genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 61 the fates and why i left them what is a ‘green day’? i had wondered • 62 genesis spring 2017 beautiful, with long, blonde hair like mine but with a fairer face and the fates and why i left them genesis spring 2017 63 hello! seat – open no. recess? with you all? madeline ketchem 64 genesis spring 2017 the fates and why i left them genesis spring 2017 65 why? when i returned home that night, i told my mother that i elizabeth and i rode home each day, elizabeth turned toward me and why? madeline ketchem 66 genesis spring 2017 ever the fates and why i left them genesis spring 2017 67 madeline ketchem 68 genesis spring 2017 the fates and why i left them genesis spring 2017 69 madeline ketchem genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 23 enchained tl ridgway fall 2017 final digital.pdf dwarf planet ronan harkins you only saw me as a vagabond among the stars i made like icarus toward any sign of hope i’d drown with you in neptune’s waters we’ll swing amongst the debris of asteroids and tilt their orbit we can honeymoon on venus they are the only two planets in your solar system without a moon they look only to you than anything that could ever grow inside of me i long for the day that you’ll reach out with burning hands to have never touched the ones you love genesisspring2016.pdf 32 genesis spring 2016 the day after he dumped you, let’s-just-take-a-break–style you saw a dead bird on the sidewalk and took a picture of it and sent it to him and he didn’t reply but what did you expect like the dead robin you saw outside the library before it really got cold, sort of an avian miscarriage or maybe abortion, sinewy and sad and kind of like chewed gum, bird bacon and the snow that fell on your head under the singing orange streetlamp, rivulets of broken yolk through your hair. except it wasn’t snow, it dried hard and purple and you used an entire bottle of pantene to make you feel civilized again. the day after he dumped you 20 an ode to a nobel-prize-winning racist natasha chopra “ships laden with wheat were coming in from australia docking in calcutta and were instructed by churchill not to disembark their cargo but sail on to europe. and when conscience-stricken british officials wrote to the prime minister in london [winston churchill] pointing out that his policies were causing needless loss of life, all he could do was write peevishly in the margin of the report, ‘why hasn’t gandhi died yet?’” -dr. shashi tharoor you orator, you historian and scholar, you owner of honorary air force wings, you not surprising chancellor of a pwi, you nobel prize winner in literature, you knight of the garter, sir, you prime minister of england, you prime minister of colonization, you defender of avoidable famine, they called you king of defending exalted human values, do they see the irony in the white of the paper they write that on, they hired mr. oldman to play you in that film that won too many awards, do they see the irony in hiring an abuser of women to portray an abuser of an entire nation, do they? do they know the british didn’t have tea until they were the largest exporter of tea without growing a single leaf on their own soil, they stole the crops from under amber noses, were they bothered by the brownness the boiled leaves left in the water? is that why they mixed in milk of indian cows, to counteract its brownness, to whitewash yet another delicacy, to dilute the news of my ancestor’s starvation, to distract from the fact that india was starving, to tell themselves that india wasn’t starving, to convince themselves that gandhi wasn’t dead (yet), to convince themselves they had no blood on their hands (yet)? 21 the winners rewhite, oh i’m sorry, i think i meant the winners rewrite history, they created an entire wikipedia page just for your lengthy list of honors, but they didn’t make one for your racism, i find that interesting that i didn’t learn about your racism until i saw the sadness in my father’s eyes, did you know that he inherited that glossiness, that distance from his parents – his parents that were born under a union jack, the amalgamation of imagery representing other colonizers, colored white from the skin of the supremacists, colored blue from the droplets of the indian ocean, colored red from the blood of my family. colored anything but brown. 68 you’re going to be a ballerina krista baker her body was cold, bitter like the winter wind, or the bile she could always taste. she looked into the mirror every day waiting for a swan to stare back. for hours she would strain her body trying to mimic a fish in water, trying to form and contort to please, to show her mother she’s floating. but any naked eye could see her drowning in the ocean her mother threw her in. 71 sit with me gano williamsbest of poetry i see you look at the seat next to me but choose the one next to it our eyes meet do i scare you? i dress like you hoping to assimilate into the systematic racism my university inherently facilitates the anxiety caused by the microaggressions blocks the learning curve towards my profession we too wish, to educate ourselves but we are forced to hide and to flee 2018 fucked up it’s still a crime to be me so they ask me to cut my hair told my grandmother she couldn’t go there my daughter unaware of her beauty blending her makeup but nothing needs to be made up with fenty beauty’s diversity “does this university have any love for we?” conquered our own lands, taken from motherlands, forced to learn the ways of your land wishing for your forefathers’ acceptance but you just call us a negro, hoping to break our egos “all lives matter” here we go, but our president protects neos and i’m just trying to make it to my probate three out of ten, probably won’t ever happen but still hoping i graduate “it was forever ago, get over it” we were hunted now we’re haunted 72 sit with me 72 by the student loans we cannot pay everyday it’s a struggle to find each other it’s predominantly white but i’m surrounded by black, darkness comes with depression predominantly white so i say it again darkness, comes with depression so i say it again i see you look at the seat next to me choose the one next to me our eyes meet “hello” do i scare you? genesis 2018 final digital.pdf campus of colors dane wallace mixed media on paper fall 2017 final digital.pdf paper lanterns kate marquam the ghosts of the undead write themselves into the strangest places. the signature in a painting on my wall, the restaurant i walk past weekly but haven’t entered since the holiday art gala when swirling wine in the bottom of a blue plastic cup printed with the name of a charity. after dinner while everyone tenth of 2001 he was in the twin towers, and what if the planes had come a day early? then he pressed and wished me a merry christmas. i didn’t throw the tin away until poems for answers, like when i wrote that his ribcage was made of rice paper. he tore so easily but goddamn, he could light up a room. the ghosts of the undead write themselves into the strangest kate marquam places, and when i say undead i mean alive and maybe happy somewhere else. i mean maybe someday we’ll and i’ll tell him that i’ve tried to write myself out of loving him for three years now, but still can’t take his painting down. fall 2017 final digital.pdf how to walk to the library anna white one is looking. check to make sure you remembered your wallet and take the secret life of glow. think about the concert this weekend, and pull your skinny jeans up a little. wave at your friends that you see as you pass. keep walking, and turn the corner now. notice the strange man leaning on the stop sign at the end of shoulders back. keep walking. try to think about your book, or your thumping down the sidewalk. imagine your knees are screws, your brain a and make sure your thumb is in the right place, just in case. imagine that getting closer now. he’s looking at you, and he’s standing a little too tall, now. his mouth falls open. keep walking, and purse your lips, letting his keep walking, and feel your metal skin convert to rubber. your you are human. best of fiction genesisfall2016.pdf 28 genesis fall 2016 acrylic samantha wrighteye genesis 2018 final digital.pdf beauty still life savannah calhoun digital photography fall 2017 final digital.pdf frostbite zach carrico photography genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 9 angel gel pen on paper 8x11” laila naseeb best of art genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 55 excuses, iraq, chai genesis 2018 final digital.pdf bubble in a dream serena boehmer colored pencil and gouache 23 dove mario stone seeking solace in the thrill of shadowed skin, i culled warmth from eager necks, the ruder prey. such a night i cast my hook, and, love, you bit. but your lips, your song, with soft arrest you held me close. glowing brighter than the moon, and in your eyes two suns, you stole darkness from me, blessed a prism of every tear. what sweet catharsis, what burning bliss to see my hands and find no claws, no scabs, no leprous thing. you cast the devil out of me, proof of the beauty i couldn’t see. i held you in my arms like god must hold the stars, how they must tickle when they blink, how bright they make the night. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 20 genesis spring 2017 monet paints nympheas at 79 • genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 76 genesis spring 2017 string games she sees all chanya ruby soft pastels and watercolor 39 fall 2017 final digital.pdf mahogani. 2017 (from "the within" series) julian jones photography genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 36 genesis spring 2017 my daughter, this world will not consume you but they hold you here now, like a bear mad with rage, • watch yourself smile chloe coy photography 10 submerged chanya ruby soft pastel 63 fall 2017 final digital.pdf the trumpeter lynzi stringer photography genesis 2018 final digital.pdf myself and the irrational fear (of insects), 2017 iryna bondar black colored pencil yeah, toast claire hegge photo typology 36 genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 40 genesis spring 2017 be a work of art joelle stille fall 2017 final digital.pdf bloom olivia wilkins chalk pastel fall 2017 final digital.pdf michaela white i’m just sitting. i’m sitting in the bathtub. my knees are up against my chest and i can see the scrapes on them, my arms are wound around them, my veins showing through, my knuckles scarred, and i can feel my ribs through skin though i am not touching them. for once i ignore it. water drips down my face, moving around the hollows of my eyes, strange, that i am a strange creature here and now and always, trying desperately not to think of anything. i stare at the tiles of the wall, but they don’t stop it. the only color left is my bruises. i wish i was not in love with color. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 47 it’s lit lifan fan fall 2017 final digital.pdf liquids ben levart photography cover art genesis 2018 final digital.pdf looking back ashley rae taber watercolor paint genesisspring2016.pdf 22 genesis spring 2016 i envy the coyote in the cold blue night, rife with burs and ticks. another new trot across the meadow as my moon waltzes coyly with clouds, to the music of wind. imagine the blood beneath the panting smile of a fed soul. intact kyle keller fall 2017 final digital.pdf octo harrison higgs photography genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 70 genesis spring 2017 37 voiceless toasts krista baker i’ve become an overflowing glass of water my emotions have drowned themselves in an ocean of numbness and so when i hear the vote is 50-48 i don’t feel it it doesn’t register in my body or my mind i simply nod understanding the lack of understanding that this country seems to have i look at the person beside me the persons beside me i look at my sisters my mother, my friends i look at my future the future i potentially carry and i wonder if they’ll look up at me with big, wondering eyes and question the world the way that i do and it leaves me with a shattering realization that i won’t be able to explain something that i can’t understand 42 punk rock sestina joseph warner a group of people come close enough to fall off the stage they’re paid to play on. they look out and see the crowd swirl a sea of limbs, arms and heads churning. feet pounding on the ground. i find myself in them. grounding myself by holding on to the people beside me. our heads bobbing in sync, rising and falling as guitar notes swiftly swirl as he cranks out the beat, the bass player amps it up. we begin to play our own game. moshing. pushing friends to the ground everyone running into each other, strangers swirl around me. a mass of people sprinting towards one another at full speed falling down, picking themselves up and heading right back into it. this is the head liner, and we’re all here to see them play these dismal chords, to slowly fall into this trance. eyes drift from stage to the ground carefully trying not to step on the people lying on the floor. the room swirls into oblivion. reminiscent of swirlies administered by high school bullies, head in a toilet, these are experiences shared by the people in the crowd tonight. the music plays to remind them of how they’ve grown, ground pain into art and flourished. falling like a phoenix to rise again. falling in love with the way past and present swirl around each other intertwined like roots poking up from the ground. it’s enough to make me light-headed. i came all the way here to see them play and so did each and every one of these people. i find myself falling again; my head is clear. the thoughts have ceased to swirl; the music continues to play in the background. i am at home with my people. fall 2017 final digital.pdf a summer's night on skid row corey cole outside the service station at 10th and rural like moths to a gaslight. promise good times desperately strutting like feral cats on the prowl. by the orange glare of street lamps. the night, my windshield, and myself coming home late. the right and wrong sides of the tracks stir me from sleep in my new bedroom. render the sky a tepid brown. what happens when entire generations pass without seeing the stars? with a hollow and mundane meaning. i teach their children, but they’ve seen more than me. genesisspring2016.pdf 36 genesis spring 2016 his four-post, antique bed engulfs the bedroom with giant, oaken frame. freshly laundered linens lace the air, perfumes of lavender and jasmine. far below, the corner of 28th and jackson bustles. john, the hotdog man, gleams behind the red canopy of his cart. numb toes tempted by guilt over stony, building’s ledge. my graceful descent in chaotic remorse. awaken, fumbling puddles of warm, egyptian cotton. the alarm blares like the horn of a downtown taxi-driver howling. humble rays peek behind creamy, sheer drapes. morning greets me with the agonizing comfort of a lustful stranger’s bed. far below kali harrison genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 7 the wooden girl • 8 genesis spring 2017 the wooden girl genesis spring 2017 9 want me to leave my home. caroline niepokoj 10 genesis spring 2017 the wooden girl genesis spring 2017 11 caroline niepokoj 12 genesis spring 2017 the wooden girl genesis spring 2017 13 1996 caroline niepokoj genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 21 i’ve seen a person laugh to breathlessness, his face blazing, swollen with blood, glowing like a cabbage patch devil. i remember thinking that he might die like this, with tinsel streamers of steaming red screaming from every pore, and a blinding white light beaming from his eyes. it began with a plastic smile, and all we remembered was the television, digital rain, in dead brainless black and white, acid rain, not yet drained from us, and a color we’d never seen before. we named it blue. blue david perry genesis 2018 final digital.pdf molly made me deconstruct my masculinity tanner léon i on top of it sit lines of magic; it only burned a little bit in the exciting kind of way. replaced by an enveloped sense of euphoria. i saw the beauty in the men around me. it was only a little gay; moreover, it was human. it felt only natural to embrace strangers while we talked. it was a party. i forgot what it meant to be uncomfortable, to be afraid. ii our love is being repressed and we’re content with the lack men, can we hug? men, can we touch? we’re so afraid of our own sexuality that bumping your friend’s leg in public best of poetry molly made me deconstruct my masculinity feels like an awkward tv interview: and we’re so afraid of interviews: every question is a challenge that demands just to layer another bandage that hides insecurities. always felt like a drunken stepfather watching, waiting for when i slipped up so he could start wailing. it never felt like part of my equation. realistically, masculinity was more the unknown variable i was solving for at the top of the fraction. stuck at the bottom, separated by a bar built by —————————— faggot pussy and bitch with promises that solving for the common denominator would earn me my manhood. i still don’t know what manhood is, it takes a hell of a lot more strength to cry, than it does to lift weights. it takes more bravery to love, than to destroy. there’s more power in holding hands tanner léon than there is in pulling yourself up. iii this is for all the boys who will go home and cry tonight because they were told boys don’t cry and did it anyways. this is for the years she’ll spend trying to uncover what’s been buried deep inside, because bottling things up is for body builders. this is for the man afraid to admit that he wants to be held like he was when he was a baby. our weakness makes us human. iv well, i ended up kissing two friends of mine. they were guys... and we’re still friends. i’ve never felt more comfortable. genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 29 make sure the envelope matches the card, my dad sighs with a guttural cough, to his ear, hands on some chipping gate or an eighty gallon water trough. on my mother’s birthday, like a head butler, i am sent to the dollar store with a twenty pulled from wadded bills that live in an overall front pocket. i am to scour for the most endearing calligraphy with processed pinks, titled to my wife, something i do not have. i drive in with the consolation prize of mcdonald’s won with the change, thinking of stale dollar store air, and stale mcchickens, ranch only. i look for some last minute love, printed and sold for a dollar and some change, matching envelope included. and sometimes i even sign it for him, with my block letters of my botched generation, clearly an imposter of his quick, dark slashes of historic cursive made always with ink, shaming the water color of my pencil. go ahead and sign it, i got a cow having trouble calving. and so i wipe the french fry shine from my left hand, but the drag of my wrist against the written lead leaves smears that can’t say how much he wanted that dollar and a half card to tell her everything he wished he felt in his powder heart. with love, steve sarah turmail genesis 2018 final digital.pdf the death of great aunt june anna white mark sat with his hands hanging between his knees, his back slumped. stole a glance towards the grand entrance of the cathedral to his left, and towards the front of the room during mass, and to pay attention, for god’s sake. for their own sake, the siblings chose to occupy the last pew by the door. mark shifted his weight. the priest was talking, but he was deaf to his words. the last time he tried to pay attention, the man was speaking have worn it, or if he had overdressed. it was hard to tell how formal you had to be for a dead woman in a casket. that morning, when his mother presented him with the tie, she hissed something to him about respect, and his attire anymore. she stared towards the front of the room, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. were just bored.” mark shot back that he was older, therefore wiser. “what?” mark grunted. the two sat and looked towards the shiny casket and older brothers could show no fear. now was the end of an era. it was the death of great aunt june self slipping further away from it every moment. he eyed the glossy, black nerals. for an eerie moment, he imagined her, sitting in the pews, staring “i bet you won’t graduate from high school,” mark said. he remem ground as she struggled across the monkey bars, blonde pigtails swinging. ahead. mark couldn’t read her expression. he thought about the time she poured a glass of ice water on his head when his alarm for school didn’t go “at least you won’t be late,” she had told him. from the corner of his eye, mark saw his sister’s hair, and how the sun shined through and around it, a halo of light. he wondered when it was she took her pigtails out for the last time, never to put her hair up like that away. mark shook his head, and his hair fell in his eyes. “time’s a bitch,” up. “come on,” she said. “we don’t have all day.” from the pews, she looked older to mark, with her hair pulled back and her hands on her hips. “the bitch probably wants us to get going.” weekends and the holidays, and hearing her voice over courtesy phone for him to hurry up as her footsteps faded. mark faced the rows of pews 65 how to get rid of a hickey ashton hall 1. catch the hickey while it’s forming; apply firm pressure to the affected area. -gq magazine when your girlfriend takes your hand and leads you out of the roller skating rink, you could let go. head back into the nearly-abandoned building and learn how to skate backwards. convince her to play the grungy arcade games. tell her you forgot your purse and then sneak out the window of the women’s restroom. instead, you let her tug you toward her hand-me-down minivan. you don’t protest when she pushes you into the back seat, where the windows are tinted. you force a smile as she straddles your lap and pulls your hands to her hips. you aren’t ready, god, you aren’t ready, but you steady your pale, sweaty palms on her back pockets because you need an anchor to face the hurricane of her desire. she leans in and devours you. you wore strawberry lip gloss for a goodnight kiss; it’s gone in a moment, smeared against her lips and jaw and neck. her violet fingernails dig into your shoulders as she pulls you in for more, never satisfied with what you offer. you’re nineteen, and you should want this. but you’re more focused on the idling bus across the street. and the way your legs are going numb underneath her. and the way her makeup looks more and more like a jackson pollock painting every time she pulls back to catch her breath. you’re nineteen, and you should be thrilled with the way she moans when she mouths at your neck, but you just want to run. finally, her stomach growls, and you pounce on the opportunity. on your last date, she told you she wants you to take charge. now, even though the command feels like a shirt three sizes too small, you insist on taking a break for milkshakes. you glance in the side mirror as she drives you to steak ‘n shake and see the necklace of hickeys she left behind. it’s too late to stop them now; they’re already under your skin. 2. massage the affected area with a toothbrush. -little things when the uber drops you off at your apartment, you hurry upstairs and text your little sister, who’s gotten a hickey from every boy under eighteen in your two-thousand-person hometown. for the first time, you ask for her advice. she laughs and says, “only get hickeys below the shirt.” you throw your phone on your bed and open your laptop. five articles later, you’re standing in your bathroom in your bra, viciously scrubbing your neck with the spare toothbrush you keep under the sink. the articles told you to stop scrubbing when it hurts. you don’t. once you start, you best of nonfiction 66 how to get rid of a hickey can’t stop until your skin is as raw as a road burn. it still doesn’t feel like you’ve done enough. 3. apply heat to the hickey to help the blood reabsorb into the skin. -hickey solution you stand under the scalding spray of the shower for nearly an hour, rubbing your neck like a genie’s bottle, wishing for a miracle when you face the mirror. you don’t blame her for your desire to tear your skin off. no. all those thoughts, the sickness in your stomach, falls back on you like acid rain. here is a pretty, normal girl who liked you enough to send the first message. who liked you enough to sneak behind her overbearing parents’ backs to talk with you on the phone for hours. who liked you enough to tolerate your ignorance of flirting-kissing relationships and teach you everything she knows. so, why do you want to crawl under your bed and never reemerge? why are you trying to remove every piece of evidence that you’re desirable enough to warrant a hickey? why do you want to block her number? you step out of the shower into a bathroom filled with oppressive steam. you stand on your rainbow bath mat for a moment, struggling to take a breath. then, you spin around and turn the shower on full blast again. 4. apply a cold spoon to the area to prevent more blood from pooling. -cosmopolitan you do everything out of order. the website recommended putting a cold spoon on the hickey immediately, but you only do it after you’ve tried everything else: toothpaste, peppermint oil, aspirin. you’re good at doing things out of order. that’s why you agreed to be her girlfriend on the first date. why you didn’t balk when she said “i love you” during the first phone call. why you didn’t protest when she started planning your suburban life, right down to the number of kids you’d have and the type of dogs you’d adopt, between the second and third dates. you figure that you’ll do all these things eventually, so order doesn’t matter. after all, your grandparents met at work, and they were engaged three weeks later. now they’ve been married for fifty years. if things happen fast, it’s just fate, right? maybe she’s your soulmate and your rapidly unfurling relationship is proof. that’s what you tell yourself at eleven pm when you go to bed that night. it’s what you tell yourself at midnight as you stare at the ceiling. it’s what you tell yourself at two am when all you want to do is call your mom. 5. wait it out and give it time to heal. stylecraze the next morning, you send your girlfriend your usual good morning text, full of flirty emojis and topped off with a saccharine nickname you stole from google. as she taught you. 67 ashton hall you text her during your work break. you send her a picture of a cute dog while you heat your dinner in the microwave. you wish her good night and tell her you love her because you’re worried she won’t be able to sleep if you don’t. the next day, you send her a good morning text without emojis. you still text her during work breaks. but you pretend to lose your phone all evening because you don’t have the energy to tap out replies to her twicehourly texts. in the middle of the week, you call your mom, and you pour your heart out like a waterfall. you ask her if she had to decide to love your dad. if talking to him felt laborious. if kissing him was just another chore on her to-do list. she laughs because she knows you’ve already made up your mind; you’re just calling for permission. that night, you leave out the “i love you” in your good night text. 6. the best way to get rid of a hickey is to not get a hickey in the first place. self magazine you give it a weekend. you tell her that you’re going to be with your aunt and that there’s no cell phone service at her house. you do go to your aunt’s, and you bike thirty-six miles, and you kayak up a river, and you eat an entire cheese plate. when you come back on monday, you ask your girlfriend if you can call her. she calls you instead, two minutes after your text. she asks about your weekend. you tell her about how sore you are from biking. in the same breath, you tell her that it’s not going to work. she tells you she understands. you tell her you’re sorry. you hang up the phone. instantly, you feel lighter. it’s been seconds, and half the weight of the world falls off your shoulders. then she calls you back. she’s crying. she asks if it’s because she came on too strong. you lie and tell her you aren’t ready for commitment. she tells you that she doesn’t know what she wants from the future, that she’s willing to change anything—everything. that she loves you. you tell her that you don’t feel anything, and it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to say. when she pauses to take a breath, you hang up the phone. and you block her number. and you block her instagram account. and you block her on snapchat. anything she can do to get in contact with you, you cut off. because when you’re pulling weeds, you can’t just trim the leaves. you have to uproot the entire plant. when you look in the mirror that night, the hickeys are gone. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf the universe of us sydney petrunich multimedia collage genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 38 genesis spring 2017 the mirror sister “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -eleanor roosevelt hamilton, wicked, the book of mormon the media our nation in unison poor bone structure sunken eye sockets small lips short eyelashes unpronounced eyebrows • genesis spring 2017 39 one day genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 23 flower preservation in victorian england best of poetry genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 21 ode to a mug brandon spaulding o, exalted mug! to the multitude you may appear humdrum, even dreary; your smooth porcelain stained like walls of a deserted dollhouse and brunette rings of saturn circling your cavity into infinity. but those masses, they have not beheld you like i! grail of the lord’s bitter black ambrosia, between my steaming nectar and the melancholia of an unholy mahogany pool reaching across the tile floor, there is only you. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 22 genesis spring 2017 history: boone county stay quiet…pretend you are still asleep. 8% of adolescents, aged 12-17, abused pain relievers in the year 20092010. hold your breath so you don’t scream. an estimated 1,740 children died from abuse and/or neglect in 2008. i’m working on it. 50%-70% of normal-weight girls think they’re overweight. he found me, he wants me. run! 66% of rape victims know their assailant. • genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 29 act i scene 1 the refrigerator door in the center of the stage. there is darkness once more. for a moment, nothing changes, and then the lights marshall holy mother of biscuits! emily! would you come down to the kitchen, please? darling, why is your uncle’s prop skeleton in the fridge? emily marshall emily yeah. he’s always dreamed of living up in alaska where it’s cold. it’s too hot here. he said it makes his bones sweat. marshall emily, would you take him out of the fridge? emily no. marshall please? emily you can’t make me! lence, and then delilah comes from stage left. she is delilah good morning, marshall. marshall good morning, delilah. you won’t believe what i found in the fridge this morning. delilah you found in the fridge this morning. but try me. phil the plastic prop skeleton kathryn staublin 30 genesis fall 2016 kathryn staublin marshall fridge, you know. that skeleton is at least three delilah please. marshall two spoonfuls of sugar? delilah spoons. marshall oh. well, i don’t prefer sugar, so i wouldn’t know. delilah marshall can i ask you a personal question? delilah we’re married. not sure how much more personal we can get. what’s on your mind? marshall well, i’ve been thinking— delilah that’s dangerous. marshall —about, you know, the afterlife and such. and i was wondering how you felt about it. delilah about the afterlife? marshall yeah. i mean, what you believe. do you…you know. believe in ghosts? delilah i don’t see how that’s really a personal question, dear. marshall i think it is, kind of. delilah do you? marshall do i what? believe in ghosts or think it’s a person al question? delilah marshall, we don’t really have time for this. emi ly has to get ready for school, and i haven’t even started breakfast. marshall i can help with breakfast. would you like me to make some eggs or something? delilah no, dear. we’re running a bit late. cereal will have to do. ther. unaware, delilah sets the gallon of milk on the marshall you never answered my question. delilah yes, marshall, i believe in ghosts. genesis fall 2016 31 phil the plastic prop skeleton marshall thank god. i mean, i don’t exactly believe in them, but at the same time, the idea kind of scares me, too. delilah i never said they scared me. marshall what? delilah ghosts. they don’t scare me. marshall what do you mean? delilah think about it. in real life, and in real life alone, ghosts are simply something we don’t understand. a ghost isn’t there, in our world, like us. a ghost can’t hurt you, marshall. people can. marshall what about poltergeists? you know. spirits com ing back, haunting places, throwing things, pos sessing people…talking about how they wish they’d moved to alaska. delilah alaska? movies aren’t real either, you know. i would be far more side of the table to the other. delilah what’s sparking this conversation? did you have a dream or something? marshall i’m just curious. there’s a lot we still don’t know about each other, and since the wedding we ha ven’t really had much time to ourselves. i mean, the honeymoon was nice, but we didn’t really talk much— delilah it’s not my fault we had to cut the honeymoon short, marshall. funerals aren’t exactly planned weeks in advance. marshall marshall (cont’d) your uncle, was he a big halloween decorator? delilah tually had what he called his “creepy room” in the basement, where he kept all these strange things he found at antique stores and whatnot. i don’t know why he felt compelled to share any of it with emily. it must have meant a lot to him. his things, i mean. marshall shame i never met him. delilah i miss him. marshall doesn’t say anything. he is still holding the marshall hey, i noticed it’s been a while since emily went to stay over at any of her friends. 32 genesis fall 2016 delilah what? are you interested in a romantic night alone? marshall well—actually, that would be nice, but i was just thinking about emily. she and her best friend were so close way back when. and i’ve noticed her work… delilah emily’s grades always go up and down. kids can’t be perfect all the time. you’ll notice that after a while. marshall delilah so she does. marshall you know, i caught her laughing with that skele ton the other night. she must crack herself up. delilah marshall? marshall i just— i don’t know if she should be spending so much time with...out real people. she might end up— delilah like you? marshall what? delilah introverted. like you. is that what you were going to say? marshall i’m not introverted. i’m the best salesman in my department. delilah i know you are, dear. marshall delilah, let me be frank for a moment. emily and i…haven’t spent a lot of time together. we’re not close. and i can’t say i know what’s best for her. but i’d like to think i could help her, you know, with her friends and her grades. i could even read to her if she’d let me— delilah she’s too old to have someone read to her. she likes to do it on her own. marshall see, that’s what i mean. she can’t raise herself. delilah excuse me? marshall no, i didn’t mean— delilah no, i’m sure you didn’t. marshall lilah— delilah marshall, don’t dig yourself into a deeper hole. fast. marshall do you want to talk about this later? delilah there’s nothing to talk about. you’re talking in cir cles. ten minutes. marshall lilah, i think emily should talk to a professional. delilah professional? why? (she takes a dish rag from the kathryn staublin genesis fall 2016 33 phil the plastic prop skeleton marshall i think she’s going through some problems right now that you can’t help her with. she’s just been so withdrawn. delilah i’m not sending her to an overly educated knob about anything. marshall well, you, yes, but she doesn’t say anything to me— delilah you’re not her dad, marshall. marshall legally, i am. listen, delilah, would never hurt you or emily. delilah i’ve heard that before. marshall just because emily’s father got sent to jail for stab doesn’t mean i’m going to do the same. give me a chance to be everything that man never was. delilah i didn’t mar ry you so emily could have a father. i married you because i didn’t want to be alone anymore. marshall well, did you ever think about why i married you? did you think that maybe, just maybe, i wanted to have a family, and to be part of a family? delilah if you want to be part of a family then you need to act like it. marshall what’s that supposed to mean? delilah great, now emily doesn’t have time for breakfast. toaster pastries will have to do. marshall delilah, you need to listen to me. delilah i don’t want to hear it. marshall delilah? delilah, look at me! marshall (con’t) why do you have to make this so goddamned hard? there is a moment of silence, and then emily, who is and then he looks at emily, realizing what he has done. emily why? why did you do that? (emily holds onto the don’t you know that i love him? why would you do that to him? emily sits on the stairs for a moment, crying, and then 34 genesis fall 2016 kathryn staublin marshall delilah save it. stands alone, watching. she stands straight and walks you said you wanted to be part of a family. if you really want to be a father— —then prove it. he’s now holding. delilah crosses her arms. marshall him to stage left. the stairway on stage right. delilah (cont’d) emily? emily, would you please come down here? i’d like to talk to you. ing. emily where’s phil? delilah the prop skeleton? marshall is looking after him. here. sit with me for a moment. (she sits down on the last we need to talk about...phil. emily why? is he going to be all right? delilah honey…you didn’t know your uncle very well, around a prop skeleton all the time—well, that’s me is that you’re happy. emily i don’t understand. delilah you like marshall, don’t you? delilah (cont’d) i know you don’t always get along. but can you try, just for me? why did you name him phil? emily wants to be called phil. delilah do me a favor? emily what? delilah don’t ever tell marshall that. emily but why? genesis fall 2016 35 phil the plastic prop skeleton delilah marshall can’t handle things like that. you know, would be best to keep anything about phil away from him. you don’t want to upset him, do you? emily no. delilah good girl. emily mommy? delilah yeah? emily you do believe me, don’t you? delilah what? emily about phil. that he talks to me. that he’s real. delilah honestly, honey, i don’t know. but it doesn’t mat ter. if you’re happy, and if you keep in mind the fact that phil might bother other peo ple…then i don’t see why you can’t keep him. i don’t want to take him away from you. after all, it was, in a sense, the dying wish of your great uncle. emily i like having him around. he’s good company. delilah is he now? are you ready for school? emily yes. delilah good. i’ll bring some toaster pastries so you can have breakfast on the way. emily okay. delilah kisses emily’s forehead and then walks to the items away. shall. emily (cont’d) marshall yeah. the plastic screws were just loose. every (he hands i’m sorry i broke him. emily emily (cont’d) delilah well, would you look at that. i think it’s an im provement. go get your backpack, honey. i don’t want you to be late to school. emily okay. delilah emily? 36 genesis fall 2016 kathryn staublin emily yeah? delilah would you leave phil here? he’s had a long day. i think he could use the rest. emily yeah. okay. got it! delilah go out to the car honey. i’ll catch up. emily exits stage right. marshall is still standing awkhim on the cheek. marshall what was that for? delilah it doesn’t take much to be a good dad, marshall. more patience. marshall thank god it’s friday. delilah come on. marshall you really creep me out, you know. huh. the end. genesisfall2016.pdf 46 genesis fall 2016 oil on canvas whale watching lifan fan the truth behind trophy hunting samantha barnes chalk pastel 14 genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 15 two paths diverge lifan fan genesisfall2016.pdf 14 genesis fall 2016 waitressing and us victoria johnson i met donald toward the end of the night. he’d come in to check his schedule and i saw him out of the corner of my eye as i bussed a table. he he was average height, skinny, and had glasses. all he did was introduce himself and i don’t know that we talked about much else, but i knew from would’ve second guessed it. maybe he was just being nice. but with donald, there was no denying it. * “he’s so annoying,” one girl said. “he creeps me out,” said another. we were in the break room, taking one of two of our crackers dipped in strawberry jam (free). “he’s not that bad,” i said. they shrugged. when i got back to my section it was dead. the quick and (hopefully) interesting history of hutches is as follows: the hutches are wood and quite large, larger than most grandmothers would have in their kitchens or dining rooms. they have glass windows where antiques are displayed. but more importantly, they have just about every sin gle thing a server would need: pitchers of sweet and all the other necessary condiments. just about every server had their own. they were our proper ty. mess with someone’s hutch or steal their water pitcher and you were in for it. for all the ones who got away year i night at gray brother’s, a local cafeteria that had been around since the 40s. when people came to visit, you took them to gray’s. it was unique, one at the entrance, sat a massive assembly line for your dinner sat in front of you. you grabbed your tray, napkins, silverware, dessert (yes, before the main course), and then the kind workers behind the counter asked what you’d like and you’d pick you would seat yourself. i worked there for roughly six years. that’s the thing about gray’s. you either worked there for a few days, weeks, or months, or you were there for years and people thought, “may i never have the luck of that person.” however, i quickly found a rhythm: introduce, swer the bell, and repeat. except “answer the bell” was more like every few minutes. because gray’s stalled and the cashiers rang it every time some one needed help carrying their tray. this bell was the annoyance of the entire restaurant. it was like running from the door but wanting to chat every two minutes. est o on ction genesis fall 2016 15 “victoria,” he said. “my someday wife.” maybe it is odd that he greeted me this way, but it was our normal. he put his arm around my shoul ders. i side stepped away and tried to shimmy out from under his arm. “you know, you’re the kind of girl any guy would want to marry.” always did, and i hated it because i didn’t want to encourage him. “whatever,” i said. what i really wanted to say was: donald, people wouldn’t think you were such a creep if you wouldn’t act like one. for the rest of the night, i found random bits of trash and straw wrappers hidden on my hutch. each one was like a treasure hunt. don ald would walk by, smile mischievously, and i’d know he’d hidden something somewhere. i took give in just enough to encourage him. year 2 the honest truth that took me years to ad mit is this: i looked forward to working with don ries. i liked that they didn’t know him: that he was mine alone, separate from the rest of my life. but the ambivalence i felt toward him was palpable. that’s the crux i kept tripping over. we leaned against my hutch (such a nor mal position for a bored worker). it was before the ty: a normal conversation at the beginning of the before close and the time of our last break of the evening. if the line was gone by then, our tables would have plenty of time to eat and be gone by time we closed, and the hope was that we’d have an empty section ready for cleaning by closing. in a perfect world it would happen. “how’s the boyfriend?” he asked. he’d ask every now and then. he probably wanted me to tell him how awful my boyfriend was so he’d have i had fun. he kind of came out of nowhere and i honestly was just enjoying hanging out with him and then i started to like him and he liked me, but it kind of went downhill from there, honestly. to say that even though he never met donald, he old self liked that donald made him a bit jealous, and well, vice versa. “what?” his grin was undeniable. “when?” “a couple months ago.” “you never told me.” i wanted to wipe the about something like that. “didn’t seem important.” “this is fantastic. didn’t i always tell you i could see the future? you and me, we’re meant to be.” “you have a girlfriend,” i said. i wanted to punch him for her. i really did. he’d recently met a girl that lived in chicago. for a good year or so people joked that she didn’t exist. such per was used to, especially from someone who had a girlfriend already. it made me feel like “the other woman” when i wasn’t even doing anything. for four years a fear hung over my head that this mys terious woman from chicago would come down and yell at me for something i didn’t even do. “right now, but i can see the future, re member?” victoria johnson 16 genesis fall 2016 waitressing and us me.” “and your point is?” “it’s, i don’t know, weird.” when you’re nineteen and a guy that is for me it was anyway, but the more i got to know donald, the more it didn’t seem that big of a deal. i was more mature and he was less mature, so i guess it evened out. “will you help me clean the rest of my ta bles?” he asked from across the room. i was a pro rhythm. “absolutely not,” i said. “you can do it yourself.” i packed up my things and prepared to leave. “but victoria,” he said, elongating the sylla bles. that was when i found him most annoying—when he acted as if he couldn’t do things himself, whether kid ding or not. it wasn’t that i was against helping him, but he didn’t legitimate ly need my help. year 3 donald became my safe space at gray’s. he kept me entertained, sane, and laughing. when ever i was cleaning a table or talking to someone, he’d come up behind me and poke me in this spot under my shoulder blade that made me cringe. or he’d put his arm around me and tell whomever i was talking to that i was his girlfriend, especially if i was talking to another guy. whenever i came into work, i’d look for hands in his pockets in the opening to the new room, which wasn’t even the newest addition to the restaurant. he’d smile at me and wave, and i’d smile back, happy i had someone to smile at. but all the while he was dating the illumi nous chicago girl, and it didn’t sit well with me. you,” donald said. “jackson is watching.” jack son’s family owned the restaurant. my cousin married him. he’d told donald that he had his eye ing with girls (obviously), and i guess jackson saw it as his duty to make sure donald didn’t get too close to me. i laughed and shook my head, enjoy “seriously. he scares me.” after a pause he said, “so you’ve got a boy friend now?” “sort of. i’ve known him since high school.” all of my relationships at that point had been long distance, which in hindsight, i’m grateful for. to quote myself, i once said about this relationship that it was like i was single, but not. i kind of liked it that way—then, anyway. “you think you’re going to marry him?” “i don’t know.” i knew i wasn’t, but some sight. really a beauty. “well, you’re not. it’s you and me, future wife.” “if you say so.” nonchalance epitomized never got me anywhere, so i just passively accept ed whatever he said. donald would say some thing he’d said so many times before and instead with it, be ambiguous, or pretend not to show any donald became my safe space at gray’s. genesis fall 2016 17 victoria johnson interest. maybe that was wrong—i don’t know. “so you admit it,” he said. i could hear the smile in his voice. i tried not to make eye contact because i knew i’d smile back. i shook my head and laughed, knowing no response would shut him up. “why don’t you think we’ll work?” he asked. “you don’t even really know anything about me, donald,” i said. “sure i do. i know you’re beautiful, funny, and amazing.” he said it as if it were all that mat tered. it wasn’t. “besides, you’re the lois lane to my superman.” “i don’t like superman.” i couldn’t help but laugh at his shocked expression. was like i had another life at work. one no one else really knew about. sure i’d tell stories about don ald, but it was understood nothing would ever happen between us. my friends would say, oh that donald. he’s so ridiculous. my mom would ask if i had any more donald stories. that’s what he was in the end: a mess of stories. year 4 we stood in a doorway, watching custom put his arm around my shoulders. i didn’t shrug ished some spiel about how perfect we were for were of course. i found out donald told someone he’d leave his girlfriend for me, but i didn’t want that. i never wanted to be the “other,” the one who ru ined everything, the one who stole someone’s boy friend. it doesn’t always work out like it does in the movies. “oh, victoria,” he said. “when will you re alize we’re perfect for each other?” “you have a girlfriend,” i said. the same makes me uncomfortable.” what i’d wanted to say at work, but couldn’t quite form the words, so i sent him a facebook message (classy). after that, he was cold and didn’t say anything to me. “donald, did you hear about the doctor who 50th anniversary?” a shrug. no eye contact. the next week, he walked by me singing “heartbreaker” by pat benetar. my jaw dropped. both relationships i’d had, they’d kind of ended up mutual in the end, so i’d never left someone heart broken. it felt like that time i sprinkled salt on a slug and ran immediately away because i felt like the worst person in the world. apologized—for what, i wasn’t quite sure, but i apologized anyway. the restaurant bustled with about the temperature of their food. “i didn’t mean to hurt you,” i said. i really anything. we were barely friends. this moment i remember perfectly: i stood over a round table by one of the big windows, cleaning. he stood on the other side, holding a tray full of dirty dishes. his voice quivered as he spoke. he didn’t make eye contact. i knew he was being sincere, speaking from the heart. no one, not even the guys i’d dated, had expressed their “i meant everything i ever said,” he said. “you’re a great girl. you’re, like, what every guy 18 genesis fall 2016 waitressing and us dreams of as the perfect wife.” i stared back at him in shock. i didn’t know what to say. obviously not every guy would think that, and i wouldn’t want them to. so i just looked at him. his voice cracked. “i can’t believe i’m telling you all this. but i really do like you. i always have. i’m sorry.” he walked away, speeding toward the dish room. i stood dumbfounded with customers staring at me. him, he was cleaning one of his tables, which was the perfect time to talk to someone when it was busy. i took a deep breath, with my heart nearing my throat, and said, “you know, donald, maybe it would’ve worked in another life.” that’s when i said it. that mostly emp ty, but heartfelt phrase. did i mean it? partly, but at the end paths. “you’ll always be the one that got away,” he said. i liked that. i liked being the one that got year 5 “so you’re really doing it this time,” i said. after talking about moving to chicago for “in a couple weeks.” “it won’t be the same without you. who will i talk to about doctor who?” “i’ll miss you too, victoria.” one of the last things i remember before he left is this: i was working on pies, where you cut strawberry pie, which was a beast to cut. it was just before close. only a few people made up the line and i was trying to get a head start on clean up. donald stood next to me, saying something he usually said about our eventual marriage, when a ware. “you guys are perfect for each other,” he said. “we’re not together,” i said. smiling and feeling awkward. always smiling though. it was my downfall with donald. my inner emotions coming out when i least wanted them to. “i know we are,” donald said. “she won’t admit it.” his grin was ear to ear like the cheshire cat. the man looked at me and said, “she likes you. i can tell.” when he got down the line, donald bounced over to me. “see! i told you. even he can see it.” i don’t remember what i said. i probably told him ev being ridiculous. he had a girlfriend. etc. etc. but i in my stomach at the man’s words. at donald’s words or his smile or the times he’d put his arm around me. a couple weeks later, he left and didn’t say goodbye. he said he would, but he didn’t. year 6 i left the cafeteria too, but after a year of volunteering abroad i came back, something i said i’d never do, but i was going to get my master’s degree, also something i said i’d never do,and i needed a job. many people were new and most “you know, donald, maybe it would’ve worked in another life.” genesis fall 2016 19 victoria johnson ly high schoolers. i wondered if i was like them their names. i’d always been awful with names. everyone had their own people to talk to. i stood near them, sat next to them, but rare ly joined in the conversations. i knew people and was still known as a veteran, but we weren’t close. i was there to work. i stuck to myself even more than before. i went back to my section in the new room, leaned against my hutch, and observed the room and the subtle changes that had occurred since i’d left. i looked out the window and remem bered the night donald and i watched a bird peck at the window all evening. “i think he comes every year,” donald said. and down. said. i never thought i’d miss the hidden straw wrappers, random pokes in my back that made me jump, and having someone to lean against the hutch with. but i did. i do. 41 when death danced with the ocean blue elijah hendricks i search for solace, all alighted so consumed and unrequited for the sea to turn tides in my arms, erode my heart i meant no harm the wounds have opened up again your salty skin poured over them while i tremble as i pine for you for death to dance with the ocean blue but i know as i lay down alone your heart is taken, i am prone the tears roll salty, damp, unfair i let them linger, to feel you there i’m lost at sea, my darling dear the depths of you my joy and fear then as away i start to drift the fates so cruel allow a gift you stumble in, pass through my door no likes of which i’ve seen before your onyx hair a blush disguise to mask the sea storm in your eyes passion shocks the air around us your stride wide, my form tremulous towards my bed you make your way so, this must be my dying day... your head leans down to touch my own conspiring thoughts, all sense now thrown inhibitions dropped and longing grew as death danced with the ocean blue your lips meet mine in crashing waves which echo cries throughout the cave that i have lived in all this time where i had hid till you were mine and then the spots of light appear my vision breaks and balance veers you’ve turned to mist and slowly faded your lingering kiss has left me jaded i stumble then along the line for sleep has wronged me to feel right i was the boy who fooled his pain with visions of the falsely gained the prince of ghosts, i am the same and yet i’m haunted by your name left but with this, a dream of you where death danced with the ocean blue 8 crocodile nick kinder with a cry the world shot itself in the heart and the bullet flew through classrooms and theaters and ghettos and concerts and churches and daughters and sons and uncles and aunties and mothers and fathers and the crocodile choked on his tears and said, “i wish there was something we could do.” genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 34 genesis spring 2017 do not resuscitate •best of poetry 25 superstar claire christoff 1. karen carpenter was born on march 2, 1950. 2. she died on february 4, 1983. 3. she was 5’4”. 4. karen weighed 91 pounds in september 1975. 5. mary gaitskill, in her book veronica, wrote of karen that “starvation was in her voice all along. that was the poignancy of it.” after the lush, eerie orchestration on the intro to “superstar” evens out and karen’s voice breaks—keens, wails—through the empty space, you can feel that longing. it is piercing at its entry points and soft, pulsating, everywhere else. 6. don’t you remember you told me you loved me, baby? 7. you said you’d be coming back this way again, baby. 8. in a picture taken three months before she died, karen is sitting crosslegged, like a little kid, in front of a homemade needlepoint banner. it says you win—i gain. she’s smiling a kind of smile that looks like it hurts. like she’s trying to convince herself that she really does believe the message written above her in bad 1970s blackletter script. 9. delaney & bonnie first came out with “superstar” in 1969, but it was bette midler’s rendition of it on the tonight show that caught richard carpenter’s attention. after he and his sister released their cover, midler made jokes at karen’s expense and did not apologize until after karen was already dead. 10. in the carpenters’ version of the song, the line “i can hardly wait to sleep with you again” became “i can hardly wait to be with you again.” 11. maybe karen’s voice was too clean, too wholesome, to sing about sex; maybe she transcended it. 12. todd haynes directed, wrote, and co-produced superstar: the karen carpenter story in 1987, while he was still a film student at bard. it barely lasts 43 minutes, but even that seems too long to bear. karen and richard are barbie and ken dolls, and in bootleg copies of the film—the only versions available to the public—their voices are muffled, and their faces are cast in black shadows. richard carpenter sued haynes and won, but there’s something about the movie that feels far more insidious than a copyright infringement issue. it’s creepy and dark and unsettling in an uncanny-valley, ’70s-via-the-’80s way. as if it’s portraying the closest thing to reality that there can be. 13. two years later, the karen carpenter story aired on cbs. the actors playing karen and richard look like they’re going to a halloween party dressed in bad carpenters costumes, and the whole thing is laughably bad in a way that only a 1989 made-for-tv movie can be. karen faints during a performance; a drug-addled richard takes a tumble down a flight of stairs. an unconvincing happy ending is tacked on at the end of the two hours. no copyright infringement 26 superstar lawsuit was ever filed. 14. karen’s vocals on “superstar” were recorded in just one take. there is nothing practiced about pouring honey out of a jar; you simply do it. 15. your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear. 16. but you’re not really there. 17. it’s just the radio. 18. there is a symmetry, an anachronistic-feeling precision to the sounds of the oboe and the drums on “superstar.” the recording feels round, smooth, full, if a song can be described by words like these. 19. karen was not cool. 20. she was a choirgirl in college. she collected disney memorabilia and did not believe in women’s liberation. 21. performing “superstar” on the carol burnett show, karen is wearing yellow taffeta and blue eyeshadow, and her hair is stacked like a smalltown bride’s. her mother could have dressed her. perched behind the drums, she looks flung out of space and time, but once she starts singing, this all falls away, and you’re under her sad, dreamy spell. 22. karen was married for a year and two months. she wanted children, but she never had any. in her wedding pictures, she’s smiling like a little girl in dress-up clothes. 23. in 1994, sonic youth released their own cover of “superstar.” thurston moore sings in that husky whisper of his, cool and cocky and knowing, almost like he’s doing a parody of karen’s silky-voiced naïveté. kim gordon, perfectly coiffed, looks like she’s playing at a high school dance. 24. years later, when terry gross asked richard carpenter on fresh air what he thought of the cover, he said, “why would i like it?” 25. in a photograph from 1976, karen is wearing high-rise jeans and a t-shirt that says lead sister. she’s smiling, but this smile is fierce, joyful. her hair is flying as she absolutely goes to town on the drums, giving her the appearance of a ragdoll. 26. around this time, karen’s brother was dealing with addiction. quaaludes, known for their sedative and hypnotic effects, were richard’s drug of choice. this seems strange, considering that he was always in close proximity to a voice famous for the very same things. 27. in 1971, lester bangs wrote, in rolling stone, that the carpenters had “the most disconcerting collective stage presence” of any band he’d ever seen. i don’t know exactly what he meant by this, but i think i agree with him. 28. karen walks onstage, mic in hand, dressed in red. her hair, cut into bangs that fall across her forehead in a single shiny piece, seems like a failed attempt at keeping with the times. 29. she’s the winner of the talent show, the winner of the beauty pageant, the prom queen, singing her song into a void as deep as purgatory. 30. baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby. 31. i love you. 32. i really do. shredded megan chitwood charcoal and ink 19 genesis 2018 final digital.pdf oh, shenandoah brooke holmes photography genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 23 dragonfruit colored pencil on paper 22x42” lifan fan genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 78 genesis spring 2017 g-r-a-n-d-m-a megan smith • genesis spring 2017 79 80 genesis spring 2017 g-r-a-n-d-m-a genesis spring 2017 81 megan smith 82 genesis spring 2017 g-r-a-n-d-m-a genesis spring 2017 83 megan smith genesis 2018 final digital.pdf gen. nick kinder we, the generation that sheds others we deem to be “dead weight,” we, the generation we, the generation with chains on our ankles and the world on our backs, as our parents live stream our missteps to their facebook groups. we, the generation condemning the devil’s advocate, yet wondering why others won’t just look from our point of view, we, the generation who cares for only two things: avocados and not uniformity, we, the generation street curbs, and “no, all lives matter.” we, the generation because they aren’t from here, but “not this immigrant. i own her.” we, the generation one younger and one with more regrets, and both grinned, and both knew this was a lie. genesisspring2016.pdf 30 genesis spring 2016 when it rains cold in autumn, to rehearse the warmth of her senses, the girl presses lip prints to the pane of a window’s fog, to the pulsing jazz of her heart. in a light sleep, she stirs & dreams once more of restless folk-strings on a worn stage, in orange -aura, outdoor summer symphonies, amid the hazy evening hum from hidden swarms of cicadas. as she sleeps, my name will run to the screen of her phone, send a buzz-buzz down her leg & in a bubble, as though i’m speaking, will read: listen tho, i had no intention of being so enchanted. please, squeeze me to the marrow, til the cages of my bones close. yeah, no. nothing serious kyle keller untitled connor stump charcoal and ink on raw canvas 29 62 does grieving ever end or do its instances just grow further and further apart natasha chopra the indigo dye of my new dupatta rubs off on my fingertips, turning the white strips of my nails a faded royal blue; i wonder if dadi ever wore this color, wonder if her hands ever looked like mine, wonder if she knew the last time we spoke would be the last time we spoke; i remember in college, i learned that every time you think of a memory, you only think of the last time you remembered it, you remember only its ghost. after scrubbing at my fingertips in the sink of some restaurant, bhuji tells me this is the nature of the indigo dye—if you do not wash it first, it will bleed into your skin. if you wash it too much, it will fade completely. i did not realize that choosing this dupatta led to such a strict cleaning regiment, did not realize i had to ration out my laundry, dirty it only so much before it started fading, slipping through my royal blue nails, the weight of commitment rests heavily on my lungs; i wonder if dadi ever cringed when i called her sarees dupattas or the other way around, but the more i think about her, the more she fractures, the more she fades, i didn’t realize i had to ration out my grief, didn’t realize i had such a strict schedule to mourn her, i wonder if she’s even there at all or if she washed out over time, becoming only a ghost i wish i could be haunted by. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 71 the sickness now that i am eight, i know a lot more about the world, •best of non-fiction 72 genesis spring 2017 the sickness genesis spring 2017 73 74 genesis spring 2017 not long after that mother told me i better be good the sickness genesis spring 2017 75 genesis 2018 final digital.pdf rafael caro comic the yellow wood chainsaw massacre genesisspring2016.pdf 34 genesis spring 2016 in your palms i dissolve, you want me tender, i am seawater disappearing in your warmth. you want me sweet and light i am torta caprese, you go back to in that corner café in capri where you write me in hot evenings when i wait to be born over and over. i am clay curved by your grip accordingly, i am laughter sung by your throat, i am a rose stripped by you. can i be something more? neruda’s roselets kalia dimitrova genesis spring 2016 35 i die in every line you give life to i sleep in this nameless house anonymous as a southern wind, a secret you keep away from the streets that greet you. i am the sweat on your face when she asks if you love another. i am the bittersweet espresso staining your lying mouth. you wash me away when needed. but what do i know of this world? my soul, my brain, my words, no one knows. i am a rose, roselet, tiny and naked, for you. neruda’s roselets genesis 2018 final digital.pdf yeah i have friends...does my dog count? lifan fan oil on canvas genesisfall2016.pdf 8 genesis fall 2016 you said, when i’m dead, do my hair like madonna. last fall i read a poem out loud to you and a room of strangers. didn’t even turn red—but you cried during the line about the old yellow house; i know it reminded you of your dad. i hadn’t seen your face so soaked since the night that yellow house turned singing that postal service song: i am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles (although we have never kissed except for one halloween, and what could be real between a mere mermaid and an elf queen?) for the freckle in her eye rachel leonard genesis fall 2016 9 wrapped gifts you got that year. so quickly we became in december we made stockings with our names at the top but our home had no hearth to hang them above. on the coldest mornings eye. but we no longer aligned. so you packed yourself up in a box in january i watched the christmas tree in our living room die and i remembered one hundred years ago, telling you that when i wither i want to be rolled into a ball of good soil. i said, i want to grow a tree. you had told me earnestly. for the freckle in her eye genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 31 strips of new wheat sway in the sand like planted chorus lines. they hum the southern battle cry with the cicadas, while closing screen doors keep the rhythm steadied. on a front porch, red-faced farmers gnaw their aftersupper pipes. the stories of lost souls who bend and weep like heavy willows are fed with the dessert pie to their grandkids, garnished with secondhand smoke. the burnouts eternalized by the farmers’ parables are found digging for cigarette butts in the gutters. scrape horseshoes against the wooden street markers. the poor men can hear the dying snap of a mouse, caught in the stove trap of a skinny hilljack. he itches that goes unwashed until the next rain. in the morning, grubby beater-lickers will pitter and pat the clotted black dirt into baby foothills. they will grind the sandy grains between their teeth as they sit with chubby knuckles wedged between clammy, raw thighs. they will wait for their life to be validated by a tractor ride on the tire guard, to mind a beer cooler underfoot, to watch the soft soil sift and separate through the blades. the lesser of appalachia sarah turmail 59 our time tanner léon yeah, we came to shake up the world because the olds have lost their way and it is our time. born into freedom only to later realize terrorism was constructed at the hand of our own government for the towers still burn in our hearts but there’s a hole, missing like the plane wreckage. fueled by cartoons and less-than-cabled television, we were raised on the garbled alien dial-up frequencies and took the trek from cords to flip to smart: phones and we can’t get off our phones. if my earbuds are in i want to be alone. we watched our food come in boxes bags and wrappers knowing none-the-wiser, tv and dinner made for an oasis as we praised the microwave— it was all we knew. we lived through four seasons and now acknowledge we screwed the weather up; just like our parents did to us— caught in between fall(ing) and spring. we were always told the world used to be safer. the glory days already spent— but outside has always been a second home. the ones who played with walkie-talkies and made lite-brites depict our dreams. walmart and mcdonalds are the two pinpoints of our foundation: we are birthed in muck. we still can’t remember anyone’s birthday except our own 60 our time but christmas is ingrained. we grew up without moms dads siblings and lost the milk carton kid— painted in the headlines as “the 50% divorce rate refugees.” too many hormones in our food we gut gender roles and slice open binaries. raised on meat and republican bias but still cast our first votes for bernie: hope never died, it was born into us. we survived sexual assault, learned how to speak with a broken heart and adult swim showed us everything our parents wouldn’t. we made friends with screens and cried when we realized they could make for better friends. told to go to college where we smoked weed & cigarettes— realized capitalism ruined education just like it ruins everything else: down the liquor down the drain. our colloquialisms come in the form of memes about our mental health because we don’t really know how else to deal with things. humor might just be what saves us. which is kind of ironic considering the strict no horseplay policies put into place by people who thought they were happy working in factories. so it’s no wonder we chant in the streets for more fun and less work. no surprise that we drink coffee at 10 pm in steak & shake and then go home for a bowl of cereal. we’ve always been defiant like that. 61 tanner léon some of our music might suck, but what really sucks more is that it took rock’s limelight, and that they don’t like. we’re a flock of night owls running on no sleep caffeine doobies before work alcohol in water bottles food fast: the pace of our lives. we’ve grown up knowing only war— our hopes for peace scheduled illegal by the government, but we were never good at listening anyways. they tried to kill our creativity and called it standardized testing in hopes we’d grow up lost. so many of us grew up lost. until we got older, grabbed the sauce and found out what god really is. now we’re dreaming in millions. our skills aren’t specialized, we don’t have ten years of experience, fiscal responsibility sounds like a section of the newspaper we never wanted to read in the first place. we’re dreamers… believers… and no, we’re not livin’ on a prayer— we’re prayin’ just to live and too often to die, a damn shame. we have so much hope to see an ideal world so are called idealistic— i say thanks for the compliment. our days, the stuff of dreams: set an alarm ‘til it's real. here’s reassurance to the radical revolutionary in the heart of every millennial: we’re here to shake up the world because the olds have lost their way and it is our time. fall 2017 final digital.pdf soft boy ronan harkins you pray at night to gods thought long dead one day, they will answer but you don’t know when in the morning, in the afternoon, they teach you grace on your feet you wish to walk the earth with no fear and the gods behind you you are a rabid wolf trapped in the body of a child this skin is too tight this skin is an unrelenting snake with endless coils of muscle no, i will be a man worth fearing you are as a rose, they say yes, but that does not make me weak i am not what you make me only i know me only the gods can make me genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 45 dr. lector on the lam • 46 genesis spring 2017 watching her grace in dealing with an unruly bunch of teenage cre dr. lector on the lam by corey cole genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 14 genesis spring 2017 loc’d queen • genesisspring2016.pdf 24 genesis spring 2016 we don’t talk about her like that. past tense, or otherwise. unless we’ve been drinking. i hold her hair, rub her back while she buries her face in my chest. my lips around her penis, she moans in ecstasy, and then breaks into tears. she pushes my head away, and weeps into her hands. i don’t know what to feel. i don’t know what i am. i know what you are. her cries quiet. she grew up with pickup trucks and football. her grandpa’s name. he had been a sweet man, gentle, with clear blue eyes, until the day she told him his name didn’t match who she was inside, and he broke the skin on her face with the his old blue eyes bright and cracked, i’m not your home anymore. i grew up with a single mom and magazines, how to get your best figure yet, please him in bed, that’s what people say. i hold her tight in bed. sometimes she steals my boxers, rolls the waistshe piper rowley genesis spring 2016 25 ly breathless. my hands frame her rounded face, her tear-stained eyes break my heart, i am enveloped in her vanilla scent. you are a real girl. for her birthday i get her a silver bracelet. she has no jewelry of her own. i pick something modest, elegant, beautiful like you, i say when she opens the box. in a long, long time. my mother made her a cake sprinkled with crushed almonds. her family, like they are every other day of the year, were silent. later that night in the darkness of our bedroom, with her cold bare feet pressed against my warm ribcage i can hear her soft smile through the dark. this was the best birthday i have ever had. you said that last year. she wraps her arm around my chest, every birthday i spend with you is the best. she kisses me on the lips and falls asleep. she sits on the edge of the tub, her long damp hair falling over her shoulder. i watch this ritual the way some people pray. we share razors, men’s are better than women’s, she says. i watch the way she pulls the blades across the does her hair in the mirror. i can see the angry sadness in her eyes. i go up behind her, kiss her neck to make her shiver, make her smile, if she feels safe i slide my hands into her pants, hear her breath catch feel her get hard. we stumble back to the bed and make love. some mornings it takes us hours to get ready. i want her to feel beautiful. going out, we feel the stares. head turning, lingering, hard-edged glaring eyes. they look at us like we are an obscene puzzle. i put my arm around her broad shoulders, you look lovely again today. we take our food to go. her head is resting on my shoulder, her hair is vanilla scented. the tv illuminates our faces, a movie we’ve seen a dozen times already. down her spine. i turn her eyes towards me, why are you crying? she inhales, shaking, her voice is wet, it’s okay if you leave me for a real girl, want a real girl. i hold her while she shudders, becoming violent26 genesis spring 2016 piper rowley curve of her legs, she is a painter with a brush. her face is still, calm, peaceful. she glances up, why do you always watch me? i smile, go to her, on folded knees i kiss her soft smooth legs, her calves, her thighs, because i can never look away. you are an abomination, one woman says. a sin against god, humanity and nature, an older man screams. hey sweetheart, let me suck on it, you fucking fag, a drunk guy shouts. some weeks she refuses to leave the house. she makes the bed in the morning. her side is neat and crisp without a single wrinkle. she leaves my side carefully undone, because she knows i don’t like climbing into a made bed at night, stranger’s bed, so i make my side, i leave yours. she buys me the deodorant i like, and my favorite soda when i’ve had a long day at work. she is learning to cook. she home-cooks a big spaghetti dinner, the only thing she knows how to make, when we are celebrating. i’ve come to love the texture of the slightly overcooked noodles. she’s not a screamer. not a talker. when she is upset, if she is angry, she disappears inside of herself. she is gone. pensive, silent, absent. i get so frustrated. i learned from my mother, to complain, to say, i don’t like it, it makes me feel you hurt me. she does not speak. i think she learned from a young age, how to fold herself away. an inverted origami piece. she exiles herself into isolation, to the island of our couch. she avoids my eyes. i’ve found her in the shower, after hours of sitting there, her hair is dry, her skin is dry, she is sitting in the my voice gets rough with desperate emotion, what is it, just tell me. just talk. but i know how she is. i know this is how she deals with life. so i climb into the shower with her, and i wait. her eyes are squeezed tightly shut, the pain on her face hurts me. they were so mean…even when i tried… her sentences are fragmented by hiccups. they’re still so mean. all i can say is, i know baby. genesis spring 2016 27 she i can’t kiss away her bruises, i can’t erase the faces she sees. i was sure. are you sure, are you sure, she had asked. it had been months. months of timid, shaky kisses, her lips nervously knocking into mine. it was months before my hand traveled to her breasts and cupped them, stroked them while she moaned inside my mouth, are you sure? only if you are. she hesitated, so i took my hand away, when you’re ready. five months later it was christmas eve, and she stayed over. my hands were pulling down her underwear, wait, wait, are you sure, you know, you know i’m not, i don’t, i have, i stopped. put my hand on her cheek, i am sure. we looked at each other for a long time, eyes, and then she nodded, ever so slightly. that night, we unwrapped each other like presents under the tree, our voices, is this okay, does this feel good, became frantic pants, the christmas tree lights blinking against the dull sheen of sweat on our bare skin. we fell asleep naked, her head in the crook of my arm, my leg over hers. she is inside, putting groceries away. mother and i are pulling the last few bags out of the car. she takes care of you, you know, my mother says. i know, i say. did you know, right away, that she…her voice i nod. it must be so hard, she says softly to herself. she really is something special. she is, i say. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf tired nick kinder the nights are restless we all just ache for sleep i’m at a loss for how to handle this i’m existing, i’m present i can’t provide rhymes or lines i’m just tired, is all i want to write a book i want to make them all proud these words are mediocre maybe it just won’t come back to me i’m just tired, is all can’t forgive anymore forgot to eat again haven’t talked in months forgetting faces of them i’m just tired, is all my alarm broke the emptiness i feel the need to write why am i not asleep? i’m just tired, is all genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 50 genesis spring 2017 consummation, destruction, desolation genesis 2018 final digital.pdf shackled allison saylorbest of fiction i scrubbed the clothes against the rock until mama’s words were gone from my mind. i still could not wrap my mind around the idea of marriage, even if it is my duty. with the clothes draped across the barren limbs, i waited for the wind to dry them before i headed back. i gathered the hem of my skirt and stepped into the river, wisdom. above the ground and tell me i was still a little girl and that the world was full of god’s surprises. feeling the heat of the cambodian sun, i yearned handsome farmer and not by some cousin who proposes out of obligation. i ran my hand down the length of my hair and pulled it into a braid. i not a woman. the air thick and heavy from the heat, i decided to go back early onto my hip, i started the trek back home and decided to confront mama. i would tell her no. i decided i would tell her i will marry after i was her hot hand on my face, i promised myself that i would stand my ground. sleep, my darling, sleep. don’t cry, my baby. your rice with honey is already prepared. don’t cry, my love, i’ll hold you in my arms. when you grow up you’ll go to school, you’ll gather knowledge, you’ll learn. one day, my love, it will help you. shackled i took my time and walked carefully around the occasional rock and stick on the powdered dirt road. i stopped to watch the bird sit high in the tree and to pick at a stray weed at the edge of the path. twice, along the walk, i readjusted my sleeves and rolled them to my elbows. my long, the skirt’s hem in my waistband. i embraced the heat like a familiar guest. i paused at the road’s edge, where the overgrown road met the city shacks. i shifted the basket of clothes to my other hip and readjusted thick layers of fabric. i adjusted the scarf wrapped around my head, then approached the city. the men that sat outside their shacks whistled and hollered as i walked past. i quickened my pace to a brisk walk, but it only attracted more calls. the town tiger stood as my steps brought me closer towards his the town bestowed the aggressive name in an attempt to make all women aware of the man. one quick glance at him brought to mind the last count of girls who had been seen with the town tiger that disappeared afterward: he her as his prey. the town tiger would hoard her into his shack for an entire night and do whatever he wanted to her. the next morning, he took her and disposed of her. i thought the name suited him well. the man only to cut short the walk home. “my darling, chaya.” he stood shakily with his arms wide. “come, “one day you will come to me,” he responded as he squatted back onto his wooden stool. two left turns and straight past the market, i slowed as i saw my loosened the grip on the basket, looking around for my sisters and the neighboring children. normally involved in football, there were no games harsh slap of plastic and the hum of the neighbor were the only noise that hung in the air. i held onto the necklace as i lifted the tarp door and went inside our shack home. allison saylor *** i threw my hands over my eyes as a shield, even though i still could see the light piercing through. i could not hold my giggles. “what is it? what is the gift?” “ok, you can open.” stone shaped like a teardrop rolled slightly in the center of his palm. i grabbed his wrist and rose from my bottom to my knees for a better look. mixture of light and dark greens. it was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen. “remember this whenever you are fearful, my girl.” the heavy “chaya,” he gasped as he crawled back over to me. “i will leave are a grown woman now. whatever mama says, you look at that necklace and think of me. understand?” that nestled in my neck. “my glorious girl, this is your future. follow your brave heart.” shushed me as mama lifted the blue tarp door. *** knees in a welcome bow towards the guest. “welcome,” i mumbled into the ground. while i waited to be released from my crouched position, i was taken aback by the stench that him the way the air clings to a carcass. his clothes smelled pungent, as if “thank you.” the deep voice bubbled in the man’s throat as if it struggled to get out of his mouth. “come, sit next to me.” over me as i stood and stepped over the blankets spread underneath the large man. i took in his large face. the skin under his chin and eyes hung shackled my eyes from were the black holes for eyes. the man's thick arms bulged from a stained turquoise shirt. the dark rings under his arms, i observed, must have been the source of the rancid smell perfuming our small shack. scooped food into bowls. “what a beautiful necklace for such a beautiful girl,” he said. the murky liquidness of his voice made me want to run. i watched as his head tilted to the left, eyes wide, waiting for my response. he looked around, then lifted the blanket, pretending to peek underneath. grabbed the cup of tea from mama. the man raised his eyebrows when i did not respond. instead, i stood to help mama. scarf back slightly, my hairline exposed to the sweating man. mama walked back to the food but spoke to the man with laughter. “my chaya is one of modest intentions, always covered outside the home.” the tension between the man and mama. the hair on my neck stood as i “my name is narith.” he nodded then plunged his hand into the have heard much about you.” rice pellets freed themselves from the corner of his mouth and fell up. instead, i looked away in disgust. his attention caught; i heard his chewing cease. narith’s head turned to mama, then back on me. with my head still directed towards the wall, my eyes glanced at his face and noticed the upturn of his misshapen lips. his charred eyes had taken on an oily gloss. “chaya, you are a living jewel.” he used the back of his hand allison saylor dangling around your thin neck.” mama had sat at the corner of the blanket just a foot away from the two of us. with a cup between her palms, i could see the frustration in her eyes. “chaya, mr. narith has come to ask a favor of you.” i slowed my breathing. narith pushed the food towards me, a signal that i could begin my eating. my stomach dropped. i had a feeling i knew what would come next from his dirty, contorted mouth. young age.” i placed my hands on the ground, balling up parts of the blanket “i have heard about your beauty from miles away, and i had to agree to give me your hand in marriage.” with my hands thick of blanket, i shot mama a look of betrayal. tears welled in my eyes. “i will not be burdened with a daughter who refuses to do her curry rice for narith. tears streamed down my face. i opened my mouth to beg for mama to reconsider, but the rigidness of her back and the sharpness of her hands gathering more food told me that her mind had already made up. narith reached across the space and lifted a porky hand to catch a tear that fell from my eye. never know what it is like to have someone like me.” with that, i hiked the blanket underneath the food high over my head and sent hot food soaring over narith. i shot out through the plastic door and ran faster than any of the him, covered in red and brown foods, following closely behind. knowing the town, i knew i could lose him in the sea of shacks. i turned right at the market and heard narith yell to someone to stop the shackled knew he was still close behind. i ran straight ahead. i felt every heartbeat corner, someone grabbed my waist and pulled me inside a shack. “chaya.” i looked into the town tiger’s eyes. i kicked, but when “quiet, now.” with wide eyes, i watched as the town tiger backed away from me. he stepped out into the street and covered the hole with a tin sheet. i pushed into the corner of the home as i heard the stool scoot against rhythm of my breathing, i held onto the smooth stone around my neck. distinctive voice rumbled through the makeshift walls. here?” “narith, let him be.” i covered my mouth, shocked to hear my wouldn’t run here. i know where she went.” the footsteps fell quick, but the town tiger left me alone for a while before removing the tin door. “they have left.” he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. i sat against the wall keeping my knees close to my chest. with his back to me, the town tiger rummaged through a wooden box before pulling out a small candle and matchbox. he began a pot of tea inside so i would not have to go outside. i gave my best attempt at a warm smile. in three years?” necklace as if it could protect me. now that the sun had settled, the chill of the cambodian night had cooled the shack. i had begun to shiver. “town tiger,” i corrected. he furrowed his brow. i grabbed the kettle just as it began to scream and poured tea for him and me. the town tiger began to chuckle as he blew into the steaming 51 allison saylor cup. “i thought you would rather die than pour tea for an old man.” i smirked. i grabbed my cup and began blowing on it as well. the town tiger shook his head and let the laughter fall from his lips. he said no and set his tea down. “that man will be back.” “how do you know?” the town tiger looked at the door and made a tsking noise. “i’ve seen him around many times. he comes for young girls and takes them sleep over there, in the corner, for tonight, but in the morning, i will send you to my friend. he is in the countryside. that bad man will be back for you, so we need to get you out.” i sat in silence and gave my brain the time to process what had happened. the town tiger sipped his tea, simply enjoying the company of a person in his home since the last girl. “i want to ask you a question,” i said. he nodded but kept his eyes on the ground. “what is your name?” hard line of the town tiger’s jaw lessened. he blinked twice before the corners of his mouth shifted into a smile. i wondered if he had ever been asked. in the bottom of my cup and smiled. i nodded as he turned and crawled to the opposite side of the shack. to sleep. i quietly placed my cup down and eyed the tin door. i grasped the *** “chaya.” he grinned. “no more clues.” i giggled as i ran around him in circles. he continued to chase me his chest. powdered dirt and bared my teeth. with a loud roar, i charged towards shackled himself up on his forearms. the edges of his jaw had become rigid. understand something, my daughter. if you protect them, tigers will always protect you. remember that.” *** tight grip on the necklace. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 41 7095 track, • 42 genesis spring 2017 the faith that failed him, the kitchen where he told me i am the evidence why are you crying, 7095 genesis spring 2017 43 i lay my head down and think of unknowing neighborhood, piper rowley genesis 2018 final digital.pdf red eared slider lifan fan oil on panel genesis 2018 final digital.pdf stand like the bull tanner léon the only one on the guys' team who didn’t shave his head, a real warrior amongst high school peer pressure. they were ready to hold him down with clippers on standby before the coach with a hung head grumbled for him to be released. fast forward to sectionals, of the year. his hair is all tucked up into a swim cap, a ball of fury and warping potential energy. his swimsuit: a skimpy thong at best, reserved for competition built for speed, he’s in lane eight, closest to the crowd on anticipatory edge and takes position on the starting block, stand like the bull adrenaline pumping hard throughout the veins of his trembling body. the entire girls’ team chants his name to the beat of his heart faster & faster the rush of this moment could be felt years later with simple reminiscence. it took his breath away every time. “take your marks” starter beeps he’s a swan that glides into a stream slicing through angles in water heartbeats on a line graph, he’s gone. his arms, they pump like two windmills in freestyle artistry legs kick to the beat that’s a need for a brush with life. taken like a champion. exhumed into the lap pool, you could see the apparition tanner léon of energy streaked through like squirts of mio in your bottle, dragon claw marks left behind. at his royal departure from the water, his kingdom, as though neptune rose again. he strolled back towards his team, removed the cap, a prison. his hair tousled out of his teammates ready to hold him down on that day, they understood what it meant: genesisfall2016.pdf 6 genesis fall 2016 amidst the melody of beeping registers and the harmony of whirring carts, i stand at a table of graphic tees in the men’s department, folding a shirt depicting a cat on the moon, dressed as an astronaut, stop to look at ball state hoodies. the boy, bored with clothes not meant for him, zips between the racks, unaware of smears of bird droppings left on the metal frames like notes on sheet music, to the song of supply and demand. after a while, the boy tires of his part in the store’s rhythm section and throws in his own refrain. i wanna look at toys. when his parents answer with the resolving notes in their chord of no, his piano pleas crescendo into forte wails; a countermelody taken up by the bird in the rafters. only when the parents drag the boy away does his chorus of demands decrescendo into silence, but the bird remains, belting out his dream of free air, unheard by anyone except me. the song of a sparrow trapped in a supermarket rachel smith genesis 2018 final digital.pdf sharp season nancy lee he escaped his clan and insisted on a new name. he left family behind in a murderous machine up north. he demanded freedom of thought, he tended his artistic talent and birthed multiple galleries. his rough magic curated the work of ample artists through thickets of gallery walls and career pitfalls. he slipped, though, and fell down into his mind. in prisms of selves he knew but did not know. he excommunicated john b (not his real name), october 18, 1953 – june 29, 2017 sharp season put down piano abandoned guitar shredded canvas his multiple voices and a sea of inertia. he caged himself in a prison of broken teeth and television. lungs his harsh words repelled friends. he escaped his earth on the last thursday took a power saw to his ready neck. and let himself leak on the leaves in his yard. all is quiet now. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 35 dissolve cover art genesisspring2016.pdf 12 genesis spring 2016 open/closed oil on canvas 22x30” kelsey blacklock fall 2017 final digital.pdf caitlyn bruszewski photography genesis 2018 final digital.pdf drowning nick douglas watercolor and colored pencil 54 tankas for runaways moriah northcutt when is it my turn to be able to say mom or dad? where am i going this time? “a new home,” they say. maybe this one’s forever. you raise your hand and i flinch. your brow furrows, eyes slice my skin, i brace for your blow, you smile. “not where people can see, dear.” one bottle, two more. the only thing sadder than my best friends being jack, brandy, jim, and mary is this bottle’s bare bottom. he’s at the corner of the busy mini mart again. paper cup in hand. the change doesn’t clang, and nobody gives him cash. whose needle is this? fuck if i care. shoots the same. quick, run through my veins. help me, help me ignore this pain. i see the light once more. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 24 genesis spring 2017 passing •best of fiction genesis spring 2017 25 it in the mirror of her hotel room for half an hour the night before, 26 genesis spring 2017 what are you doing? how dare you remake yourself for these people? passing genesis spring 2017 27 eden rea-hedrick 28 genesis spring 2017 passing genesis spring 2017 29 eden rea-hedrick 30 genesis spring 2017 passing genesis spring 2017 31 eden rea-hedrick 32 genesis spring 2017 passing genesis spring 2017 33 eden rea-hedrick fall 2017 final digital.pdf nosferatu mario stone i lurk in the black room with one frail light naked like a moon famished men with cadaver grins and sickle fangs beg at her feet. as they sink into her wrists. into their mouths. their black veins glisten and throb, pulsing through taut skin. their eyes blacken as she lays her head back, amber smoke. i watch her and purse my lips, gently blowing strands of silver curling in the black stops as my words wrap tight around her ankles and wrists. and burns to gold. her sweat sweet mist as i kiss her. i feel her pulse throb through her lips as her eyes glow rose and mine shine black. transcendental kyle englert photography 69 genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 11 his calloused hands carved my bed into a warm wooden bowl, where our porcelain bodies rested delicately like eggs. by spring the frost melted and his pocket change puddled on my nightstand. morning was rich with the scent of parliaments and the gasps of matches scraping brick. he was rough, like clay and shale; i burned slowly for him. like clay and shale rachel leonard genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 77 best of curious cat • art genesisfall2016.pdf 26 genesis fall 2016 free falling laire ri “thanks, sweetheart.” he looked up at her from his booth, eyes level with her chest, grinning like a hungry wolf. “you haven’t got any of that pecan pie back there, do you?” “just apple, i think.” her notepad back into the pocket of her apron and “oh, so now we’re staying for dessert. didn’t you say you’ve done this kind of thing be fore?” dick’s companion, a noticeably smaller and ly with the crumpled bills in his cheap pleather cent bulb threatening to burn out overhead. “this was a bad idea—not just some restaurant, but a truck stop diner? what do you think this is, fiction? we’ve been the only customers in here for the last hour, if you haven’t noticed.” “look, sam—can i call you sammy? if you can keep your mouth shut and do what i tell you, the waitress returned to the table with the wedge of apple pie, a waxy slice of neon orange cheese congealing onto the crust. “y’all ready for the check, boys?” “i’ll take care of it”—dick snatched the receipt from her hand—“brandi,” he added, ap praising her nametag with a salacious eye. before she had the chance to return to the kitchen, dick drew a small, gleaming gun from inside his jacket and slammed it onto the countertop with an uncer emonious thud. “i hope i won’t have to take care with terror as she stood frozen in place, shaking her head fervently. “good. i didn’t think so.” a shot into the ceiling. broken glass rained onto between her shoulder blades. a bright blossom of blood bloomed onto her starched white blouse eyed as ever. “what’s going on out here?” the cook, a large, toothless man with a paper hat and a child like face, bumbled out of the kitchen. against the unsuspecting man’s neck. “where’s the cash register?” “i, uh, i don’t have a key; i’m just, you know, just the cook, and—” “you want to end up like her?” dick’s voice boomed from across the small diner, gesturing at brandi’s lifeless form lying crumpled on the grub by tile. “i, uh, no—no! no, i just don’t know where—” ing so good for you, either.” the cook, whose eyes threatened the kind of big, blubbering tears usually only shed by a tod dler, scampered over to brandi’s limp body and reached tentatively into the pocket of her apron genesis fall 2016 27 free falling for her set of keys. they were hanging neatly from ware stores—a sort of telephone cord reincarnate. “open the drawer.” sam pointed his weapon at the cash register, then back at the cook. “now.” the cook opened the drawer, his stubby tents, sam turned to dick accusatorily. “there’s probably not two hundred bucks in there,” he sur mised. “i told you this was stupid, and now this girl is dead.” “where’s the safe?” dick demanded. “we don’t have a safe, sir,” the cook said earnestly, sweat beading on his bald forehead. “you’ve been our only customers today, i reckon.” dick knocked his gun against the counter that grazed the cook’s side. “yeah, you’re good, dick. real good.” sam shook his head. “that’s a lot coming from you, dillinger.” break.” the cook wailed in agony, and dick drew his gun a third time, shooting him cleanly in the chest and not bothering to spare a glance as the casional twenty before looking up at a languid sam. “let’s get out of here, sammy.” the night rushed past in a blue haze as in age of less adept drivers and their cars struck sam as being a sort of creepy memorial to something to stick his head out the window of dick’s pick up truck like a dog and breathe in just one more taste of that deliciously thick air he had missed so much, but he had a feeling dick wouldn’t like that. he had just killed a woman—a truck stop waitress at that—and what did he have to show for it? half of two hundred–odd dollars? gliding down over mulholland. “now what do we do?” sam wondered aloud, not really expecting released from chuckawalla valley state prison, but they would be headed back if they didn’t do something soon. his lips, the unmistakable combination of wailing too apparent. craning his neck, dick jerked the steering wheel to the side, and his truck toppled maw. now i’m free, free fallin’… yeah i’m free, free fallin’… relief washed over sam as he realized they would never be going back to chuckawalla valley again. genesisspring2016.pdf 28 genesis spring 2016 sprawl mixed media 11x9” jacob dehart 57 my name ayla walter slit eyes and crawling among unfamiliar constellations—i am toothy, pushing squat bunched legs under gaining footholds atop of moon beams clawing at the sharp stars. up—i am going up. rib cage over treetops, curling lips stretched like electrical wires across mountains over train track seas—i am swimming. swinging back and forth and singing like this: at times a feeling of constraint, panicky and wide eyed brimming into rage a curious hurricane letting myself reign pretending all land lay out beneath this perch is my domain. or calm, setting for tea with beasts, smile in my teeth—i am my monster mutable. unafraid of softer darknesses speaking in second hand words and dreaming—i am just dreaming. breathing dry through my throat exhaling the night, dripping it out onto the floor and inhaling more. my back broad, expanding, shoulder blades scraping from one horizon to the next my spine cusping the curve of this world—i am belonging. or at least longing. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 21 sydney petrunich neptunian tides genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 16 genesis spring 2017 restaurant of the mind faulkner, joyce, vonnegut, • genesis spring 2017 17 in the daylight i look down genesis 2018 final digital.pdf endless m.e. carnes that seem to go on endlessly, corn soybeans corn soybeans with muddy boots. chew dribbling from the corners of their mouths. women barefoot in the kitchen. hands left pruned from soapy water. men do hard labor, women always in labor. i’m driving down these endless roads, searching for somewhere better to reside. that has my name printed on it. still drip from my tongue, but the only life that i allow to take root in me is the one left by books. the words strung together, shaking my world, shaping my world. fall 2017 final digital.pdf flower connor stump digital painting genesisfall2016.pdf 40 genesis fall 2016 the bee whisperer victoria johnson when i close my eyes, what i remember most about the farm is the mornings and how the sunlight came through the sheer curtains and the breeze blew through the screens. the earthy smell of the farm: hay, horses, chickens, manure, would blow in too, but it was a good smell. a rooster downstairs. i always woke up sticky and my hair greasy. my older sister meg complained and con stantly examined her face in the mirror for new latest edition of cosmo, taking quizzes, and avoid ing explaining to me what some of the words on the cover meant. i didn’t really want to know any way, after i thought about it, but sometimes my curiosity won out and i’d ask her questions about boys and she’d pretend to be uninterested. meg was sixteen that summer, and i was twelve. in early june, we loaded up the car and drove for two hours to grannie and grandpa’s farm, except grandpa passed away a couple years before, and grannie slept in the recliner most of the time with a patchwork quilt over her legs. she couldn’t gather the eggs from the chickens any more. it was my job, and she gave me a quarter for it every day. dad worked forty hours a week back home at some plant. i think they made engines for ford. on the weekends, he drove down to the farm and tried to keep it under control: he mowed the from taking over the fence lines. it wasn’t much of a farm anymore, really. but we called it that out of necessity—even though it wasn’t a farm anymore, it had to be to us. some mornings, mom cooked a big break home. by the end, the kitchen would be covered in one such morning, i sat at the table, draw ing a picture of the tree out back, the one with the tire swing. the tree was picturesque. mom bustled into the room, her hairline sweaty. meg pulled her blonde hair up in a ponytail and took some eggs from mom and cracked them into the skillet. i sat my sketchpad down and walked over to the stove. “how do you make pancakes, mom?” i asked. “can you crack an egg?” she said. i nod ded. mom placed the mixing bowl in front of me. “don’t stir too hard,” she said. “pancake er that meant. the month before, cappuccino was vogue. that was before it had too many calories. bles in it?” she took the spatula and lifted up the ing a mess, but i placed the plate, toppling with pancakes, on the table proudly. “i guess you are growing up, aren’t you, kiley?” dad said. i looked up from spreading but best of fiction genesis fall 2016 41 the bee whisperer ter on my pancakes and didn’t know what to say. i’d never thought about growing up, really. it was inevitable and i had dreams and things i wanted bother with it much. what about making pancakes the smell of old wood and paper. i wanted my own bed and bathroom. i wanted central air. it rained sporadically and steadily for nearly two weeks. grannie slept or watched her soaps with know immediately whether she was asleep or not. and cleaned until they smelled like bleach and lemon, i collected the eggs from the twelve hens, trying not to think that i was taking away their children. every morning, i wore my red rain boots and rain jacket to collect the eggs, i washed them and wrote the date on them in pencil, and placed them in cartons. after my chores were done, i stared out the window and drew whatever i saw. then my aunt called, and said her and her son danny were coming to help out. i’d never met danny, and i hadn’t seen my aunt since she was pregnant. i was in the chicken coop, trying to coax an irritable black hen away from her precious eggs when i heard the car rumbling over the gravel ing screen door slam behind me, and into the barn lot, where dad stood, brushing the appaloosa, my aunt, her sister. “come on, danny,” aunt janet said. “come meet your aunt molly.” he was small, smaller than i’d imagined, but i didn’t know many bent down in front of him and said something i didn’t hear. instead of giving her a hug, he shook he wrapped his arms around my mom. they both laughed. “oh, kiley,” mom said. she waved me over. “come say hello to your aunt janet and dan ny.” i walked over, my boots sloshing in the yard and the pail of eggs creaking with very movement. i felt strange, as if i’d taken on some persona. “hi, aunt janet,” i said. “look at you,” she said. “you look so grown up. danny, this is your cousin kiley.” “danny,” i said. “would you like to see the chickens?” “can i, mom?” he asked. his bright blue eyes opened wide, excited at the prospect “of course.” i held out my hand for dan ny to take, it seemed like the right thing to do, and led him over to the coop. a couple chickens clucked outside, eating the rest of the corn i’d thrown out earlier. inside the coop, the air was dusty. bits of exciting, but danny let go of my hand and walked slowly up to the ornery black hen. “be careful,” i said. “she doesn’t know you yet.” “hello chicken,” he said. “i’m danny. does she know me now?” leaving two brown eggs. danny’s eyes were wide. he asked if he could carry one, and i said yes. he i’d never met danny, and i hadn’t seen my aunt since she was pregnant. 42 genesis fall 2016 held it with two hands, as if it were the most pre cious thing he’d ever seen. i wondered if i ever looked at anything that way before. i’d come to understand that everything was precious and exciting to danny. everything he’d never seen before and everything he had. while the adults took care of the farm and gran nie, i watched danny. i didn’t mind. *** that i didn’t want to move. we sat in the shade under the oak tree, drinking lemonade. i heard grannie still had a quilt over her legs and longed for the days when she too sat out in the yard drink ing lemonade. i decided i would never get old if i could help it. danny sat next to me, coloring a picture of some superhero, and i sketched him with charcoal. i couldn’t get his hair right. it fell in waves across his ears and forehead, especially in the heat. when i looked back over at him, he was gone. crayons sprawled in his place. “danny?” i said. toed quietly and slowly toward a light pink peony. i joined him, careful not to make any noise, and curious whether he was simply playing a game, or whether he was after something. he pointed cused. “don’t danny,” i said. “you can’t touch bees. they sting.” what would aunt janet say if he got stung and i was supposed to be watching him? what if he were allergic and i didn’t know? “not me,” he said. just before i grabbed it stayed there. i stared, mesmerized, puzzled. how did he pet bees? how did he not get stung? and clapped his hands. the bee buzzed away. i couldn’t believe it. “how did you do that?” i asked. the hum ming echoed in my ears. “gently.” “but danny,” i said, chasing after him. he tried to pull himself into the tire swing. i lifted him opening. “why didn’t it sting you?” “bees never sting me,” he said, as if it were obvious. “i like bees and they like me.” “sure. i guess so. but isn’t it scary to try and touch bees?” danny turned around and glared at me. “i don’t try. i touch them every time and it isn’t scary at all. wasps are. bees are just tiny and fuzzy. you swing and ran inside. it didn’t make any sense. i why was danny special? *** “aunt janet?” i said. we sat on the front porch, savoring the cool breeze and watching cars pass by. danny sat in the yard, waving his arms back and forth, trying to get the cows across the street to look at him. aunt janet looked over at me and smiled. her and my mom looked a lot alike: long wavy, brown hair and green eyes, freckles speckled across their noses. i liked to think that down to earth sort of way. aunt janet was suppos edly wilder than my mom, though. she dropped dad, and no one heard from her for quite a while. she didn’t seem so wild anymore; i guessed hav ing a kid made you grow up. “did you know that danny can pet bees?” victoria johnson genesis fall 2016 43 the bee whisperer time he was only two, and i turned my back for one second and when i looked back around, there up immediately, but he was okay, happy even. he looks for them now, whenever we’re outside.” “but why do you think he can pet them?” aunt janet thought for a moment and watched danny, who was trying his hardest to sound like a cow. his moos got deeper by the sec ond. “i’ve wondered that, but i don’t have an answer,” she said. “he always says he isn’t afraid and that he touches them gently. it’s almost like time. maybe bees are just misunderstood. some times the most brilliant things in the world are the ones we can’t explain.” *** i may not have understood ev erything about cosmo, or why my sister needed to take tons of quizzes to know her personality or know how to get the “perfect guy,” who according to her was some guy named jeremy who played guitar and wore converse tennis shoes. but i did understand that at some point, my body would change and i dreaded the thought. it was supposed to be a good day. dad said and i held on tightly to the reins. joker was old gate, watching. i put my left foot in the stirrup and my left arm up on the saddle. dad hoisted my oth on the saddle. “ouch,” i said. i rubbed it, despite every one looking. mom and aunt janet looked at one another. dad was oblivious. he led me around the barn lot at a slow trot. the wind blew through my hair and joker seemed happy. dad ran and joker picked up his speed. i laughed and held on tight er was majestic and beautiful, even mysterious. when dad helped me down, he gave me a couple gers straight, and laughed when he took them in one bite. his big, brown eyes looked at me and he dered what he thought about and what he saw. was the world only apples and straw to him? think much of it. i thought i’d eaten too much at breakfast or maybe i hadn’t eaten enough. i was too focused on riding joker to think about any thing else too deeply. but when i went to the re stroom, there was blood. i stared at it, confused and ing? was i hurt? did i need to go to the hospital? through the started my period. but i cried anyway. i cried harder than the time meg accidentally hit me in the face with a softball. ever since i heard about periods, i dread much too soon—i was only twelve. i wasn’t ready to be a woman, yet. “mom,” i said, through the crack in the bathroom door. she rushed over, concerned. when she came, i closed the door behind her and told her i’d started my period. she didn’t say a word, she just wrapped her arms around me and let me cry. “i know,” she said. “i’m sorry. i know. it’ll be okay.” i washed my face, changed, and pretend ed nothing was wrong. i couldn’t make eye con tact with dad. we girls loaded up the car, drove to a super target, and got everything i needed, and a it was supposed to be a good day. 44 genesis fall 2016 training bra while we were at it. “do you like this one or this one?” mom “mom, people will see,” i said. i pushed them down and out of the way. “it doesn’t mat ter.” “i’ll get both.” when mom and aunt janet were out of ear shot, meg took me aside in the cereal aisle. no one was around. “i know it sucks,” meg said. “it actually, really sucks. but you get used to it. everyone un derstands, so you don’t have to be embarrassed.” “you weren’t embarrassed?” i shifted from one foot to the other and pulled at my shirt. “of course i was,” meg said. “remember that pool party cam had a few summers ago? you thought i was sick, but i’d actually started my pe but i know now that you don’t have to be em barrassed or anything. every girl goes through it some time.” “but doesn’t it mean…” i choked on the words. “doesn’t it mean i’m not a kid anymore?” “i guess so, but that depends on you, i think.” *** on grannie’s good days, we played gin as a teenager. i didn’t mind though. i guessed it gave her something to feel accomplished about. “oh kiley,” she said, after she’d just squashed me in a game. she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. danny ran past the win behind him and swung him around in the air. it was a rare day in late july when the heat wasn’t sweltering. “will you promise me something?” “i guess,” i said. grannie and i didn’t talk her after the stroke, i didn’t know who she was. i wondered if that was what happened when you got old: you forgot who you were and not just your name, but what made you, you. like when you’re a baby, you don’t know who you are yet and you discover yourself and make yourself over after that, but the real grannie sparked in them that afternoon. “don’t ever let yourself forget how beauti ful the world can be. that’s what happens to a lot to appreciate.” “okay, grannie. i won’t.” she fell asleep after that, leaving me confused. i wanted to ask her what she meant. what had she not appreciat ed? before i could ask, she clutched her chest and gasped for breath. the adults crowded around her and gave her oxygen, while i backed away, picked up the cards, and joined danny and meg outside. danny kept saying, “push me, kiley! push me!” he rocked the swing back and forth impatiently. my stomach tightened and my ears grew hot. meg and i exchanged a look of wide eyes and fear. i held my breath and watched everyone through easy. i pushed danny, slowly. he kicked his small legs, trying to do it himself. inside the house, it calmed down. grannie was okay. i exhaled, re lieved. mom handed grannie a glass of water and helped her drink it through a straw. grannie’s hands shook, and aunt janet rubbed her shoulder. i heard a bee buzz by my ear and backed away. even though we called danny the bee whis perer, i was afraid they’d sting me. he heard the red rose on the side of the house. i didn’t think any thing of it. i’d seen danny pet bees a dozen times victoria johnson genesis fall 2016 45 the bee whisperer by then, but this time, when he ran toward the bee, he must’ve frightened it. when he screamed, i jolt ed out of my day dream and ran after him. did he thing? he was always running around barefoot. by the second. the bee stung him. he wailed, more out of his feelings being hurt than anything, i thought. aunt janet ran out side and took him from meg who couldn’t get him to calm down. we followed aunt janet inside. gran nie sat in the recliner, her hand still on her chest, but okay. still here. i watched as mom mixed bak ing soda and water together and to make a paste to relieve the sting. i felt as if i were witnessing some alternate reality. how could danny get stung by his small, fuzzy friend? i didn’t understand how everything could change so quickly. or maybe i didn’t want to accept that it could, even though the evidence was in front of my face. *** danny didn’t pet bees the rest of the sum mer. i tried and failed to coax him to. i searched and longed to hear the familiar buzzing. but he his head. he preferred to run around and play tag or swing. i realized he was afraid. he’d been hurt him to be afraid; i didn’t want to be afraid. on our last day at the farm, i collected two dozen eggs. a farmer down the road bought the chickens and joker. we couldn’t stay and take care of the farm. we had our own home and lives to get back to. i said goodbye to each chicken, fed joker an apple, and packed the cards grannie and i played gin rummi with in my bag. they were was what made them special. we took grannie to we visited. i sat near the garden, watching dad and the farmer load up the animals, and i sketched a bee. it looked harmless on paper, lovely even. i one of danny coloring. i ran my hand over the pic ture and watched danny draw with a stick in the dirt. that’s when i heard the loud hum of a bee, and i knew what i had to do. “danny,” i said. the bee landed on the pink peonies. danny walked over, hesitant, sure i was trying to get him to touch a bee again. but i wasn’t. ers and i winced, but smiled at danny. i had to go through with it. i felt the fuzzy bee underneath my genesis 2018 final digital.pdf rita marley and the glitter trail brelyn jefferson my hands gripped the knobby wrists of girls hissing and cursing, they suctioned their glittered palms to every surface they could. i shirked and i could hardly blame them. he thanked me for removing the whirling swarm of lace and silk, heavy with makeup and perfume, their thin waists and skin he called me for help. i trudged back to my room in lead slippers, noting the glitter trail snaked down the hall. the discerning every stage dressing room, every tour bus. from my bed i watched my babies drift to sleep, wrapped in their dancer feet bruised black from a night onstage. like waves lapping at the tender shore after a hurricane, and i slipped a secret smile from somewhere deep in my chest and almost felt it swallow up the heartache. genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 60 genesis spring 2017 steel genesis 2018 final digital.pdf natural nerves katie slabach ceramics, leaves, bark, stains genesis 2018 final digital.pdf vintage ink sydney petrunich alcohol ink genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 39 photograph modern art keeley miller best of art; cover genesis 2018 final digital.pdf what could have been cleveland dietz ii prehistoric humans and complaining about my computer class. then, the panic attacks started. in the driver’s seat of a rusted shell of a car parked at ivy tech community college, unfettered terror developed in my chest and gut, growing until it spilled out of my rocking body in a torrent of tingling skin, chattering teeth, moaning, crying, shaking and shallow breathing. my eyes narrowed, and the path of my life diminished into a straight line, a tunnel into the dark earth. hoped its repetition would act as a kind of mantra. i thought it could dissolve into nonsense sounds and focus my mind. it couldn’t. indiana. i tried to focus on the grindstone, getting things ready for the next general manager, but the noise found me there, too. i heard it as i scheduled promos for air, discussed changes to the station’s bylaws and and hours passed, it got louder until it couldn’t be contained anymore when i pulled into my driveway in the evening. then, face down in the pillow, i repeated with increasing force, “stop, stop, please stop,” until exhaustion pulled me into sleep. i stopped taking the medicine. * * * kelsey’s gentle hands rubbed my shoulders from the bed as i cried ten years, attempted suicide twice, thought of doing it many other times, “i think so,” she answered. “that’s not important. if you think you should go, you need to go.” “i don’t know. it’s too much.” i wasn’t suicidal, but i didn’t know if i would become so. i didn’t everything. it was a minor comfort that there were no guns in our rural home, though their absence had long been a source of tension between 1 it felt like death was going to come soon. it would be delivered as a heart attack or an aneurysm or some shapeless end in my sleep. if not that, the cancer surely building in my mouth would claim me, suddenly, as leukemia did my papaw. the thought of it had always been in the back rate feelings of anxiety and depression i may be having on a scale of one a prescription for quetiapine xr—an antipsychotic primarily used to treat 2 with bipolar disorder while attending college in 2006. i remembered referring to them as coma pills then. i slept for twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours at a time after taking the medication. if i managed to stay awake, everything that touched my skin, even the air, hurt. i didn’t have health that he was trying to kill me. i stopped taking the medicine. what could have been the prescription this time was for two weeks. i was to double the could cause manic episodes or suicidal behavior in some people. i would’ve done anything to stop the feeling. * * * from me. “why are you here?” she asked, and i told the stories i always told. i’d told them so many times, it was as if they weren’t mine anymore. i smiled and laughed at the right moments, as though i was recounting the comic foibles of a character in a movie. * * * it began with a shopping cart. i was seventeen years old, ambling through a walmart parking lot, hard as i could into a ditch. it was an innocuous enough event—one most likely shared by teenagers around the world—but it was out of character for me. for several months after the incident, i was inundated with hallucinations. badger suit emerged from a gravel alleyway between a church and a squat, beige house. he or she started across the street, stopped in the middle toward the town square. no one else saw it. no one else was there—no parties, no children, no parked vehicles. the church door was locked, and the houses were hushed. it was unreal, and a sign of things to come. indianapolis, i saw it rain spiders. i saw them fall through the air, all cascading down the glass and into the dirt below. they appeared, then they were gone, replaced with more impossibilities. on the drive home, impotently kicking up dust. one night in indianapolis—the night kelsey and i started us on the other side of the street. we were walking along the wall of a parking garage, talking about ditching indiana as soon as we could, when cleveland dietz ii the shine in their eyes became apparent. i threw myself between kelsey and the dogs. if they came, we’d be trapped between them and the wall. “what’s going on? what’s over there?” she asked. and still.” any sign at all that there were dogs nearby. “cleveland,” she said. finally. we waited until i understood. there was nothing. “what do you want to do now?” she asked, and we stood by the wall talking for a long time. it was as though i slammed the shopping cart through the tissue linking the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia regions of my brain. psychosis—episodic breaks from reality—and depression.3 the neurologist who saw me in 2005, after the cart and the spiders, couldn’t have known that when he said there were no signs of brain dysfunction in my episodes of mania and depression occur.4 * * * i tried to hold myself accountable. there was always something i could do to eliminate my neuroses. it wasn’t out of my control; i just wasn’t doing enough or the right things. for example, the nurse practitioner who prescribed the antipsychotics discovered that i was 12 vitamin to symptoms of depression and psychosis—symptoms that could look like bipolar disorder.5 i told a new psychiatrist about it when i saw him in early 2016. i he made his diagnosis. he suggested i think about taking lithium. it had the highest success rate for treating people with bipolar disorder6, but there were caveats. its use required regular bloodwork, because it could become toxic 7 he asked me to read an unquiet what could have been cleveland dietz ii mind worse, she no longer comprehended what she read and couldn’t write. it took her years to regain those skills. that was an unacceptable risk. the psychiatrist suggested lamotrigine as an alternative. * * * years8 9 that approval was for epilepsy treatment.10 lamotrigine for bipolar disorder.11 the two drugs impact the disorder in 12 by enormous energy, euphoric and racing thoughts, and irresponsible behavior13—while lamotrigine is best at reducing depression.14 15 fatal rash could develop after starting the medication.16 learned that increasing the dosage to the desired level over time could help prevent the rash.17 i was to increase the dosage from 25 to 100 milligrams over four 12 shots totaling six months. if the would be impossible to tell which. * * * from 2005 to 2007, i didn’t sleep more than two hours a night, if i slept at all. i wandered and wrote and read and watched movies and become an archaeologist, play chopin, build furniture, throw myself into open a bar, run a battle of the bands, hitchhike, hop rails, code, move to mania is boundless. it’s everything; it’s impossible. it’s looking outside a hotel window in the big city at the most crushing moment of this moment is one of billions happening at once. it’s doing anything, honest and wrecking friendships. it’s not caring if people’s feelings are hurt. it’s not respecting others’ privacy. it’s spending money recklessly, yours and theirs. it’s sleeping on broken futons after dropping out of after notebook with hurried scrawls. manic episodes drove your achievements, then drove them straight into the * * * the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders requires a criteria have been met. it’s a life sentence. * * * psychiatrist i had been seeing announced the clinic was closing. medication,” he said. “make an appointment as soon as you can. it might he wasn’t alone in making the move. the whole outpatient clinic was consolidated into another iu health hospital. the day he made the announcement was his wife’s birthday. they were getting old. “i got her a pile of dirt as a sort of joke, you know?” he said from 12 shot, i told the nurse practitioner promise me you’ll follow up with a psychiatrist. i want to know when you get an appointment. that’s the deal.” * * * the department estimated there would be between 6,080 and 15,400 fewer nationwide.18 it also noted that providers were unevenly distributed across what could have been cleveland dietz ii the states and shortfalls may have been present in some places, even when surpluses were expected.19indiana had just one psychiatrist per 16,543 residents in 2016.20, 21 laden process to receive treatment. intake—an initial assessment of the severity of my illness—and see a therapist before the psychiatrist could see me. the timeline was long: two months before the intake, another month to see the therapist, and another to see the psychiatrist. had it not been for the nurse’s willingness to in treatment and, perhaps, never gone back at all—a common story that i was lucky not to fall into myself. “i’m sick of having to prove this,” i told kelsey. “they have medical records. they know the history. if i had a broken leg, i wouldn’t have to demonstrate over and over that it was broken.” “i’ve spent most of my life thinking i would one day kill myself,” i told her. the bell jar after again?” "what could have been" endnotes with bipolar disorders follow for up to 2 years.” bipolar disorders 2006, vol. 8, oct. 2006, pp. antipsychotics: history, science, and issues. greenwood, 2017, pp. disorder.” dialogues in clinical neuroscience u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2008, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti 4 ibid. nutrition journal, vol. 7, no. 2, 2008. u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2008, ics.” journal of molecular psychiatry u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2016 november, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ international journal of bipolar disorders, vol. 3, no. 13, 2015. u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4456600/ ics.” journal of molecular psychiatry u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2016 november, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ u.s. food and drug administration 10 ibid. lithium’; drug helps prevent depressive episodes.” clinical psychiatry news genetics.” journal of molecular psychiatry u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health, 2016 november, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th ed. 14 ng, felicity, et al. “the role of lamotrigine in the management of bipolar disorder.” neuropsychiatric disease and treatment u.s. national library of medicine national institutes of health u.s. food and drug cleveland dietz ii administration 16 ibid. 17 ibid. u.s. department of health and human services, november 2016. https://bhw. u.s. census bureau, 2017. https://www.census.gov/ fall 2017 final digital.pdf visiting hours trenna soderling i pushed my hands through my hair, leaning against the window raining or not, the way the air conditioning blew on my face no matter which direction i pushed the vents. i looked at the newspaper on the passenger seat again, the one that had now been there for four months. its had obsessively read, lay facedown. i sneered at it, cursing myself for leaving it there. i should have thrown it away months ago. i could have spared myself the visceral disgust it linger, let it sit there and mock me every time i saw it. me. the line of stopped trucks, rvs, and motorcycles was so irritating my skin began to itch all over, a rash of stress coating my body. i leaned my face into the air again, felt the hairs whip my face, leaned out of the wind’s path, checked the map to see how much longer it would be. thirty more minutes. thirty more minutes of the newspaper staring at me and the engines rumbling and the vents and the sky’s indecisiveness. i turned creatures trapped over the space of a few miles. the line of cars inched forward momentarily and stopped again. i slammed on the brakes and screamed in frustration, hitting my hands waiting, i saw my destination in the distance. it had to be the jail. nowhere else would have that many fences. i pulled into the parking lot and approached the building, the fences. instead, i was met with tan, cinder block walls and a huge metal door with a disproportionately small window set in the middle. the stone was almost worse than the fences; heavy, unyielding, secretive. visiting hours the guard inside was just as unfriendly. i assume she had been hardened by years of watching children, spouses, and parents approach thousands, even hundreds of thousands of visitors walk by her into despair. began speaking, a speech apparently so routine that she only glanced up from her monitor once while giving it. this form.” of the glass. i glanced over the pages, scanning for places to put my shaky initials. once i had turned in the forbidden items and pushed the clipboard back under, she looked through the document with one hand sound. the inside of the visiting room surprised me, a sea of tan jumpsuits and hung heads. not like what you see in those prison tv shows, the ones nonviolent criminals clumped together to wait out their sentences. in, wanting to hide more of my feet, but i found the chair wouldn’t move, stuck in place not only by bolts but by years of rust cementing it everyone around me, unsure of what to do now that i was stripped of my possessions. over the sound of the conversations around me, i heard a door swing shut, the same metallic banging that had followed me into the room. i looked up and saw him, the one island of familiarity in this place, the one thing that should have brought comfort, but didn’t. i was suddenly aware of every muscle in my body; felt my lips twitch downward and my stomach heave and my chest contract and the blood rush to my hands, towards me i stood up, sat down, stood up. it was only as i was falling again that he reached me, grabbed for my hands, and held me as i tried to remain upright. “hi, dad,” i said. i fell against him, felt the rise and fall of his breathing as i used him trenna soderling for support. i was buried against his chest, the way i used to hide when i screen. unfortunately, the disinterested guard picked that moment to look out into the room. “move apart.” her voice echoed between my ears, made me acutely aware that i was not at home, that i was here, in a prison, visiting my father. i let go and stood on my side of the table, pausing a moment before i sat down. his movements slowly mirrored mine. he looked around and shrugged. “i’m here,” he said. the drab faces encircling my vision on all sides painted a grim imprisoned nonetheless. he was subject to searches, made to stay in line, to thing those shows all got right: these were not people. they were numbers, i saw his look of shock and pride. it had taken me four years to prove my talent to my director, to get the female lead in any show, let alone a musical. “wow, i bet that’ll be really great.” “yeah, thanks. i’ll make sure to record it for you.” of the other inmates. i knew he was trying to convince himself that he didn’t belong there, that he was saner, less dangerous than the prisoners surrounding him. “it was a teapot full of cafeteria beef and water.” i tried not to gag and instead let him purge the stories from his system. the more i learned, the more uncomfortable i became, picturing watching old movies. he was stuck here, with alligator soup and khaki jumpsuits and thick, brick walls enclosing him. i looked at him again and saw not my father, but what the guards, visiting hours society’s biggest threat, but an outlaw nonetheless, someone who needed to be locked away in order to send the message that his behavior wasn’t tolerated, that he wasn’t tolerated. i rocked back and forth in my rusted chair, holding back tears, unable to listen to him anymore. he stopped his story and asked me if i was alright. i inhaled, the breaths catching in my “why are you here? why did you do the things that got you here?” was not a trait of mine; it never had been. we sat in silence for a while “i don’t know.” or he lost his job or when he left my mother. i went to the bathroom to out a way to stop my heart from beating against my chest, tried to mentally reach inside myself and push it into place as i said goodbye, and gathered my belongings back from the guard. it took all of my power not to sprint reached my car, i opened the door and slid into the seat, only to be greeted by the newspaper. obscuring the story i practically knew by heart. to a felony for the rest of his life. the ink had soaked into the pages, who read the article would never know the way he watched golf because it reminded him of his father or the frustrated rasp his voice would get or how it felt to hug him after he came home from work. they would only ever know that he was part of a drug ring, that he had made a series of they would never know his regret or his depression, would never hear the got caught. they would never know anything about him besides what was on that paper. i sat in my car and tore up the article, piece by piece until no as i drove out of the parking lot, accelerating away from the jail, past the threw them out the window, letting them stream behind me. genesisspring2016.pdf 10 genesis spring 2016 all my classmates write important things to their ex-best friend, jesus; they all seem deep and important, their nibs all too coagulated with ink to actually say what they’re talking about, so we coat it in waxy ambergris, terribly poignant, hyper-extended metaphor, something like, “i am a square peg in a round hole,” when what you really mean is i love the sensation of anal intercourse and as a man, i question what that means for my sexuality, or dare i say, what will my mom think? that metaphor bullshit carie mcmichael genesis spring 2016 11 you write about her eyes as if they were the most intricate star scape, when what you really mean is there are no words to explain the observable destiny nestled in the spidery spokes of her irises. you write about the sound of your heartbeat resounding loudest in your skull when what you really mean is you are terrified of being alone with yourself. perhaps the solid tangle of copper wire is not spool-able, which is what i scribble casually in some hollow margin when what i really mean is i am too tongue-tied, my brain is too fried to eloquently convey my fractured being. for other words to staple together in hope that someone will understand the parts of themselves that need shading in. you can’t describe paris until you see it. you can’t describe a heartbeat until you feel it, but that never stopped anyone with a pencil and something to write on. fall 2017 final digital.pdf a poem for the next generation of women caitlyn bruszewski i walk the streets at night hoping, wishing, praying that my clothing does not hug my body too tight. that my perfume does not travel through the alleys to those waiting for someone like me to walk the streets at night. when they say, or we will hurt you.” and in danger. i put on clothing that masks my body because i want to, need to, must hide it away because it is an open invitation to a man. if i wear shorts, a skirt, a dress, a tank top my freedom of choice is an open invitation to a man. to touch, to stare, to judge. because then i will not be seen by a man as anything more than a prude. of 6 months for branding me as his behind a dumpster when i will die unhealed from the tragedy. caitlyn bruszewski the land of the free is only referring to the man because my body is not free. my body is not my own. that he has a right to touch me, grab me, take me because i was there and beautiful. how could he resist? when the woman was dressed provocatively? i am told that i will not be loved by a man because then i am not a trophy. keep a man happy because he is your lifeline. rising like a wave and i will crash into this damn patriarchy that has taught me to dress to please a man but not to please myself. hit, cheat, rape, or demean me because men do not want us to know that they are weak. hit, cheat, rape, or demean his wife, daughter, mother, sister, lover. my freedom of choice to any man. and i will grab back.” genesisfall2016.pdf the red que n keeley miller photograph 12 genesis fall 2016 fall 2017 final digital.pdf if lovin screw is wrong, i don't wanna be right will knapp ink with digital color genesis 2018 final digital.pdf wild abby mendoza oil on canvas cover art genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 48 genesis spring 2017 for the young black man with heavy footsteps on my way home from the library i hear footsteps more often than not, they disappear at the stoplight on blackford or the crosswalk on michigan. today they fall heavy past both. damn, i parked far today. • genesis spring 2017 49 but i realize in that moment that he might think about how he felt in that moment genesis 2018 final digital.pdf poppies joseph alcala here lies a ground soaked in blood. the clearing is a break in the crumpled remains of two brothers. other bodies reach for escape, shot leads to a young man, a boy really, slumped over a turret. he has been shot in the spine. he cannot move. he exhales, watching his last few breaths down his back and along his thighs. he wonders if he has wet himself. ing is coated with a perfect layer of white. thousands of miles away, his mother is making his favorite, hominy soup with potatoes. *** powers beyond the tree’s control have decided that their home was better suited for housing developments. two mothers watch from a bench as four, laughs from thrill as he trips on the jungle gym. his friend catches up to him and points his stick at him, commanding him to put his hands up. bled to death. in a corner of the park, far from the jungle gym, lies a stone with a thousands of miles away, the leaders of nations sit in a room, die for their countries. 17 babe aish thamba i called you babe, accidentally, of course... perhaps it was a slip of the tongue just as much as your fingers slip between mine or perhaps your shoulder: a steady warmth against the light of day. i hope you didn’t notice, how i played it off with a laugh, a casual shake of my head, a spasm of my mouth since my words are meant to be casual—slip on your shirt in the hallway and fall into the bathroom with me. yes, casual like that. maybe tell me your gods and i will tell you my fears, the oldest ones are the worst—they lurk in the wallpaper and comfort me when you are gone. but don’t worry, this is all a temporary inconvenience. leave the kitchen teapot on while you go, and maybe i won’t watch you leave. i am driving in the rain and giving you my notes and perhaps between the pages, you can smell it on me. babe, i have never called anyone that before. it’s not something i mean… i am afraid it is something i mean too much 18 babe and too earnestly—to be used more often: when you eat your orange marmalade, when your eyes crinkle, when we yell, when we hurt, when we feel. babe, i wish i could be more, i wish i could be myself these days. it’s harder on me or maybe it’s harder on you. i don’t know—the clock ticks faster every day. babe, come back. slip into bed with me. forget about the light of day. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf all peanut butter taylor moore monster truck. of course, i loved her. of course, i didn’t want her to get run over by running her over. the only reason i agreed to it was because he said, surprise when he, in fact, did not save her. i cried and stepped on his big dumb monster truck until it was destroyed. i ran into my babysitter and truck. spot on her nose in between her eyes. her pretty face. should have known better. i am going to talk to your mother about this, think she is going to be happy about that?” i drop my head as tears well in my eyes. my hands are sticky from the peanut butter crackers we were eating, and dirt from the shed. i wipe my eyes smearing a mixture of dust and dirt on my face. i bite my lip hard, truck. “no, miss k, my mom will not be happy to pay that money.” all peanut butter my response did not seem to be wanted. i think it was one of those questions that are asked, but you don’t answer. mother picks you up.” hurts real bad, but also because miss k never takes my side. one could come and save her. i had my hands on the control and... i mean maybe we could just not run her over for a little bit?” cars. maybe i could be like a cool girl race car driver. i nod at him with can be so kind when he wants. this is what makes him my best friend. well, that and the fact that he is the only other kid at daycare most days. * * * is going to be the best race car driver. miss k brings us out more peanut to braid it back for me. i eagerly agree to the braid, because braids are my favorite. miss k sits behind me pulling my hair back tightly. it hurts, but i wasn’t going to say anything, not when we are getting along so well. miss k really does not like being corrected. taylor moore leaves. * * * the shed feels like one of those sweat rooms and is real dirty, but it and dirty i get. miss k has been bringing us snacks and juice, though, so i don’t really see a point in playing somewhere else. the smell of peanut butter and dust bunnies mixes in the air. i always leave smelling and my “um, i just like her. my mom got her for me, and we always play with plastic ponytail trying to see why i like her so much. out.” appear. “well, yeah.” “i learned all about that a few weeks ago when school was still goin'.” don’t.” “not really, but whatever. i guess you are just a baby and don’t know —” all peanut butter “oh well, you probably have never seen one.” he tips back his head and laughs at me. side and waits for me to answer. say ‘hi’ to each other and sometimes he notices that i swing by myself and is nice and swings with me. when we are here, he always lets me play with him. way more than he plays with the other kids that come on monday, wednesday, and friday. don’t know; your games are just getting kind of babyish.” i shift around thinking back to how upset he was when i broke his i giggle as i think of something. “ok, truth or dare?” “i dare you to eat all the peanut butter crackers on the plate.” he walks over to the plate of about six peanut butter crackers and i shriek with laughter as he begins shoving them in his mouth. i feel so his mouth. he chugs both glasses of apple juice and wipes his mouth clean on his anything. you weren’t a baby?” “ok, i dare you to show me yours.” “oh...i don’t think my mom or miss k would like that.” i back up to taylor moore the wall of the shed. really want us to be friends still.” i probably won’t have any if he tells everyone at the end of the summer that i am a chicken baby. my mom. i close my eyes and lift up my yellow shirt and count in my head to three and yank it back down. felt but is similar to when i wrote on my mom’s wallpaper with her red lipstick, and she had to take three extra shifts at the diner to get new wallpaper. i look around, and i can’t think of anything. “i dare you to hold your “truth.” he rolls his eyes. “fine, that’s your one truth for the game. would you let me kiss you?” ponytail on my thumb. me?” supposed to love friends. “ok, then, yes or no?” i want to get up and go inside, even though miss k said i get to come all peanut butter i feel him lean forward and put both his hands on my shoulders. he he gets slobber on my top lip. with the peanut butter crackers and juice. then he gets up and runs into the house. genesisfall2016.pdf 38 genesis fall 2016 thinking of funky bones by atelier van lieshout funky bones at first it’s a mess of white blocks lying on an open, green lawn with people walking and jumping from block to block. a kid sits on his father’s shoulders to get a better view: it’s a skeleton. all by itself in the clearing. a couple leads their daughter across the blocks, making a fun lesson: five toe bones, just like you, they say. the girl jumps from bone to bone with her father holding her hand. this is the longest bone in your body. standing on the hip bone, a young couple takes a picture. the girl hops around them. here’s the spine. it’s in your back. this is your skull. the holes where the eyes should be stare openly up at the sky. the girl jumps off, runs to the next exciting thing. the skeleton is alone. all it has is grass and sky. leaping from each bone, we see what we look like under our skin: at our bones, we’re all the same, staring up at the sky with open eyes. victoria johnson genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 51 detachment • 52 genesis spring 2017 fast and furious detachment genesis spring 2017 53 54 genesis spring 2017 detachment genesis 2018 final digital.pdf venetian street with gondola gabriel akre oil on canvas undertones megan fisher digital art 40 genesisspring2016.pdf 4 genesis spring 2016 lucy, i’m home sarah turmail pal, i need to weep. the rubble of my life is naked, catching cold under the woodpile while i pair socks, fuss with my eyebrows. disillusioned with botched handwriting, an epitaph i thought of just now. you lay on the warped linoleum, and the curve of your hip as you hide your penis from me hangs a crescent moon because you left the door open, again. tears meant for the dog hair dusted on the baseboards. the smell echoes from his mouth, bouncing from the yellowed cavern to the winded light of dinnertime. he is babylon, collapsed after a seven lapped walk, and if i fold enough socks, that i ever loved whiskey breath and bad teeth. pal, i’m leaving, now, to look for the dog. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf one of one connor stump monotype print with ink genesis 2018 final digital.pdf northern lights cameron reed watercolor and acrylic paints genesisspring2016.pdf 18 genesis spring 2016 candied syrup bought from the amish store and my sister’s name spill onto the warped linoleum: it’s the holidays in the holler. dad says her blood must be sweeter than this sugary ham baste, as sinful as she is. nothing more than an abomination he banished from his folding card table. he holds his tin wool under the drip of the sink, sharpens the butcher knife. butcher know. they’re like any knife pulled from the drawer of spare mason jar lids and stained hot pads. not scary, for kids, not for making pb&j’s or grandma’s afternoon crackers and cheese. they’re meant shaping cubed steaks and pork chops. so be wary, kids, he says to the little cousins as he works a knife they can’t tell from a butter spreader. this one will get you good, not like the other knives, he says. god, aunt sharon sighs to me. i think about telling weeds and canadian thistle, high and tripping acid. best of poetry a butcher and his family’s first christmas after losing a loved one sarah turmail genesis spring 2016 19 to my brother. i close my eyes and think of her. but mostly, i only think of dad’s eloquent defense knives in their home amongst the mason jar lids and stained hot pads. aunt jane just looks at me and shakes her head. i look to the window, to the bright do you see those stars, i say to aunt jane. stars? she goes to the window. nope, can’t see, not one day you will be brave enough to carry the sky on your head. to burn like the stars that ignore the sun, and shine anyway. i see her twinkle at me from her place above the setting sun. i thought you weren’t coming, i say to her. she twinkles. 11 to my sister, the artist kate marquam the day we met, you handed me a ball of yarn and taught me to knit using only my fingers. you tied our hands together, demanded we construct a chain so long that no matter how far apart we stood, we’d still be connected. years later, you wove that knitting into a tapestry for my grandmother’s christmas gift. little sister, you can make art from anything. clearance-bin fabric, leftover scraps of family cut at odd angles around a missing father, your own body. ballet has taught you to contort yourself into others’ creativities. it asks a precise harshness that i see in the snapback unapology of your wit, but not your pirouette. i beg you, little sister, stay soft. may your ribcage never be serrated and starving. may you always be just a little off-beat from the crowd, keep that ballerina grace, but not the conformity. i was done finding things to love about this world until i saw what you could do with it. keep making joy from everything you can get your hands on. don’t you ever bend to anyone else’s beautiful. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf ode to washing my hands m.e. carnes grabbing ahold of the metal knob i pull it towards me, unleashing a torrent of water— and thud against the skin of my arms as if the water can sense inside of me. i move my hands under the faucet and allow the water to coat them. i watch as the steam rises, and like a burner on an old stove my hands turn an angry red; the water searing through my skin the pain ignited in my hands a distraction from the bruise that hugs my left eye, i take hold of the bar of soap twisting it between my hands i rub my hands against each other, coating them in the silky white silt— scrubbing every inch of skin that stretches as if i could wash away the purple bracelets his hands left on me. once more i move my hands under the faucet. the water removing the residual bubbles—they swirl around the drain and disappear, and for the moment so do all of my worries. repeat. fall 2017 final digital.pdf beauty elizabeth coffman-mackey the noise of brassy bands and chatter, the scent of burnt popcorn and popsicle juice. i am sprawled on the sidewalk, an array of chalk before me and my tongue stuck out as i try to sketch out my masterpiece with sidewalk when i color and shade at the top, and getting indented by i have lost the competition once again. and she’s gone over each of the thirteen stripes so many times that the boring. it’s unoriginal. it wins. against the street. the lines are not clear, and the judges say when they think i am not in earshot that they do not know what it is. i had been practicing for the competition for months. this piece of the sidewalk, it’s the epitome of my art. what i colored was a map of my fantasy world. i tried to bring to life with pale pigment on the ground the world i played in inside my head. it was comprised of lush, rolling, green head it is gorgeous. on the sidewalk, it looks like scribbles even though i cry on the way home, my hands still covered in dust in every pastel shade crayola could make. this is not a story about art. beauty this is indianapolis, indiana, sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for my classmates to say what they thought of my story. it’s autumn of 2017, but it’s so hot and muggy outside that the air conditioner is blasting all through the classroom. there’s an institutional chill in the room, and says. around in a circle as they take turns vivisecting the story on the classroom it is too confusing, it’s too long, it’s not long enough, it’s showing and not telling and it’s telling and not showing and the paper is bloodless, pale as it gets carved up with markers and pens. “the real problem is that there’s no moment of reckoning,” the professor says. “this is a good story, but how does it come together? you’ve got to narrow your focus here.” i don’t want to take my story back home with me anymore. this is not a story about writing. this is urbana, illinois, wearing my best velvet dress and listening the symphony is otherworldly. instruments weave together like the tapestry of the fates. when i close my eyes, i am not in the crowded concert hall with 2,000 of my closest strangers, struggling to stay awake under the dim lights. i am back inside my mind, running through the lush forests that refused to be committed to paper, or i am swimming through but i do not know these notes. the chords and the melodies do not sound “i wanna do that,” i think to myself when the music stops. “i want to make music like that. i want to make people feel like that.” my mother speaks before i say any words out loud. “you could do that, you know,” she said. “if you practiced your piano everyday like you’re supposed to, you could sound like that.” mind, folding and crashing and dancing like rivers. music that sounds like water or adventure or love, i can hear, i could write it, i know i could. time on piano without crying in frustration. this is not a story about music. this is an old beige toyota with the windows rolled down, kicking up dust as it blurs past forests and mountains down the old dirt road. drowning us, but just enough sound leaks out of the open windows that we can still breath in the musty summer air. makeup is perfect and unsmudged. her hair blows around her face but never tangles up or gets in her mouth. her waist is trim and her eyes are “you’re perfect,” i say, in more words, words that come out bitter and accusing. “i try harder than you,” she says in more words, words that sound like biting classroom insults, words like “lose weight” and “don’t be a slob.” i can’t tell her i am trying because if i’m trying and this is as good as it gets then that is so, so much worse. this is not a story about love. this story is me trying to say something and never having the words to, never having the guts or the balls or the brains to pull something to completion and not really trying to. it’s a story about letting all the stitches show in your clothing, having a life that isn’t seamless and art that’s riddled with mistakes. it’s about sending letters that aren’t thought through saying anything at all. broken pottery with melted gold. this is about beautiful damaged goods. this is a story about the mosaic i made when i was very young. it was made of pieces of broken glass pressed into wet grout, and it was supposed to be a sunset, but it didn’t look like anything but colored broken beauty glass. no one knew what it was, no one knew what it meant. no one could deny that it was beautiful. 38 mama never cried moriah northcutt mama never cried. no, you’d never see a tear. wipe the tears off your face, darling, she’d say, i’ll pour you some more juice. and mama never let manners slide. it’s yes, ma’am, she’d say and no, sir. may i please, and thank you. go hug your daddy and thank him for your toys. most of all mama never sat around in pj's with messy hair no, she was always dressed crisp and proper, hair done, yelling, you don’t want to look like a hoodlum do you? we laughed while she straightened our locks. but one day mama stopped worrying so much about manners, and she didn’t really talk all that much anymore. so i’d remind my siblings remember: yes ma'am, no sir, may i please, and thank you, and go hug daddy and thank him for your toys. then mama began to sit around for days on end in her pj's with the messy hair. so i said to my siblings, remember we don’t wanna look like hoodlums and i’d brush and straighten their locks. and don't forget to grab mama a shirt, i’ll get it on her. one day mama began to cry. and she didn’t stop for hours, weeks. so i’d say to my siblings it’s alright, we just need to be strong. hand me those pills so she can stop crying for a few hours one day mama wasn’t really mama anymore, daddy didn’t laugh or smile either, sissy started asking me questions i didn’t understand myself. bubba still needed to be changed, and i still wanted to be 10. fall 2017 final digital.pdf liquids ben levart photography cover art genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 19 life studies emily wright painting genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 44 genesis spring 2017 solitude genesisfall2016.pdf 24 genesis fall 2016 chains photograph kyle matthew englert genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 18 genesis spring 2017 lamassu joelle stille • genesis 2018 final digital.pdf stressed elijah shanton charcoal fall 2017 final digital.pdf birth giver piper rowley late in the evening. the abruptness of her fragility has winded me. eventually, she will disappear. i remember her blank white skin only from pictures. her skin is leather brown now, cluttered with ink as incomprehensible as her thoughts. graying severely at her temples. hard drinking, childhood trauma, adult mistakes gray. her body is a collection of unpredictable slopes and swells. celluloid divots and aged stretchmarks. and a jutting scar above her navel, evidence of poor health. best of poetry piper rowley carried by pink soles, cracked and calloused. lined with deep regrets and troubles. a pale and unforgiving landscape, wintry and vicious when provoked. scatterbrained advice, and subjective, inconsistent realities. a source of shame, a place of guilt, the origin of homesickness. the possibility of unhappiness heirloom of imbalanced chemicals dormant in my veins i was born trying to escape. her angry missed calls collect 7 seven ways to come out jayce koenn 7 best of fiction solution #1: calmly talk to your parents and tell them you have a girlfriend, and you two have been dating for a few months now. those sleepovers were actually dates. already have your things packed and have a second place lined up to stay for when they kick you out. you know that their religion preaches against this, and religion is their top priority. even more important than acceptance. solution #2: your dad has a lot of vicodin for his chronic back pain, and your mom really likes wine and always keeps a bottle in the fridge. it would only take a few pills and a few gulps to do the job. have your parents find you so they feel only remorse for publicly shaming people who live your secret “lifestyle choice.” let them feel the pain that radiates in every fiber of your being. solution #3: you may live in a small town without a car, but you’re also near a busy highway. you’re cute and tiny, so it wouldn’t be too hard to hitchhike to the big city where there are more resources, and where your girlfriend lives. she’s out to her parents; maybe they will help you out for a bit? but don’t tell your parents. they obviously don’t care about you. solution #4: get a cake that comes out for you—with a lot of rainbows— in their favorite flavor. win them over with food and humor. follow the second part of solution #1 if this fails. solution #5: stay in the closet. lock the door for protection and let your silence radiate off the walls in the tight space until you suffocate. or at least until you can support yourself. solution #6: cry a lot while you tell them, so they pity you. ask them to pray the gay away. when it “surprisingly” doesn’t work maybe they’ll see on your level. if not, go with solution #2. solution #7: slowly hint at it so it’s not a shock for when you formally tell them. share about being an “ally” on facebook, videos of other kids telling their parents. they’ll slowly adjust on their own time. then when you see that they probably can predict it, tell them, then act shocked when they say “we knew.” after all, love wins. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf feminine bodies piper rowley “ turn her into literature.” – henry miller virgin, a saint, a mother, a daughter. too precious for sex, too pure for inedible. or worse yet, they turn us into literature. they describe our bodies as beautiful plains. write songs and novels about how they want to fuck us, devour us, dismiss us, forget us. they compare us to birds, landscapes, nymphs, anything imaginable. on albums playing on the radio this morning. mind, experience, history. they want to spread our legs and write poetry necks, bed us or kill us, one of the two. “why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” – virginia woolf displayed for every distracted eye to wander to, lust and compare standing wives, casting quick glances, maybe a disparaging, longing comment. the wives who hungrily lap up the captions. lose 20 pounds! trim your fat! tone your abs! they want us to disappear, to whittle and carve ourselves for a feminine bodies place in the world. “women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.” these parts. i dismantle myself in the shower where i cannot avoid my measuring the swell of my waist with shaking, wide palms. i drip in the tub eight of those years i have systematically and at times, sloppily, tried to while stirring enticing/repulsing food on my plate. no thank you, i am not hungry. i ate earlier. i already ate. i didn’t eat at all. for none of those years did my body feel like my own. now, my body does not feel like my own. bodies. meticulously crafted, embellished with tailored clothing, painted nails, makeup to look natural even though no one looks like that naturally. the bags beneath their eyes have been concealed, their eyelashes extended. we do not see the: stretch marks on their legs, folds of their stomachs, slope of their uneven breasts. those things do not exist in: the literature. “be not ashamed women. . . you are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.” –walt whitman they write about us. they sing about us. they talk about us on the piper rowley when they don’t care they are being recorded. their paintbrushes are they paint our bodies. they give us passive, inviting expressions. i am not a gate, a bird, a rolling mountain, a thing to be desired, pursued, neglected. i do not exist for their consumption, loving hands, my thighs are perhaps a little too big and breasts noticeably uneven. dragging my soles on the treadmill. glance at the other feminine bodies. disembodied, driven. when i hear, watch, read a man compare a woman to an idea, an unhinged concept, an animal, a place in nature, i turn them i am not here for memorable quotes, romantic thoughts, how women are this, women are that. how our feminine bodies drive men sickening, annoying at best. they do not own a feminine body, they do not understand. they can never have us, through their stilted similes and fall 2017 final digital.pdf ripple bench devin johannis soft maple, walnut devin johannis fall 2017 final digital.pdf victoria of the insects cut-paper collage, alcohol inks fall 2017 final digital.pdf metaphor kate marquam the fall is not a metaphor for my father. the sunlight strained orange and gold through brittle leaves is not his eyes when pumpkins grocery store parking lots. my smile is not but glowing. when people ask if i’m ok, i tell them that shit happens. people every year and the world never ends, but the fall is not a metaphor for my father. my father is not a broken tree that couldn’t survive the long winter, is not a season, but i can’t orange sunset without searching for his eyes somewhere genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 37 acrylic mermaid samantha wright fall 2017 final digital.pdf my home is home to many mario stone written @ saint matthew’s house, homeless shelter in collier county, florida here time is sharp, cuts lights out at ten as the lingering chatter dies down like gossip found out. music persists but louder than headphones are the snores and sharper than time are the coughs sporadically torn from dry, jagged throats and wet lungs. it’s half past two and a hack of a cough is killed the night’s most humble sound, and the bite on my thigh the loudest by far. jealous, the bites on my arms scream to the bites on my calves and the bites on my ankles, tearing skin add to the din, cough itch scratch itch itch cough itch scratch. itch. itch. the black bed bugs scurrying my home is home to many bloated my nose curls as i jab and feel them crush beneath my disgust to red fetid memories on white sheets. i take a deep breath and let myself feel my shirt shifting on my skin, the night’s only caress genesis 2018 final digital.pdf greenwood ethan marley greenwood stands in front of its shabby house, bragging about the paint job and smoking with a steaming cup of joe down your shirt. tumbleweeds of cigarettes blow by kids playing with like bored road rabbits, bending the rims of bent frames. greenwood laughs at the kids with rings in their noses, hotels a town over in early march. condemned houses fold over themselves like old men collapsing into recliners. the malls reek of fried food, the fast foods joints of cheap cologne. gunshots ring out, celebrating another day of survival. greenwood just bought a new pontoon and dropped it shakes you to sleep and rocks you awake, pulls up an eyelid just to make sure you didn’t get enough rest. greenwood takes up two parking spots with its pickup, whose vanity plate reads it settles fender benders with handshakes greenwood believes that power to the people genesis 2018 final digital.pdf the observer paul williams wearable sculpture best of art & comic fall 2017 final digital.pdf forever moments. isaac schmitt photography 8.25 380 isaac schmitt accident pinned fall 2017 final digital.pdf vulnerable (from the "society" collection) paul williams raku-fired clay genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 7 oil on canvas golden deer still life lifan fan genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf genesis spring 2017 37 colored outside the lines street night claire hegge long exposure photography 52 genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 25 of the night sky, and i traced it’s just a painting, my friend said. she pointed at one of a woman with yellow lips who seemed to be in all places at once, and she laughed. but as i lay in her foreign bed, i saw the swirling stars, wind, and sky surrounding me. at me, beckoning me to look, see, and feel her colors. in the once quiet darkness of her room, i felt my knees buckling although i wasn’t standing: greens, yellows, creams, and dark, dark blues. a thirst kindled in my throat and a tang ripened on my i breathed in the motion around me and fell asleep in a thick dark blue. first sleepover a night with van gogh and picasso victoria johnson 30 back on the horse ethan marley “what’s it been? six months?” john jabbed his fork full of spiraled spaghetti at eric. “seven.” eric took a sip of coffee and breathed a heavy sigh while he looked down at his lap. “it’s been seven months.” john slurped the noodles off his fork and laughed. “single for seven months. we gotta get you back up on that horse,” john said, taking a gulp of ice water to chase down his large bite of pasta. eric shook his head, both at the idea of dating again and at john’s decision to order spaghetti at eight o’clock in the morning. “why?” “listen, the longer you’re alone, the more that stench of loneliness starts to follow you. it’s like unwashed clothes, or morning breath, and if you wait until it festers enough, everyone smells it on you and then it’s too late.” “no, i mean why are you eating spagheyou think i smell like morning breath?” “you don’t smell like morning breath, but we need to get you with a girl. it’s been too long, and its starting to reflect poorly on me.” “you’re not dating anyone right now either, john. how is this a poor reflection on you? according to what you’re saying, we’re equally smelly.” “don’t be hung up on the smell thing. i am just trying to tell you that it’s time for you to leave single life and find the girl of your dreams. or, you know, someone that seems nice.” eric stared into his cup, watching the last sip of almond-colored folgers sway from side to side as he rolled the cup in his hand, thinking about his “single life” that he had built for himself, that john was trying so desperately to get him away from. eric didn’t like the idea of having to give that up quite yet. after downing the last of his weak coffee, eric placed his cup down on the table with a furrowed brow and finally spoke up. “i like being single though.” john stopped his hand in midair as he was about to shovel another bite of spaghetti into his mouth and dragged his gaze toward eric. “i mean, what’s so bad about it? i get free time, i have extra money, i get to do what i want pretty much all the time-.” “you work all the time. you fill your free time with more work, and what you want to do all the time is work. you need to get outside of that bus, eric; it’s corrupting your mind.” “any more coffee?” their waitress said. her name was tess, and she saw these two come in every morning at the same time, to sit in the same sticky, torn, red booth that they always did, right under the dimmest fluorescent bulb in the diner. eric smiled. “yeah, thank you.” she poured him another cup and glided away like an ice skater in early winter. tess didn’t mind her job, but she did feel like she worked too much. 31 -31 “i shouldn’t even know his name, let alone be able to call exactly when eric is going to wipe his mouth with his crumpled napkin,” she said to the other waitress as she came behind the counter to return the pot of coffee to the warmer. without turning to look at eric, she said, “i bet he is right…now.” she looked at the other waitress for confirmation. “i think you are here too much,” she said. eric finished wiping coffee from the corner of his mouth and chin with his balled-up napkin. “you’ve been in a slump, and you’ve been working to distract yourself from it,” john said. “you know it’s true. no happy person with prospects offers to work weekends and holidays driving a bus around coralville, iowa.” “i have plenty of prospects.” “besides driving your bus, name one.” “recently i’ve been considering getting a rabbit.” “that’s a non-committal pet. huge red flag. you don’t have to care for a rabbit, you monitor it, like a warden. if you can’t get a dog, don’t get anything. plus, a dog would help you in your situation.” eric was skeptical about getting a rabbit, but was especially reserved about the idea of getting a dog. whether women would like it or not, that sounded like a lot of work. and, being out of the house all day driving his route, he didn’t want to hire someone to take care of it. “eric, are you thinking about work?” john asked. “n… yeah.” “you don’t even have work today, and you’re spending your day off thinking about driving a bus.” the driver’s union of coralville had contacted eric and told him that he had to take the day off because he was about to work his third fiftyhour week in a row, and apparently that was bringing into question their stance on “labor rights.” while eric thought it to be a bit much, he knew that it was time for him to take a breather. he didn’t know what else to do, so he came to the diner he did every morning before starting his route (which was located directly next to the bus depot), and planned to stay for as long as john would keep ordering food. while the diner was usually free of customers at that early hour of the morning, john and eric turned their heads when they felt the icy february air hit them. the front door of the restaurant had opened, and in the doorway stood a heavily wrapped figure, scarf wrapped around their face, a hat almost pulled over their eyes, and a coat so puffy it could have popped. the person began to unravel themselves from their winter armor, first unspooling the tight scarf from around their face, then pulling the hat from their head. under the layers was a woman, with long dark hair and a bright red, cold face. she was more beautiful than any woman eric or john had seen in iowa. “girl of your dreams,” john said under his breath. the woman shuffled to a booth across the small diner from the two, and tess followed her to ask what she would be having. they heard a 32 -32 voice smooth as silk say, “coffee, please.” “sounds like you already have a lot in common,” john said. eric hadn’t heard anything since the woman walked in. he sat, frozen as the power lines, and stared in wonderment. she looked so different from the women he saw every day on his route, there was something so fresh and new about her, and he started to think that his work might not be so important (at least for today). “john,” eric said, “i think you might be right about dating.” “say no more.” john shot up from the booth and traipsed toward the mystery woman’s booth. “no, no...” eric tried to pull him back, but john blew by him with a flip of his arm to shake eric off. john pulled his wallet, a battered, folded piece of brown faux-leather from his pocket, and turned to wink at eric. no matter how hard eric shook his head to call off the operation, john continued forward and as he passed by the woman’s booth, he threw the wallet toward her feet. eric saw the woman look down, stirring in her seat and shifting to pick up whatever this man had “dropped.” he saw john waving his arms in an exaggerated apology and taking his wallet back from the woman. to his dismay, he watched as john leaned over her table and put on his most persuasive face. he talked to her for about ten seconds and a smile stretched across his face. eric thought this might’ve been a good sign until john’s smile fell off his face and was replaced with a defeated frown. he moped back to their booth and plopped down. “what was that?” “fate. it’s not meant to be, man. i’m sorry.” “what do you mean? what did she say?” “she wasn’t receptive.” “to what?” “well i pulled the ol’ wallet move, you know, as you do, throw the wallet on the ground, they pick it up, you go from there.” “i’ve never heard of the wallet move.” “regardless, she told me she wasn’t interested.” “in who?” “me.” “were we not talking about getting me a girl? i thought that’s what you told me?” “you’re one hundred percent right, sorry, i bailed on that plan in the moment. your turn, though.” “what does that mean?” eric asked as tess came over to their booth again. “did you want anything to eat, eric?” she asked, and he looked down, embarrassed that she might’ve heard their conversation. eric and john had been coming every morning for six months, since eric had gotten his job driving the coralville city bus (john tagged along with him every day, due to his lack of employment/ambition). tess and he had gotten to back on the horse back on the horse 33 ethan marley 33 know each other, as well as two people can through cups of coffee and the occasional plate toast, but even still, he didn’t want to look desperate. “no, thank you, though,” he said, his face red. “all right, john? anything for you?” “it’s been a rough day, tess. i’m gonna need a few pieces of that apple cobbler. and eric’ll have the bill. what?” john said after eric glared at him. “we talked about you loosening up.” after tess scribbled his order onto her pad and whisked herself away, john leaned in and said, “eric, this is your chance. forget your fifty-hour weeks and not having any furniture in your apartment. it’s time to grow up, so go over there and ask that woman on a date right now.” there was a long pause, and eric found himself unconsciously clenching his fists. his palms were sweating, and the butterflies in his stomach had turned to angry birds of prey, but he summoned the courage to slide to the edge of the booth. john pumped his fist and slapped eric hard on the shoulder as he stood up, straightening his shaky knees, and took his first step toward the woman of his dreams. every inch of the thirty-foot walk was a laborious step through a pool of molasses, and eric felt time creep to a halt. the back of the woman’s head scared him more than asking her out. he finally reached the table, and so did tess, who came over to give her a small mug and pour her a cup of watery coffee. eric stood to the side as tess gave the woman her coffee, trying to stay out of sight until the moment was right. he heard the same silky voice before asking, “where’s the cream and sugar?” “oh. i’m sorry. i’ll have that right out to you,” tess said. a woman who knows what she wants, eric thought. i like that. tess stepped away and rushed behind the counter, and eric took over her position by the booth of the woman. he finally stepped around the booth and saw the top of the woman’s head, her face buried in her phone. “hi.” “thanks,” the woman said without breaking eye contact with her phone and reached out for the cream and sugar that she thought he had delivered. when her delicate hand only grabbed the air, she looked up from her phone, first at the table, and then up at eric. “how are you?” he asked with a smile. “i’m not buying anything,” she said, returning her intense eyes to her smartphone. “oh, i’m sorry, i’m not actually selling anything, i was wondering-” “listen, your friend already tried, and he told me that you were really nice and that you’re ‘too precious to deny,’ but i’m passing through and i don’t need this right now. my aunt just died, and unfortunately she picked this place to die in.” “i’m sorry to hear that.” eric didn’t know what to do. he looked back at john, in a panic, and held two thumbs way up and smiled. eric shook his head, and john lifted his thumbs higher, as if his hand gesture was going to improve the situation by being higher in the air. it struck eric that john had lied to him about trying to ask this woman out and that he 34 -34 had really gone over to try to set him up for victory. “okay,” she responded, looking at him with annoyance. “uh, what,” eric cleared his throat. “what’s your name?” “can you do me a favor?” the woman asked. “anything,” eric said, immediately regretting such a personal answer to someone who clearly wanted to remain strangers. she noticed it too, and paused, holding eye contact with him and not knowing if he was all there. “can you, please, can you just, for me, walk away. can you do that? can you go away?” she made a pushing motion with her hands, as if to shoo him. “go away. walk away from me, please.” her condescending tone compounded the embarrassment of tess having walked up at that moment to deliver the woman’s cream and sugar. “can i get you anything else?” tess asked, her gaze cautiously shifting between the annoyed woman and eric. “the check.” tess walked away without saying anything, and eric followed suit, managing to eke out a meager, “bye,” before lifting his feet, which had become flesh cinder blocks attached to his ankles, and walked back to john’s booth. he stared at the floor, even after sitting back in the booth with john. “so, when’s your date?” “i’m not ready for a girlfriend,” eric said. “she play hard to get? easy, what you do is you get your wallet out, and you...” “john. just stop.” they sat in silence; john forked at his apple pie, but never took a bite, and eric relived the worst moment of his romantic life in technicolor, over and over. “want some more coffee before you go?” tess’s tone was different than it was before, more comforting and solemn than upbeat. eric shook his head, and smiled for the first time all day when tess said, “saw your strikeout over there.” “sorry you had to see that,” eric said. “hopefully it won’t take too much counseling to make you forget.” tess laughed. “well, if you want to talk about it, i get off around three today.” eric dropped his smile and stared at her. “really?” she laughed again and said, “yeah.” after dropping the check off, tess walked away beaming, and eric still stared at her. john slapped him hard on the shoulder. “see,” john whispered. “i told you.” eric shook his head with a smile and saw that the bill was just over ten dollars. he left a twenty on the table, and john followed him out of their booth and into the bright sun. back on the horse 12 holy grounds dustin ryder your voice tastes like honeysuckle, coating my lips and staining my skin. i’m in a place of worship, down on my knees begging you to bless me. tracing freckles like forbidden scriptures—i want to consume all the sins you’ve buried. my hands will wander over the gold of your skin, hesitancy in hovering—i don’t want to tarnish something so holy. your breath ghosts my neck, forgiveness trailing in its wake. that’s all i need—the blessing in my ear as you tell me my name. are you making me holy, or am i destroying the divine? there’s a pull of hair, an urgency in the way our eyes clash. words have always failed us, nerves holding our hands and butterflies breaking past our lips. there’s a cataclysm in my soul, hands trembling as i can feel the concrete kiss my knees once again. i’m corrupting holy grounds, spilling sins like wine. desperation as i clutch her sides, corruption bruising the delicacy of her skin. her words bounce in the hollow of my chest, cracking ribs and finding the heart i thought i’d lost. i’ll watch the blue of my fingertips light like fire, ghosting her lips like the blind finding god. i fear she doesn’t know how holy she is—that those that only take don’t diminish those that are ethereal. there’s a smashing of lips, copper and tiger lilies mixing. forgiveness smears my skin, her fingernails grazing prophecies on my chest. she tells me i’m more than the sins that have consumed my soul, that i was created with the darkest parts filling the sky. this doesn’t mean i’m not holy, as she shows me the ink that still stains her hands as she blessed me. she reminds me that constellations only shine when there’s a lack of light. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf too big ashton boehman lithograph genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 6 genesis spring 2017 porcupine fall 2017 final digital.pdf the day of the dreader serena boehmer acrylic paints 43 best of art 15 these rivers run tanner léon i am the veins of this world ‘y’ and ‘v’ painted across your map my joints are foamy hiccups where the fluid falls in grace hopping the skips and dips of the landscape i am a true border— gravity the only king yanking the reins decreeing me forward to slip through the moonlight sonata of the moon’s fingers— wispy spindles trying to tickle me away from fate’s wading pool. i am a child’s fond memory: i am filled of nature’s feast lures tangle my teeth and hook my gums the oil spills pulverize my pulmonary— i thought i was lifeblood. i thought i deserved worship where are the shrines? there used to be shrines you don’t hear my pain so i get high tide, until my lungs riptide, and the blood drips dry. i carry the waste— paint the face of earth: a wasteland. 28 adam’s delight tanner léon i love a slice in my mouth your pulsing red— stem poised tender flesh beneath the surface, a hard core full of seed. i scrub you clean before i feast i could churn you into butter bathe your body in caramel— kiss your colors & caress your curves split you open on the table— eager fingers on your fuji oh great gift your grannysmith— horndoggin’ for honeycrisp. i could munch you in a pie taste your flavors in my chai put an arrow through your heart in a tree is where we start grace your bottom with my hand i’ve become the apple man. genesis 2018 final digital.pdf flight emily parker plaster and limestone base fall 2017 final digital.pdf the infant factory cut-paper collage genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 17 bail bonds oil on paper 6x12” kelsey blacklock genesisfall2016.pdf 20 genesis fall 2016 pizza brook lowry oil on canvas 25 the amber planet sara lansdell digital, 3000 x 1500px 45 baby giver laura tuzzio i stood at the window with you in my arms, looking out into the parking lot from our fourth-floor room searching. i was desperate. where was it? this strength everyone told me i possessed all those months leading up to that day? i kept looking. maybe it would somehow appear, looming over the top of one of the cars parked out there. one of those minivans, probably owned by one of the other new moms down the hall or next door. a brandnew minivan, purchased especially to take their brand-new baby home in. i cringed with envy; damn minivans. i wondered what it would be like to take a baby home from this place. what it would be like to be one of those “happy” moms with her new minivan. i looked back to you; the tears were coming down my cheeks. i was not one of those happy moms; my strength was failing me. our time together was fleeting. my new focus was on trying to memorize every single thing about you, every feature, every sound, every smell. my concentration was abruptly broken by a knock on the door. “who the hell is it?” i screamed in my head. i gave the nurses specific instructions. “no visitors today!” this was our day, just the two of us. i needed this time. why was somebody here trying to rob me of it? reluctantly, i invited the unwanted visitors in. it was a friend with her mom. she was a good friend; i couldn’t be mad at her for wanting to support me. this was the hardest thing i had ever done, and she had come to comfort me. although her intentions for being there were sweet, the interaction with her and her mom proved awkward. it was as awkward as every conversation i had with every person over those last eight months about the decision that haunted me day and night. it played like a record over and over. everyone: “oh, you’re pregnant, congratulations!” me: “i’m giving the baby up for adoption.” everyone: “oh.” i heard the same reaction each time. it was usually followed with an uncomfortable, “that’s such a brave decision. you’re so strong.” again, this 45 46 -46 bravery and strength were so hard to find in that moment while i stood there engaging in agonizing small talk with the last people that visited before that big, dreaded moment. in a very short amount of time they would come. the adoptive parents, the counselor, the ex-boyfriend, the lawyer, the papers; none of which i was ready for. i just needed more time. i knew it was the right decision for you, for me, for the parents; it was what everybody expected to happen. i just wasn’t ready. no one said it was going to be that hard. no one told me the past two days would pass in seconds rather than hours. and to look at you, you were just so perfect, so beautiful. your raven-colored hair, rosy complexion, perfectly round little head, just the right amount of fingers and toes. and why was that new baby smell so intoxicating? i had never smelled a person’s head so much in my life! what was worse? you did not cry. you were the most composed little lady, so calm and peaceful. it was as if you knew. you felt my sadness, and you didn’t want to make it any harder for me than it already was. i knew those moments were precious, and i was not going to forget a single one. the breakup went as so many do. he wanted space; that’s code for “i’m already seeing somebody else, so this isn’t going to work anymore.” i wasn’t dealing well with the breakup. i had obviously invested more in the past three years than he had. there were a lot of emotions, typical post-breakup stuff, but why was i feeling physically ill? why was i letting him get to me that much? i kept trying to convince myself he wasn’t worth it. eventually, i sought counseling; maybe i was physically depressed. i went to a session or two. one day i was on a lunch break from work, and something came over me. not so much a revelation or an epiphany, but more of a nagging need to eliminate a possibility. so off to the drugstore i went and came home with that little box. a few minutes later a positive affirmation of just why i was getting sick in the mornings was revealed. i wasn’t sick over him; i was sick from nausea caused by being pregnant! wait, what? my mind reeled. “this is not good. we’re not together anymore, it’s been a month since we’ve even talked. i have to go back to work soon; what am i going to do? okay. i’ll pick up the phone and spread this shock-wave; i’m not the only one involved baby giver 47 laura tuzzio 47 here.” so, i called him at his work. there was no preparation for presenting the news; i just kind of blurted it out. “i’m pregnant and don’t even ask me if you’re the father.” i don’t know why i felt it was necessary to add the second part of that sentence. i suppose i wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to piss me off by insinuating something along those lines so, i beat him to it. shockingly, he was not overjoyed at the news. not much else was discussed as we both needed a little time to process the weight of the situation. i went back to work in a daze and didn’t say anything about it to anyone else that day. my next step was to get it verified by first, another home test (different brand, just to be sure), and second, i made an appointment with my doctor. the inevitable confirmation followed, and the maelstrom began. so, bananas were a no go. saltines were placed on the nightstand and eaten before my feet would even touch the floor in the morning, or my face would be in the toilet first thing. you had a strong aversion to bananas, which i was slow to learn, however, to this day i still can’t finish a whole one due to reminiscing. i was not a healthy eater, but i made an effort. i got the prenatal vitamins; i stayed away from people who were smoking; i tried to get plenty of rest. aside from the morning sickness early on, you didn’t cause too much trouble in there. the real problem, it was the middle of summer, and my car didn’t have air conditioning! i had to drive around with towels stuffed inside my shirt, so i didn’t show up places with sweat stains all over. gross, i know. we were greeted by a glowing neon stork hanging on the wall. a slightly kitschy choice for a law office i thought, but also a humorous touch. i felt like i’d made a good choice. after all, i had no friends who would know about adoption lawyer referrals, and the ex was completely absent during the search. i think he was only there out of legal obligations, not emotional. it was a strange process, like being interviewed by the fbi or something. they wanted to know everything about us, our lives, our health, education, and our family’s health history too. it was all in an effort to ensure we’d be providing them with a normal, healthy baby for a well-paying set of adoptive parents. i left the office that day with a manila envelope full of potential parents’ mini-bios, which they’d prepared for birth mothers like 48 -48 myself. the bio was a couple of pages that included their story, why they wanted to adopt, and pictures that were meant to show them in what they hoped was their best light. how surreal of an experience it was to sit sifting through an envelope of profiles for people that i didn’t know, but they all wanted my baby. how would i choose? how would i know if they were the right ones? what if i was making a mistake? there was a juxtaposition there that didn’t escape me. i wondered how hard it would be to think of the perfect way to “sell” yourself as a potential parent to a stranger’s child? i was holding someone’s hopes and dreams in my hands. a manila envelope filled with couples’ devastation, anguish, yearning for something only i could give them. we needed each other equally. as crass as it may have sounded, i just had to find the one couple whose desperation spoke to me the most. find it i did, and sooner than expected. the very first profile i pulled from the envelope, the first one i read, the one i still have saved away in a lock-box, that was it. why exactly those people felt right to me was hard to explain. the profiles that followed theirs seemed just as sincere and lovely. but that one, that very first one, it was somehow the one, the couple i knew was meant to be your parents. what do you say to the people you’ve just chosen to raise your unborn child? well, there was a bit of protocol as decided by the adoption lawyer. an 800 telephone number was set up for the adoptive parents. even though i would be meeting them and it was a semi-open adoption, they were still afforded a certain amount of anonymity. i dialed the number. they knew the call was coming, but they didn’t really know what i was going to say. i compiled a list of interview questions if you will. i had to know a little more before i committed 100%. i asked about their family; there were no other kids. he was a doctor; she ran a little gift shop. this, unfortunately, wasn’t their first time going through this process. they were chosen before by another birth mother. then, why no baby? the birth mother was a little younger than me and after she delivered she changed her mind while still in the hospital. the adoptive parents received this news while waiting down the hall in the hospital to meet their new baby. it almost made me want to give them my baby even more. how horrible of baby giver 49 laura tuzzio 49 a thing to have happened. their expectations of bringing a new baby home with them, finally having the family they’d been dreaming of, ripped away and there was nothing they could do to change it. i think that part of my strength throughout my pregnancy had derived from my desire to make it right for that couple. i would help them; i would give them their family. the gravity of that decision, however, would not fully reveal itself until that day in the hospital holding you in my arms, looking out that fourth-floor window. there was still time to change my mind. i thought, “you’re still mine; i can leave with you today.” but how could i? nothing in my life had changed. i didn’t have a great job, insurance, or even my own place to live. i was alone; there was no plan for bringing a baby home that day. those amazing people were waiting down the hall in that hospital, hoping for their family to finally be complete. it was happening, no matter how hard it was going to be for me, i had to keep my word. the past two days i had taken as many pictures as i could. i held you as much as i could; i only let you leave the room for mandatory tests. i looked around the room at all the flowers sent from friends and family that adorned every available flat surface. i knew their intended purpose was to cheer me up. however, it reminded me more of a sight from a funeral home, as i knew this was most certainly going to be the death of something inside of me. the time was getting closer. i couldn’t push it away; i couldn’t make it stop. a lawyer, an ex, and a counselor walked into a room. it could have been the beginning of a bad bar joke, but it was instead, the real-life scene in my hospital room. the lawyer came with his stack of legal papers, the ex came to sign his rights away, and the counselor came to support me. i held you in my arms while i signed the papers. i cried and to my surprise, so did you. my sweet little baby who had not cried in two days started crying as i signed the papers to give you away. my heart wrenched, and my hand shook. you could no longer hold it in either. the sadness you had sensed in me all along was now your own as well. we were about to say goodbye, and you weren’t ready either. there was no way to turn back; we were both facing the inevitable. the papers were signed, the adoptive parents came in to meet you and see me for the last time. i looked and felt absolutely wrecked, 50 baby giver 50 devastated, and weak. it was my choice to personally hand you to them. from my arms to theirs; it had to be that way. the ex managed to leave the room seconds after their arrival to avoid having to witness the exchange. he was, in predictable fashion, leaving me to do all the hard work. there it was; i could see the anticipation in their eyes. i’ll never forget the overwhelming confliction of happiness for them and sadness for myself as i handed you over, my beautiful daughter. they had a little gift for me, and we took a couple pictures together. aside from that, the right words were hard to find. there was no proper etiquette for those types of situations. they knew i was in agony and knew they couldn’t say anything to ease that for me. they, of course, thanked me and told me over and over what a wonderful gift you were for them and how grateful they would always be to me. and then, you were gone. it was all of a half an hour, and everyone left the room. you, my daughter, became theirs; you weren’t mine anymore. i liked to think of you as our baby girl rather than just theirs. everyone had left the room except for the counselor, the woman i had been confiding in regularly throughout my pregnancy about all of my doubts and fears. she was there. not my ex, not my friends, not my family, just her. she sat next to me on my hospital bed as i wept. not cried; crying you can control, you can get it out and then you’re fine. it was uncontrollable weeping. i could not stop. i felt powerless. most can’t imagine what a birth mother feels after giving her baby away. it can’t be explained. it was an unfathomable sadness and emptiness. i was grieving for you because you were lost to me. my journey of coping with that grief is never-ending. it was not a feeling that passed with time. my brief feelings of comfort came from knowing that you were being raised by good people who loved you. in the years that followed, i stayed connected with that counselor by working with her giving lectures as a birth mother to potential adoptive parents. each time i would tell my story she interjected at the point where i talked about how i wept in the room with her by my side. she always stopped me at that point to really get the audience to understand what i meant by weeping. she would say that there was a phrase about someone crying a puddle of tears, but that until that day she had never actually witnessed a 51 person crying a literal puddle of tears as i had done. she would say she had never seen it happen since. i felt like she emphasized this part of the story, not to make the parents sad, but just to try and make them appreciate just what the birth mother goes through. we are not just giving our babies away to make our own lives easier. it is a decision that does not come easy, and it’s always made with someone else’s best interests in mind. it is a decision made out of love. one we make knowing that the hurt it causes us will never go away, but the joy it gives to someone else is what makes it worth it. eleven months after you were born, i met my future husband. we were married two years later. four years and six months later our son, your brother, arrived. he was delivered at the same hospital as you by the same doctor. the feeling in the delivery room knowing i was taking that baby home, it was incredible. there were no awkward conversations, no visitors not knowing the right thing to say. you were on my mind and in my heart the whole time. every part of my second pregnancy felt so different than the first because i knew, this time he was going to stay mine, no one else was taking him. i left the hospital with him in my arms. i went out to the parking lot to my brand-new minivan that i bought especially to take my brand new baby home in. we drove home together and finally, i was one of those happy moms. laura tuzzio genesis 2018 final digital.pdf protector sydney petrunich oil pastel and acrylic 52 midnight snack samantha barnes chalk pastel nightlight chelsea kenney oil on canvas 16 11 the times reported that “miss elliot” choked to death on a sandwich. rolling stone said she inhaled her own vomit. but elliot wasn’t even her name. she changed it from cohen—anything to sound more goyish. she starved off a hundred pounds, snorted coke in dressing rooms. jimi hendrix sent her flowers. her last night on earth was spent at a party thrown by mick jagger, just before her heart surrendered in a bed familiar with death. gone were the flowers. gone were the percodan pills, the bed sheets stolen from hotel rooms. she left behind her records. a little girl, seven years old. not a fucking ham sandwich. she stands solo on a late-night talk show, black and white, geometric, all hairspray and feathers and shiny polyester. she begs us: dream a little dream of me. claire christoff elegy for mama 17 pruning brittany fukushima photoplate lithography 48 an ode to hot sauce tanner léon feeble bodies fumble on tasteless foods, causing grumpy moods: lost in the black and white world of culinary catastrophe, they search for any ounce of color... but wait! there looms on the horizon, a savior... oh graceful god, save us all from the nightmarish hellhole known as bland supper. your shredded peppers are blended red, like tan shaman. a few spurts of the bottle will reinvigorate ramen, painting lifeblood amongst the crevices. 49 when tacos are dry, totalitarian, tabasco liberates taste buds into humanitarian holiness. tomatillo lush greens condensed in a container with jalapeños so serene, they ride together on an emerald wave, splash into a bowl of arroz con frijoles. put it on potatoes! it’s vibrant like tomatoes! sizzle me sriracha! spice up the broccola! canvas the collard greens! lace the burritos! oh dear hot sauce, thanks for never keepin’ it aburrido. you profess picanté, delve dishes onto an edge of danger. a smoldering whip cracks louisiana lightning strike from the sky, 50 sauntering me into a slow sway, coiled with the snake of spice. fire gleams in our eyes, the hot passion of life. bodies must fight to grow and i know you’re a sweaty workout who waterfalls noses while the eyes run wildly through a lively throat. when i need a good kick, i know where to go. 42 i remember the fogs of my childhood. how they pooled over the field at the end of the suburb, hung heavy over the untamed grass, hiding the dewy sinewy stalks. it stayed there, quietly, silently inviting us to play. we did, a collection of boys donning baseball caps to explore that gray expanse. i could hear the mice scurry by as i played land locked marco polo with fog bound friends. even when i couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face, i could always look up and see the early morning sky colored in with pink and orange crayons. we’d stay there until the sun and the fog slowly dissipated. these days i’ve left suburbs far behind opting for alleys over cul-de-sacs and ditching the ball caps for a nine to five. i’ve spent my early mornings walking, pacing between buildings, between floor and ceiling of concrete and fog. it hangs overhead like a low ceiling weighing down on my shoulders and slowly collapsing my spine. it is rich and claustrophobic with the smell of car exhaust and cigarettes hovering in the air. it’s hard to catch my breath, let alone call out to long lost friends. i stay silent, knowing i will get no reply, but i still know that the sun will rise and the fog will slowly disappear. i’ll see my friends again, clear as day. joseph warner the fog rolls in 6 the reflection connor stump charcoal genesis 2018 final digital.pdf birch bear emily parker birch plywood fruit #4 molly wolfe oil on panel, 30" x 22" 6 12 zoe hanquier wandering eyes i see you youtube commenter minecraftrules with too many numbers to count at the end of your username“god hates fags,” you say. i imagine you don’t hesitate before you type it. when you grow old, you’ll be the pepper-haired man i see as i leave my favorite restaurant with my girlfriend of one year to the day. your glare burns our hands apart so we chose arcing paths around the parking lot until we get to her car and we finally hold hands. i see you, my high school administrator, “save that for home.” i didn’t see you hesitate, hate on the tip of your tongue, the word you always seem to forget until a sight reminds you of it and you think fast to remember what it is. i hope when my love and i grow old, our wrinkled hands can be joined as one of us reaches for the skim milk in the aisle of kroger that is too cold for our withering bodies and finally no one will look. 56 "calavera... calavera..." nathan marquam “hold the dark holiday in your palms, bite it, swallow it and survive, come out the far black tunnel of el día de muerte, and be glad, ah so glad you are… alive!” ray bradbury, the halloween tree i. i’ll ride the wind like a bicycle over rocks, through ravines until i find you. you look strange, funny strange in this moonlight, faded as the siren’s low wail. i follow you into a house of old wood and black marble. of course it’s haunted. why else would you lead me here? father, time means nothing. i’ll chase you up roman cathedrals and down the streets of mexico until the earth opens to give you back. it has to. we can’t have halloween without you. ii. no, you are not gone. you are in pieces, a split-sugar skull i pull apart like taffy. you shatter in sharp bursts across my tongue, live a moment longer. i pluck seconds and hours from the ends of my years, spend them missing you. your face sinks 57 in my mind like a pumpkin’s, curled in on its own expression. loving you is a soft dissection, candlelight spilled across frozen ground, brought to wreckage. i scan the treelines for your smile, comb handfuls of stars for a kitestring, beg it to take me to you. iii. shimmering, like swimming up from the bottom of someplace dark, i see you. you climb a tree with no leaves, a river styx tower that dangles a thousand faces, but the crowd of lights rejects me. blue and translucent, you say i am too much my skin, the dark shreds of bark that bite it. your fingers encircle my wrist, and i see your smile. hear the familiar rasp of your voice. kick the bark away. learn to let go. 51 basilica of st. francis of assisi gabriel akre oil on canvas genesisspring2016.pdf 6 genesis spring 2016 recuerdos means memories in spanish, and in this context refers to the items placed on the altar of loved ones who have passed for dia de los muertos, the day of the dead. well, not really, store bought from the overpriced supermarket on 86th street. i never knew they were called concords. i called them wela’s grapes, but they still burst with the same sour splits the velvety purple peel. i hated all other grapes that didn’t taste like wela’s tart little spheres. a dinted tin of royal dansk butter cookies, no galletas inside of course. with buttons, needles, and thimblesboth rubber and metal and spools of every colored-thread. for every nativity play and dia de guadalupe. recuerdos carolina castoreno genesis spring 2016 7 a cup of cream and sugar with a splash another café black and bitter both spiced with sprigs of cinnamon. i used to take it sweet like hers the leche coating my chocolate concha now i drink it dark and strong like his. long ago swallowing my hope and tolerance for humanity. roasted cynicism, stoic brew. a red bandana with black and white paisleys, twisted tear drops infusing the room with the aroma of baby oil and vicks vapor rub, the miracle drug, partnered with manzanilla tea and eggs for ojo, a couple sana sana’s and you could cure cancer. welo kept it tucked in the pocket of his khakis or cholo, even at 76, even when the diabetes took his legs, siempre cabrón! 8 genesis spring 2016 all the recuerdos de mis abuelos nestled on the lap of a mexican blanket. not a big san marcos colcha, a little woolen rainbow-colored serape we used to drape over welo’s chair, the kind gringos call “throws.” a fat cobalt blue candle that smells like the beach replacing veladoras de los santos. sorry wela, the virgencita doesn’t visit my house much these days. i burn the sage and wonder, why can’t all grapes taste like wela’s? carolina castoreno recuerdos fall 2017 final digital.pdf standardized corey cole 1. what is education? a. of countless forgotten volumes, but the vulnerable gray of 56 million youth given few alternatives. b. operation of gridded assembly line classrooms completing black and white and earn graduation pink slips. c. indoctrination into the majority whose glaring stares bully the kid with a smudged free lunch stamp on his hand which fails to rise to his heart as they stand and pledge or the right line break in your poem. of a zumba routine won’t get your heart racing and ode to joy and god forbid we let you have recess. "11.53.52 pm 04.13" mailinh ho oil on paper, 9" x 11" 18 letter from the editors we are thrilled to present this issue of the genesis magazine. genesis has been publishing student work since 1972 and is entirely selected, designed, and edited by dedicated iupui editors. this issue is filled with artists and writers exploring form, delving into immersive topics like death and fantasy, and appreciating the intimately human moments of daily life. some are joining the discussion of art and literature that has been going on for centuries with ancient greek and biblical allusions while others are creating entirely in the contemporary moment. all of the pieces offer vulnerability and creativity, and we are proud to share them in this issue. we would like to thank our editors and apprentices, who have adjusted back to in-person work with understanding and enthusiasm, our faculty advisor sarah layden, who is always a patient guide, and our contributors, who are the heart of this issue. we are also thankful for each reader and hope that you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed making it. abby & zoe managing editors 3 genesisfall2016.pdf genesis fall 2016 13 there is a skeleton guarding the cookie jar. the jar is pumpkin shaped and made of glorious he lives within, wishing to smell the scent of chocolate chip chewy munchables crunching with age. in the middle of the night, he knocks on the porcelain pumpkin, just to hear it sing a sweet lullaby, reminiscing about the sweets gone by—crumbs still just waiting to be replenished by the elves living in the walls. the skeleton would consider baking his own delicious delights, but until the day his tongue regrows and he can taste again, he will guard the cookie jar with his life. cookies to die for kathryn staublin cobweb words shannon kucaj hairy spider legs tiptoe over goosebumps planting on plump lips tip tapping teeth as she sleeps awaiting her moist mouth’s answer. just a tiny opening for silky strands to crisscross between teeth a home for dewy egg clusters to hatch, craving warm juices to fill their little bellies. once they’ve gotten a bite, her gums will swell and pulsate, allowing nothing to stop them from hiding in the deep crevasses, killing her ability to speak. 47 11 the impressionist zoey hunsinger he was a monochromatic man, painted in pastel with an earthy hue broken to the core of frosted flames. his spectacles faltered as he studied the water and ignored the rusted hills of cavalry new mexico. there wasn’t enough paint on his palette, so he marbled a pigment of his imagination. while o’keeffe hung from a cross in the museums. his hands feathered across the ridges of a canvas and his words, though soluble, blistered at the touch. he complimented others with his opaque humor but left his lover to dry on the easel. he despised when courbet arose, for he preferred the imitation of art. while surrealism flickered, like a votive candle melting on its side, he decided perhaps a barren canvas was better than none. throw away your prozac zoey hunsinger stay in bed. refuse to open the oxford curtains. never feel the rays of sunlight against your face. your best friend will call you lazy. then when you two get a ‘treat yourself’ lunch, don’t offer to pay for your croissant sandwich. she’ll roll her eyes and mutter, “i got it.” she’ll pay the $10.67 in cash. you’ll be indebted in a way that could not ever be repaid, even if you give her gas money on a later date. dry heave into a bag. take two tylenol for the calculus homework headaches. realize your best friend is right. you’ll fail your first college class. you’ll never know if it’s because you wouldn’t show up, or your professor just graded too hard. when summer cotton candy skies approach, get a copy of the star—see subway is hiring. don’t apply, you won’t get it anyway. once your classes start again, don’t sharpen your pencils—you won’t take notes, and you sure as hell won’t study. you’re lazy. leave your textbooks in an unorganized pile. don’t do your laundry. your roommate will think you’re lazy too. she’ll also think you’re a mess. she won’t ever say anything, she’s too tenderhearted to ever lobby a criticism, but she won’t need to. you’ll know by the way she edges your dirty dishes to the sink. start hiding moldy dishes under your bed. never lift a finger to clean them. one afternoon, you’ll walk in on her vacuuming. don’t hang your petticoat up. throw it on the couch. she’ll sigh. don’t worry though, she won’t actually say anything. she won’t even comment about your leftover pizza box sitting on her desk (yours will be too crowded to place it there) or the crumbs gathering on your side of the room. she won’t even complain when you forget to clean your hair out of the shower drain. but, she won’t need to say a word, because you’ll know the truth. you’re a mess. your art professor will think you’re a mess too, and that you’re sloppy. you won’t draw a straight line. you’ll get paint everywhere. you won’t be able to stay inside the box. your drawing of a 44 45 blue-eyed huskey that took four cups of coffee and a sleepless night will be stained in ink stating for you to draw “neater” and “cleaner.” in order to pass the class, you’ll have to stick to the status quo and draw a straight line. but you won’t pass the class, because you’re not normal. you’re unusual. be an astronaut. float in outer space while you kiss your boyfriend. he’ll think you’re unusual too. when you two touch, think about lines and what your art professor says. on occasion, kissing won’t even feel right. don’t tell him this. don’t dare mention the rock that’ll form in your stomach at the thought of undressing him. lay awake at night. run a starved finger over your lips. brush your teeth four times to forget that his saliva has been in your mouth. think if you weren’t unusual, you’d be able draw straight lines and enjoy having a boy touch your lips. your mother won’t like that you’re not normal. she’ll tell you this every time you mention your best friend with the cute auburn hair who pays for your croissant. she also won’t like that you stay in bed all day with your curtains shut. you’ll hate that you stay in bed all day. but it’s okay. you already hate a lot of things about yourself from your toes that are as long as your fingers to your elephant ears, to how you think more about your best friend’s lips than you do your boyfriend’s. your mother will say that you worry too much. you’ll worry that you worry too much and that sometimes your thoughts aren’t even your own thoughts. every tuesday, you’ll stare at the popcorn ceiling of your therapist’s office and think about all the problems in your life. you’ll sit in the plastic chair. stare at your boney fingers. your throat will be too dry to speak. you’ll rub your knuckles. pick at your cuticles. you’ll do all you can to not look at your therapist’s red hair. she’ll click her pen and say if you got out of bed more often then things could get better. but you’ll never get out of bed—you’re lazy. 19 -19 megan stephens #1 the subject line reads: the man, and you know exactly who it is. the email showed up in your inbox one night while you were scrolling through instagram while trying to fall asleep. he broke up with you right before prom your senior year. or did you break up with him? your twenty-three-year-old brain can’t remember. you open the email and lines of profanities and obscure language flood the screen. it was like he was trying to write a rap song to the beat of some unknown rhythm. you’re not sure why he’s emailing you out of the blue. it’s been years since you guys broke up, but you guess he’s still not over the fact that you were dating behind your parents’ back and your mom found out. he’ll never get over the night he wrote a fourteen on the back of his hand (fourteen is his lucky number, it’s the track number of the song he sang to you off of taylor swift’s red album, and it’s the age he first spotted you with his indigo eyes). he’ll never get over how he loved you. he’ll never get over the fact that you were his first kiss, and he was yours. that afternoon in the kitchen cutting strawberries and pretending that, just for a few split moments, nothing mattered except for your body on his; no one knew but the two of you. he’ll never get over how, once you turned eighteen, he bought you a wedding ring, but you told him not yet. it was always not yet. and then slowly it started to decay. the night that your mom took your phone away he flipped and started to call you names, your mom names, your dad names. he threatens you with sharp words because you were his possession, yet you were away. you had gotten away, and you were wearing his batman sweatshirt with old stains of java and crimson red lipstick around the bottom of the sleeves. you still have the sweatshirt, and as you read his nasty email, you put it on and smell it like he was still there in your bed with you. you wonder what it would be like if he was still in your bed with you. because sometimes you miss the warmth of body heat between cold lukewarm best of fiction 20 lukewarm 20 sheets. you hit reply and let the cursor stand there for a while, blinking. you fall asleep with the phone beside your head. when you wake up in the morning, the battery is dead. #2 don’t fall in love with a boy who just broke up with his girlfriend. all he wants is sex. trust me. he’ll facetime you; he’ll tell you that you’re pretty; he’ll want to go to a movie with you at ten o’clock at night and then invite you over to his house after. you’ll say no, of course, at least the first few times. you are a good girl who was taught better than to go out with a man who just broke up with their girlfriend and then over to a boys house after a first date. your mother raised you well and — every time you get confronted with a difficult situation — you hear her voice in the back of your mind, telling you what to do. she told you stories of her mistakes. you don’t want this to become a mistake. yet, the third time he asks you out, you say yes. you couldn’t resist his voice, both boyish and deep, through the speaker, telling you that it would be just as friends. so he takes you to the movies, but you buy your own ticket. in the bold, black theater, you sit in chairs where the fabric is hard and crunchy from soda spills that were never cleaned up. popcorn litters the floor. he leans away from you, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, hand in a fist with his chin resting on top, like the statue of the thinker. when the movie is over, and he’s walking you back to your car, his hands slide down your waist. he tells you your ass looks great in those jeans, then asks you if you’d like to come back to his place. you tell him no and part ways, but he texts you once you both get into your cars. then he facetimes you when you get home. he calls you the next weekend, and you do it all over again and again. each week, you talk a little longer. he starts paying for your popcorn, then the movie ticket, and then, one week, you go home with him. he pours you a glass of rosé which had been sitting on the shelf in his room since he broke up with his woman. he chilled it just for tonight because he knew you’d say yes. its taste is sweet, though a little acidy, like strong coffee without any sugar. maybe you’re just 21 megan stephens not used to drinking. he pops a dvd in, and you guys make out with it in the background, it was something with subtitles and nudity. his hair, although naturally black, is a starless sky without the lights on, just the tv illuminating the both of you. you guys do more than just make out. you do things that your mom would never approve of. but it’s ok because he’s whispering that he loves you in your ear, which blocks our her voice and all the common sense you have in your head. he says he’ll treat you like anastasia steele — you cringe, not knowing how to reply. he does, though, treat you that way — at least what you imagine it’s like to be that woman. and then it’s over; you fall asleep, and even though you were on the couch last night you wake up in his bed, the sheets ruffled. he is lying beside you, head on the pillow, black, matted hair a wild tuff on his head. you get up and make yourself coffee. bare naked and all. the kitchen cabinet is filled with a variety of coffee mugs; you take one that has mount rushmore printed in gold and, in vibrant colors, says the black hills of south dakota. the taste of wine and men still remains in your mouth, so you pour in a lot of cream and sugar to mask the night’s joy ride that you don’t remember willingly participating in. your underwear, jeans, bra, and shirt are still in the living room; his boxers still draped over the lamp. you leave his boxers there for him to find, but you put on your clothes. he’s still asleep when you walk past his room and out the back door. you walk home and never hear from him again. he had gotten what he wanted. and you still have his black hills coffee mug. #3 it’s 8 a.m., and you hold your coffee while driving. the coffee cup doesn’t have a lid on it because you didn’t have time to find one in the cabinet; you woke up too late. never do this. never keep coffee in your hand without a lid while driving because traffic is not your friend. the person in front of you will slam on their breaks, causing you to slam on your breaks, causing the hot liquid to roll up the side of the cup — like a tsunami after an 8.1 earthquake — and out over the rim and then down again, through the air, landing on your lap and staining your white t-shirt. you will then be so mad. first, at yourself for not putting a lid on your coffee cup that morning, second, 22 lukewarm at the person in front of you for slamming on their breaks. this small incident will throw off the rest of your day. you’re seeing the guy that you like, too. you’re seeing him along with all your other friends, and you need to be in a good mood. because you don’t know this, but he’s going to ask you out today. he’s going to ask you out today and every day after that, but once he sees you with a giant coffee stain down your shirt and a glazed look in your eyes, he decides to forgive the coffee stain but note in his mind how you look when you’re frustrated. lips pressed together, eyes hazy, hair starting to get fuzzy from the humidity. you’re trying so hard, but he doesn’t see it. he decides not to ask you out that day. men are scared of women who are a mess. maybe you just weren’t ready for him to whisper that you are the pam to his jim. you weren’t ready for him to ask you out to get donuts on market street, j-walking across all the roads, then on the way back, sneaking onto the roof of this one old building that you don’t know the name of but love its architecture. except, you were waiting for those things. you were waiting because that’s all you wanted him to say, those soft words in your ears, only to you. but he didn’t say it. instead, a few weeks later, you see him with another woman, his hand around her waist, her blond hair up in a high ponytail — her white t-shirt stain free. your friends say he’s the one missing out, but you know the opposite is true. you know that you’re the one who spilled hot liquid on yourself in the morning traffic. because you were running late. because you didn’t put a lid on your coffee cup. #4 pungent coffee fills the black hills mug that you hold in your hands. you’re trying to break away from the sugar and creamer and only drink black coffee — it’s the only way to keep yourself from feeling numb. the acid etches into your teeth; whitening strips are on your grocery list. you sit on the balcony, breathing in the fresh air. at least, mostly fresh air. your neighbor on the other side of the divider is smoking a cigar, and you breathe in the secondhand smoke. there’s a black plume rolling off the smokestack in the distance — letting the ting 23 megan stephens of rotten eggs linger under your nose when the wind blows to the east. your thighs stick to the metal chair, your feet up on its edge and legs bare, top half covered in a stained batman hoodie, bitter black liquid in hand, secondhand smoking while the morning is peaking over the horizon. a car honks down on the street below, and someone yells: "get the hell out of here." you imagine that they are talking to you and wonder why you’re here in the first place. how did these pieces fall into place? you don’t know. but you’re content because this is where you willed yourself to be. soft and alone and willing to take on the smog that surrounds your new home. your coffee is becoming lukewarm; you drink it anyway. this is as close as you can get to serenity. eli in the passenger seat ollie stewart somehow, in the heart of nowhere your fingers part the evening sky and in the space you bend, your will to cold air, i see why some people spend their whole lives on these roads that no one ventures anymore a flare of red against the dusk raised veins; like yours and you reach out to touch them ‘cos if not here, then nowhere. if not you, then no one. “drive faster,” and i do with you laughing in the face of them: the gods you would petition to before you learned; we purge our own sins with my hand around your knee, buried beneath things you shouldn’t know no one’s ever been so seventeen as eli with his head back, eyes closed 36 cottage in the mountains molly wolfe oil on paper, 15" x 20" 21 36 never travelled connor stump digitally colored graphite, 14.5" x 20" genesisfall2016.pdf 22 genesis fall 2016 in bloom keeley miller photograph 34 gladiator rebecca trimpe the first time he caught the ball, he was playing in the neighbor’s front yard. got taken out by a pissed-off bigger kid who thought he saw an easy interception. who gets beat by a 6-year-old? tackle. left elbow smashed to the concrete. says he’s fine. wants to go in, stretch out on the couch. johnny bravo’s on. at the er: broken. dislocated. surgery around 2 a.m. drunk guys in knife fights go first. pins. four months in a cast which has to be changed once because he’s growing like a weed. scar looks like a train track. arm won’t straighten out completely for months. still wants to play. can i sign up for pal football? they don’t have it in our neighborhood, we’d have to move, and we ain’t doin’ that, baby doll. uncle played for the packers for like six minutes in the ‘80s. tells him he’s not big enough. says he should wait ‘til high school. kid listens. mom thinks they’re safe. the high school he’ll go to doesn’t have football. until it does. dammit. kid she used to work with said his old lady bought him a silver trumpet and stuck him in the high school band to keep him off the team. she doesn’t want to be that mom. defense coach first year: can’t you hang some more meat on that boy? as a freshperson, he’s five-foot nothin’ and weighs less than the family newfoundland. the second time he caught the ball, he was wearing the yellow cleats his mom bought so she could find him in the scrum. five-nine and a buck-ninety as a senior, if you believe the program. built for speed. those thighs are original equipment but the shoulders and the biceps are not. lived in the gym at school, and in the basement at home where they put the weight machine. he switched sides. middle linebacker. knew what the quarterback was going to do before the poor kid got up that morning. didn’t want the ball. claimed he didn’t know what to do with it. just wanted to take out the kid who had it. then he had it. no concrete around this time. he crossed the white line. celia psychedelia shelby nower mural 55 42 fantast-ish sara lansdell photoshop address unknown laura tuzzio della dear, he says your name. in his sleep, i hear him. i think of you often. your hair, your face. i wonder if you look like me, or if in his attempts to escape me, you are my opposite. maybe in every way or only in some. do you love him? does he love you? i don’t know any dellas, so he must have found you. found you in a place he knew i would never be. what kinds of places would i never be? what kinds of women are there? you were there, della dear, waiting for him. i wonder if his eyes look the same when he’s looking at you. are they that same endless deep blue? the same blue i see in the eyes of my children. our children. did you know he has children? they’re beautiful and they love me. they love my hair, my cooking, my soft soothing lullabies. he loves when i sing to him. he says i’m his songbird. he says i am his comfort. do you sing, della dear? is that how he found you? i imagine he misses my voice when he is away. maybe you sing to him and make it easier for him to stray. he goes on these trips; he says work is work. the work feeds my children, the work buys these clothes. the work can make families; the work can break families. work. i hate the job that we can’t live without. i work. i work on the reflection i see in the mirror. i know he likes my face. he likes the way my lips curl up at the ends even when i’m not smiling. he likes my face. the rest of me i can’t see. the mirror’s too short. maybe it’s that part, the part i don’t see, the part of me he’d rather leave be. what about you, della dear? is your mirror longer? maybe you can see what i don’t see. maybe he wishes you were me. he’s been mine for so long. i don’t know when i became so giving, so sharing. was it missouri, kentucky? oh, all the places i’ll never be. my mother used to tell me i was never very good at sharing. it was a problem in school and with the neighborhood kids. i suppose i never grew out of it. i wonder if you like to share, della dear. maybe you are stingy? sharing is good for some things, some people, just not for me. your mirror is probably longer than mine. how does it work? do you see him often? is he happy when he sees you? i wonder if he touches your hair the way he touches mine. no. i know him. maybe you don’t know him. you don’t know him the way i know him. his coffee on the left with a splash of cream, paper on the right, buttered toast and sausage. he likes his blue tie best. i always pack it for him. suitcase in hand, a kiss on the cheek. a kiss. on the cheek. where does he kiss you, della dear? he sleeps with his socks on. but maybe you know that. his wife, anna 29 19 pinstripe sheets daisy wright i remember striped sheets. pinstripes, not those thicker stripes, and they were white with a pretty blue (blue is my favorite color). his eyes had blue too; blue, green, brown. i knew them well, i loved them. i remember the glass on the dresser, almost empty but not quite, and that for a moment i felt almost annoyed by it. why not finish it? what was i thinking about again? oh yes. i remember the light shining through the crack in the curtains and creating a perfect spotlight on that slip of paper, the pink one with the feminine handwriting on it. why did i hate that slip of paper? i remember a broken fingernail. i think it hurt. it was on my right hand, holding those white and blue pinstripe sheets in a strange, tight grip. something was wrong. what was i thinking about again? oh yes. hands. his hands were holding me. his lips were by my ear but what was he saying again? oh yes. he loved me. i was his. i could never leave. why did i think i could leave? i was his forever. i belonged to him. that didn't seem right. i remember that those hands holding me tightened whenever i tried to move. i remember that i said no, but he didn't listen. i remember that i gave up because i'd been drinking, so i knew that it would never matter to anyone. i remember. i remember looking for something to hold on to as i suffered through it. i remember going numb and trying to forget before it was even over. i remember that he cried after. i didn't. i remember striped sheets. pinstripes, not those thicker stripes, and they were white with a pretty blue (blue is my favorite color). my bruises had blue in them too. 34 afternoon in the greenhouse amelia harden watercolor painting, 9" x 14" genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 5 pools i acrylic 24x36” aaron dodd genesis spring 2016 33 pools iii acrylic 24x36” aaron dodd 20 genesis spring 2016 pools ii acrylic 24x36” aaron dodd 22 consecrated restraint emily lemke colored pencil, watercolor paint, watercolor pencil, gold leaf, 12" x 20" 50 you are warmer than a fat loaf of bread fresh out the oven, a hugging sun with softest palms. every fallen feather drifts towards you, the center of our galaxy, the womb the earth revolves around. you are every grandmother unwidowed in the calm of the promised blue sky, the everest, the mother oak and eve of every acorn. mother mary’s mom, you wear a halo blooming soft pastels, the crown of spring glowing. you are god’s warm admonition to every sharp shadow and all cold nights. mario stone sanctuary 19 a hunger artist ayla walter charcoal pencil on paper, 11" x 18" escaping st. peters, indiana rachel back i buried myself in the cold asphalt street. i trapped myself in the earth between life and death. i was a stake pulled from the hard garden ground, splintering in half when the earth refused to give. from my grave, i watched two trees stretching, reaching desperately for the other with branches too short, hacked away by jagged chainsaw teeth. their separation mocked by those who hewed their limbs from their body. their roots are left burrowed deep on either side of blue creek. a portal to the afterlife opened in their reflection with a whispered promise, a gateway to freedom, where i am no longer torn between life and death with part of my soul cleaved from my body. a winding road opens in front of me leading the way out of town to a city where hands can cross the divide and caress the face of their lover without the fear of being sawed in two. st. peters had become my prison, blue creek my cell block, and if i remained i would serve a life sentence buried between the two trees, the lovers reaching but never catching the other. 43 catalyst lacy pearson ink on clayboard 64 46 self portrait with shirt connor stump soft pastel 22 skater kids haley moore digital illustration, 10" x 24" 24 kluay kluay chanya ruby oil on canvas, 36" x 48" 16 one or another ayla walter young girls gathered here. wet voices, speaking of only sweet sharp things of being smothered of being cut and sliced and threaded through a needle’s eye. a list of things i am angry about still: the unknown multiplex of moments i’ve forgotten, on purpose or otherwise bug-bites and small things fingernails and tangled hair torn smooth my stomach churning sour milk into butter making acid sweet, turning light cream heavy the speechless gravity of it all. the flinch before a plate hits the ground. the story so far is that some subtle hand molded me like this, squashed me and tugged and i failed to hold firm this maybe fiction maybe magical realism maybe i’m not clay but a tree and i’ll feast yet upon what’s been buried. what did you learn in school i was the swimming and sword fighting girl i was the woodland creature felt closer to the hydra than i ever did my peers or like the furies, i went to sleep each night imagining i felt wings forcing their way out my back. i couldn’t always fly, you know. once i was furtive once i was child king and philosopher; calvin and hobbs stuffed animals to dress as instead of dolls wet voices sharing sweat, and shaky truths. in fantasy, i always sided with the dragon still: i won’t eat the girl. second semester college student cameron reed ink wash 43 17 you greet opulence at his throne serenna bottoms procreate, 2550 ppi x 3300 ppi 37 under my wing gillian webb colored pencil on toned grey paper, 7" x 7" 13 drifting jellies megan fisher digital art 18 the return sara lansdell graphite on paper 43 keeper brittany fukushima photoplate lithography 17 the undine veronica breach oil on canvas, 24" x 36" be born, transform courtney kravig lithograph 56 best of art she set herself aflame rachel back do not look at your daughter in disgust and say, “i raised you.” because she knows that in her, you raised hell itself. you raised the fire of the earth. put it in her soul where she tended the flame with careful hands, feeding it kindling until it burst from her like hairspray meeting the wicked warmth. she refused to stop when in her anger your world burned. consumed in hot golden flames, were the pillars of hate you poured the foundation for. now ashes fall towards the black scorched floor. do not look at her and despair at the arsonist you have armed. and when she sets out with match in hand to incinerate the pieces of herself you crafted with needle and thread, know that hell is your reward. and she walks barefoot through the smoldering coals. 38 abstract i mailinh ho oil on canvas, 16" x 20'' 10 girl made from paper molly wolfe hand cut paper 9 discovery magenta molly wolfe acrylic on illustration board 27 abstraction #1 chanya ruby oil on paper, 22" x 30" 30 light bulb moment claire hegge photography 58 genesis spring 2017 digital issue.pdf 56 genesis spring 2017 what comes together also separates jp hyde • genesis spring 2017 57 him but turn away unfazed unlike the day they, young and full of 58 genesis spring 2017 what comes together also separates genesis spring 2017 59 jp hyde 47 the 4th precept chanya ruby oil on canvas, 45" x 60" 55 a forest god meghan wilhelm woodcut print, 24" x 18" ciao bella kylie dennis photography 16 mask etiquette caitlin price pen on paper, 1439 x 1233px 41 the secret garden brooke holmes photography 53 enter net tanner léon the internet is the dirty corner of the street with a faulty lightbulb ramshackled onto a telephone pole. it saunters through the adult section of a back-alley bookstore looking for raunchy images clad in a dark leather jacket— the web it spins is not one of lies, but a very sticky predicament that stencils in the creases of a mother’s disapproving face. if you ask the internet where it is from there is only silence— trapped in a labyrinth of 100-page search results: enticing insanity locked behind untouchable glass. the internet has perused every file of your being “it’s seen those search results” has sent them in pretty prissy letters to multiple organizations so they may bullseye target your back with selected sock ads: the nsa giggles at them over a cup of coffee in the morning. the internet has sewed strings throughout your body— ragdolled you to your peers, their bravadoed fables of success rubbed in your face like persistent acne— their depression like dull drum beats at your schadenfreude, and we call it: the great connector. 48 gabrielle hoyt in my line of duty i have seen the final resting place of mistaken steps and faltered grips. they manifest in the shapes of treaded dirt and the deep sticky red of spilt cabernet. i mourn for the knuckles, knotted white, that scrub the stubborn stains. today i ripped the outline of a father off the floorboards of his bedroom. i learned that humans too, can stain. his family had only been gone a week. the lack of cellular service kept any alarms from going off when seven days passed without a call. “dad is working hard on his sales report, dad is working hard pedicuring the lawn.” after the police, then coroner, then yellow hazmat suits, the last eulogy is left for me. prayer of a sears carpet technician 49 as i worked his wife chewed on xanax in the kitchen, while his children placed plastic stethoscopes against their hearts, listening for any lapse in beat. i stared hard at the silhouette stamped into the carpet, the ink of decomposed flesh. six foot something, but when arteries collapsed foundations crumbled onto the floor. i whistled three hail marys while i packed up the fabric. my rosary did not sway the entire drive to the landfill. on the full moon, of the 12th moon chanya ruby oil on canvas, 30" x 40" 29 35 cricket serenna bottoms procreate, 2550 ppi x 3049 ppi a river in panama mailinh ho oil on canvas, 15.25" x 21'' 43 39 concerto no. 2 in g minor, “l’estate” alexa quezada a symphony of muggy august sounds rebounds between the houses on the street. like drums, dogs bark in syncopated rounds; each echo sends their notes a bit offbeat. the sparrows sing piccolo melodies and soar above the rest in pitch and height. cicadas drone viola harmonies; they offer constant counterpoints in flight. the sections all crescendo to a crest then taper off as one by one they fall dynamically to their respective rests and linger ‘til they must renew their calls, while nature plays conductor to the song with summer’s hazy heat as her baton. 45 vex me bhri'ona shoff vex me, o sleep! drape your downy blanket over my aching body. shut my bloodshot eyes and bring the cricket anthem that lets me know you’re here. come into my home. don’t make this insomniac sleeping beauty get up to let you in. kiss me with your heavy lips and lull me under your dark, still slumber. then sing to me a symphony of roaring wind and rustling leaves as you lay me down in a bed of poppies and deliver my dreams. fill my teeming mind with wings of warm stillness. please, o sleep come to me before i wake. a river in panama mailinh ho oil on canvas, 15.25" x 21'' 43 64 cicada summers ayla walter one of my superpowers is that i am completely unafraid of bees; buzzing right up to my neck cause i’m wearing a flower print shirt or dripping some half-melted strawberry slushy all over my hands. a friend once told me i could probably eat poison ivy without issue. hate the heat but love the bugs summer, on the it’s been too long since i climbed a tree team, i miss the burrs in my hair girl—where can i find someone who belongs to the woods as much as i do? i guess this is what i get for settling in a city i love. but the forest is here too, you know, just sublimated, just subtlety growing in behind our ears. find a magician on the street corner to pull it out into view: shocking, baldfaced. and the cicadas will tell you for free. look, just ask them: where they cling screaming to your sixth floor window screen. the coyotes have moved in, downstairs. invite them over, won’t you? for dinner, notice the dandelions punching through concrete. the crab grass that won’t give it up, no matter how much gravel how much acrid asphalt the ants keep coming back. there are lives adapted specifically to inhabit the habitat of humanity. we are all biomes here. and if we were afraid of animals in proportion to how likely they are to kill us everyone in the world would be terrified of mosquitos. but instead we kill sharks. instead we hunted our fellow hunters, the wolves, into obscurity. or fed them, into dogs. 44 tanner léon monsters keep secrets shrouded in an unholy agent in the backs of their throats. monster love could be mistaken for a séance, so unsaintly they cannot hide it beneath their stampede feet and littered veins. my dear, don’t fret i will kiss you first in my dreams and then my nightmares— i have tickets for both. don’t be tricked by my grin for a scowl lingers in the back of my head. i know you’re hiding more than monsters in your closet. i’ve heard dangerous memories metamorphosize while you plead for their silence—lord bless the saliva of those who speak in tongues. they cannot grasp words— slipping by like ice cubes covered in grease, right through zombie hands with cookie-crumble fingers. monsters 45 around my deathbed dance werewolves while cheese factories burn in the distance. my time here is claimed and i am the monster that ate your heart. roadkill mother's day macy douglas i drive home from work. the same path i've taken for five years. the road too narrow for all these people and their thoughts. the leaves are a heavy blanket chasing us home from the jobs we try to leave behind. nearing the house, i see a lump in the road. i feel the lump in my throat forming, knotting. i know what's coming. i want to look away but can't. i stare at the plump body, striped tail, and unmoving black fur. i am grateful most of the damage hides from my delicate mind. just a prone form, blood pasting it to the pavement like shapes on construction paper. nothing where it's supposed to be, "look, mommy!" still, a mother praises the beauty in the disfigured thing received. i hope it went fast, painless. i hope it died without knowing. how scary the feeling must be knowing, but unable to prevent one's own death. i remember the cat. the same road, two years earlier. the person in the car in front of me speeding, hurrying owning the road, in the careless way a human owns things. i see the cat, out of nowhere. scared, stupid, or both, it flees. running, then not running. mother's day i remember the mutilated body how the tail and hind legs thrashed to find an escape that would not come. try to try, front legs lie broken, useless, grey fur glued to the pavement in a sick imitation of a proud child's design. i blink to clear the memory. the raccoon still lies there, motionless. i have never been more upset being powerless to undo what's finished. i look away from the mistakes. focus on the asphalt man has laid for me. at home, i thought it couldn't get worse. i nap and the dreams about the cat, once lost, return stronger than ever. the sky darkens; the cicadas sing a song meant for ears of another world. i sit on the porch and wonder what this place could be like. if it could be better than ours. it gets worse. the sky is black now. it grows chillier but the flailing cat is stuck and so am i. then i hear it: a small chitter pop, pop, a greeting another voice, more hesitant calls out in the same way a third, shriller and demanding macy douglas then a silence stretches there is no reply. the voices return, this time more rushed. they grow indistinguish­ able from one another in their need to be heard. i listen to their mews with apprehension taking bites of my heart. a sadness grows, eating and eating as the mews turn into cries as the whimpered questions turn into anxious pleas as the silence comes again and i'm empty except for it. now i welcome the quiet, but of course it does not stay they screech and whine i know they will only keep crying i know i cannot undo what has been done. their mother lies dead on pavement laid for me her skin a sack holding broken bones blood sticky around her like elmer's leaking out the sides of a mother's day card handcrafted by the child who owes its life to the milk from her breast. it's finished now. i want to leave, to go inside, drink like i do to forget the cat, the weight of the leaves, and the uselessness of my anger, but i sit, unable to stop it from happening more useless than i have ever felt a crumpled piece of paper, wearing a mistake too big for forgive­ ness swept away when it's clean up time and the craft is complete. i cry with them. letting all my hate and confusion fill the air and pretend they find comfort in my suffering. mother's day i cannot stop it it will happen again tomorrow, and the next day­ countless times, on countless roads sitting there listening to their devastation i have never been smaller. never has my existence seemed so insignificant, and the universe so large, unchangeable, and unfixable. mss120_b01_f21_003 mss120_b01_f21_004 mss120_b01_f21_005 mss120_b01_f21_006 28 a lady in layers shae marie oil on linen, 16" x 20" do you remeber me? michelle andrea mixed media on paper, 19" x 24" 31 23 fingertoes! chloe greenberg digital collage & acrylic paint, 6.5" x 6.5" genesis 2018 final digital.pdf dream of you abby mendoza dry pastel 14 john 8:7 libby kimbrough spray paint and screen print 37 let me be georgey elaine i don’t want to be white shoes clean sneakers the high school boys are afraid to walk in i don’t want to be a decorative plate locked behind glass where no one will ever scrape their fork over me or chip me trying to put me in the cabinet most of all, i would loathe to be a wedding dress lacy white gauze worn once and hardly touched special for a single day before forgotten i’ve never seen my mother’s wedding dress and i do not want to the hint of her veil was enough smiling next to my father in an old photograph i used to look upon with wonder a dress worn to shackle herself to my father no, let me be your favorite shirt wrinkled red, with the faded letters your most worn bra let me be wrinkled and stained sent through countless wash cycles let me be able to come back let me be soft the fleece blanket draped over you i want to be a poem something startling an image seared into minds, a pain in your chest short, with meaning let me be chai tea deeply steeped, spiced with cardamom felt in the throat whipped cream on your lips a piece of home hot in your hands let me be as i wish i could; something small but loved 19 ipanema rain nadia campbell digital collage & illustration, 22" x 22.693" 49 rose colored laughter emily howson photography storge louisa coello graphite on paper with digital color, 11”x14” 11 21 to love oneself. to cope. hannah bryson-price “i love myself.” the trembling words fall from my lips in whispers only to drown in the mist of my bathroom. i’ve just taken a shower— power-washed my pores, silkened my skin with sugar scrub— i’m clean. i trap the sweetness of the sugar with rose scented lotions. i rub them in, finding thorns on my legs the razor missed. my smooth calves ruined by small, coarse trees scratching my palm. damn. a night of self-care gone wrong. how do i love myself if my legs aren’t soft? if my face doesn’t glow? the mirror shakes its head assuring me the hair isn’t noticeable. instead, it pulls my pupils to thighs that touch, a stomach that hangs, paper hair, and a troll nose. at least the lips look good in red, the mirror admits. all are visible. the vapors of the mist suffocate me. i can’t escape the sickening sweetness of roses. i convince myself to go to bed. maybe i’ll look pretty in the morning. so i lay down, reeking of “self-care;” the smell stings my eyes. “i love myself,” i choke, knowing that i’m dirty. 16 in cold womb, black barking husk i curl gold to tourniquets. i wrap my neck, my wrists pretty gifts to coax a pulse, a throb, an ache, anything to quell the shouting walls. shadows, thick the mere thought of light cast bricks on me. every shout snaps at me wolf on bone all fang no tongue no warm relief before the bite. i knew a supple life, i held him in my palms, softer than snow, he was a feather’s whisper cradling every cloud in his small hands, plucking their strands and smiling as he unraveled all his presence within. pure in every way. yet when they saw, they tore with bone and claw, gnashed their teeth and mauled the black skin i sheltered him with. the brunt of every club, the blade of every knife, i beckoned all curses in his stead. no darkness damns. the wicked burn beneath the breath of doves. mario stone grendel 63 solace abigail mendoza oil on canvas, 24" by 36" alternate world rachel knierman acrylic on canvas 24 35 float alina sheikh clip studio, paint, adobe photoshop 35 17 rough edge olivia adam photography, 2.5." x 19" 46 spidersilk overgrowth sara lansdell digital, 3000 x 1500px 6 they're building a house next door ron lauderbach clay tiles on weathered rafters weeks after delivery look weary, like the plumber’s countenance as he carries out a shiny sink, the wrong model, and drops it into his truck-bed. his truck needs tires. he might be waiting for a bargain or it could be news from his oncologist. i see two electricians wander the job, eat their lunches, laugh a lot, and leave. a concrete finishing crew works fast because two guys didn’t show up on this hot day and the mud doesn’t care. their boss jabs his finger into the chest of some guy who’s holding a big bucket of paint and i think about jim rhoads, the meanest foreman i’ve ever known, who years ago had me in tears before draping his arm around my shoulders and saying, don’t worry kid, this place may get built in spite of us. 38 technomancer's hideaway sara lansdell photoshop painting 7 god gave me a lighter tanner léon arrive home from the bar in a tumble down the avenue. punk night at melody inn. or maybe it was ska night? often it’s somewhere in between. either way, i downed 2 pbrs which is heavyset for a lightweight. they crossed my throat into my chest like holy water on a parched man’s lips. among the plague of personal crisis, i have piloted through persecution— made it back to my apartment steps high, but definitely not dry. a miracle laid there as if perfectly placed. the smallest gift from god to remind a tipsy poet to have faith. a simple, red lighter. likely it was left after a cigarette sesh. my upstairs neighbors love passing flames into their lungs. i think it makes them feel alive, to know that heat can cleanse their insides. 8 it was that sixth sense stoner sensation which whispered to their hands, leave it here, let it be someone else has the need. i swear the world knew my last lighter had just taken its final breath. the drinks were an act of letting go. this small blessing was to let me know that somewhere out there in an abstract nebula some spirit of the great divine actually gives enough of a shit to say: “hey, i see your sulks and your hulk rage, maybe a little love in an unfair life can set you back just right” so i vow to light my joint, let it be my amen. welcome to the last genesis issue of the decade! this year has been a transformative one as our country (and the world at large) faces the decision of who we want to be and where we are heading. genesis has seen much transformation this year as well, with a new editorial staff and managing editor team taking over the reigns. the works in this issue reflect the shifting, reflective cultural moment we find ourselves in, and offer some strategies in their forms that we can take inspiration from as individuals navigating our age. these pieces speak to our ties to the past and their implications for our future. poems like the hoosier dome and hummingbird eulogy understand the benefits of observing the profundity of the present. historical figures and artists are reconsidered, both in prose and visually. atmospheric paintings by malinh ho, as well as experiments in photography by olivia van renterghem and kylie dennis, lend a distant, pensive aura. all these pieces reflect the thoughtfulness required to contend with contemporary issues and offer a light to help guide us into the new decade. it has been a pleasure and an honor to step into this role and curate this issue. we hope you gain as many insights from these pieces as we did in selecting them. joseph alcala, jordan kalt, and trenna soderling managing editors 3 letter from the editors 23 consecrated restraint emily lemke colored pencil, watercolor paint, watercolor pencil, gold leaf, 12" x 20" it hits my giggle with a shovel & churns the sound into mud & gravel. it runs a thick hand down my stomach & turns the mirror away, cracks open my bones & sucks out the please & thank you. when a man grabs me in the club, it is both my ready fists & my silence after. it cracks my tear ducts like beer bottles, lets them drip onto the floor. it says that i am always the shoulder & never the one embraced, always the fire & never the thing burning. it replaces my spine with a steel rod, yanks back my hairline & burns the skirts in the back of my closet. it inspects my cologne for any hint of flower, insists i must only smell of tobacco & burnt pinewood. it hacks into me like a tree, makes angles from what once was body. it scrapes the birthname from my tongue with a sawblade, leaves me to choke on the blood & i am a wasteland of jagged stumps, worth more empty. apology: masculinity nathan marquam 28 its mother laura tuzzio ‘twas brillig they say, you remember the day. my jabberwock he stood, nose to gale he picked up your scent not far away. teeth, they gnashed, claws, they splayed. vorpal sword gripped by weak fleshy hand. an unexpected foe did present itself vigor for which my seed had not planned. young snack turned hunter, trophy to shelf. your mother, she beamed, my jabberwock unalive. your stench, boggish, still attached to his scales now to mine. lying in wait, anger did thrive callooh! callay! echoing nightmarish wales. ‘twas brillig, they say, you remember the day. nose to gale, a familiar malodor. unfortunate timing, dear beastly prey, claws meet flesh, beamish no more. 7 birdwatching siren hand morning coffee as normal. i divide my front window into tic-tac-toe grid, into nine-section, into phone keypad. it's easier for me that way, to map how the birds come and go free-form patterns of flight. take this, the case study– at 11:37 (local time): one adult male sparrow darts from northwest field of view (keypad 1) to sundeck feeder (keypad 5), squabbles with two already-present adult male sparrows over seed. they peck at each other for greeting, establish their status, take freely from what's allowed. also 11:37 (local time): four adult female finches, seven adult male sparrows, three adult male starlings (all) dig at the ground (keypad 8), scramble for the yield of another's destruction. seed spills from the feeder (keypad 5 to keypad 8). at 1139 (local): two adult cardinals fly from east field of view mill at the woodpecker feeder (kp6). at 1139 (l): 8 two adult chipping finches hop along the path from north fov, upset the whole roll-up in kp8. at 1139l: one military-aged male –no, sorry, correction– one adult male cowbird glides from se fov to ground food at kp8. at 1139l: one adult male sparrow departs from kp5, to kp3 out of ne fov. 1140l: their activity continues, nothing significant to report. 1141l: activity continues, nothing significant to report. 1142l: nstr. 1143l: my dog blitzes, tumbles in froth-mouthed uninvited explosion, deepest joy at sunlight-scattered colors– no soul left in aftershock still. how long does one watch after the upset, wait for destruction reset for no trace for next pattern for life to return to normal? if i wait watch, perhaps 9 i'll see bright boy— slim cardinal, not yet witness to how his body will shimmer, will scatter in the sun will form both fountain and firework. i divide my front window into tic-tac-toe grid, into nine-section, into phone keypad. it's easier for me that way, to sit: still watching waiting wondering if they'll all ever come back. "your mom's hair didn't look like that" caroline hawkins oil on canvas, 16" x 16" 42 25 power alixandra orr ink genesisfall2016.pdf 10 genesis fall 2016 photograph adam and eve kyle matthew englert gods of the light katrina tomeldan digital, 14" x 24" 51 32 texture and density annie sinchai ink 28 olivia pretorius walking through target on a tuesday afternoon mothers push red plastic carts containing milk, strawberries, and young screaming children in the grocery loop, yet i can’t find the eggs. did you know grocery stores are designed to be inconvenient? necessities hide in the back of aisle eleven, so that on your journey to what you need, you find what you think you need instead. the maze grows colder the farther in you go, like you’re wandering toward the ninth circle. my eyes peruse the people surrounding rather than the overpriced peaches. i try not to notice that i am the only single woman walking through this limbo. i have no home to bring groceries to. i have no devil baby mouths to feed. not having a family isn’t typically something that leaves me feeling bereft, but within these fluorescent lanes i am aware of my isolation. my cart is filled with peaches, pink moscato, freezer waffles, and single servings of mac n cheese. i put my purse in the cart where a child would sit and go back to look at the vodka. i wonder if i should ask for help since i still can’t find the eggs, although i know they must be buried amongst the back-wall secrets. when the cashier asks me if i’m ready to check out i say yes. the store greeter acknowledges my lone departure with a wave. there are no eggs in my basket. i tell myself i have no need for eggs. genesisspring2016.pdf genesis spring 2016 13 when my dog is sick, i regret not being closer to jesus. the way i see it, there’s starvation, homelessness, disease, terrorism, and genocide all over the world, so you have to be pretty damned tight with jesus if you want help when your dog teen-year-old kid who walked the halls with me every day went to bed and never woke up. they said an aneurysm. he was a healthy weight, active, no prior heart-related issues. his heart, a year younger than my own, exploded without warning. and if that kind of thing happens, how does ruger, all ninety-eight pounds of american bulldog, with his dizzy spells and head tremors, stand a chance? it’s october 2004. a few friends invite me to a trip to hell, my hometown’s alternative to wait in line. there’s hot chocolate, popcorn, and caramel apples. when our group gains the front of the line, a grim reaper ushers us onto a dirt path surrounded by tall trees about a hundred a deadly car crash – teenagers sprawled lifeless, scene is without sound. the driver, recognizable because he still inhabits the battered driver’s side, stirs. he wakes; he takes in the scene; he shakes his lifeless girlfriend, her bloodied head now one with the windshield; he screams. when he stumbles out the driver’s side, he runs from friend to friend until it becomes clear that he’s the sole survivor. if the dead bodies of his closest friends aren’t enough, his guilt steals his breath, brings him to his knees as his eyes fall on the drained bottle of whiskey, thrown from the car unharmed. we trudge on. farther back in the woods, a pregnant teenager cries voicelessly. she is alone. she walks into the abortion clinic. the sound screams. is she in pain? or just overwhelmed by her choice? when she attempts to reconcile with god, he doesn’t recognize her. i love you my child, but i no longer know you. you have turned away from me. the grief-stricken divinity casts her lost soul to hell with the others where it belongs. and we walk on. in a makeshift living room, a working mother dresses for her night hello? god, it’s me, mercedez mercedez schaefer 14 genesis spring 2016 shift at the local hospital. her young daughter need the money. please, stay home, mommy. aw honey, don’t be ridiculous. i’ll be back in time to make you breakfast before school. she has barely started her car to leave when the stepfather, thus far an inanimate part of the backdrop, crumples his beer can and pulls the small girl violently into the bedroom. hell on earth. as i write this, more than ten years later, other details have become fuzzy. i recall a suicide scene. in my mind, the scene is connected to this girl, this preteen raped in her own home, struggling to tell her mother something she cannot dare let pass her bruised lips. this girl who is without hope. this girl who is empty. this girl who is victim. she attempts to clean what can never come clean, bleach to a blood stain. she takes her own life. but there is no mercy in her act, no release. our group walks into a mock steam blinds me. fire dances on the walls. demons screech and wail into the heat, yanking at heavy chains that will never come loose. among them, the child with child, the girl with nothing but self-disgust and a razor. reapers claw and shout at us; it is their mission, their sole purpose, the trip ends with three doors. choice, a distinguished man upfront bellows. then, christ himself walks through our midst, battered and bloody, staggering under the weight of a giant cross. we part quickly, arms tingling, eyes downcast, trying much too hard to swallow. a few of us check our phones. i suppose there is a lesson in here somewhere. one door is marked heavscrawled across the top – for the irrecoverably lost. the last is the ever-popular question mark door. i wonder how many smart ass teenagers have walked spitefully through the hell door. i ward the familiar punctuation mark. i pick up a glossy pamphlet, pray with a grey-haired stranger, and arrive early for sunday’s 10 a.m. service at church on the north coast. i have since heard that the trip has improved its marketability, adding a school shooting and an ariel-castro-like hostage scene. i appreciate the church’s attention to current events. hairdresser sitting three rows from the front. she contoured cheek. monday through friday, and every other saturday, jess worked eight-hour shifts in 4-inch black stilettos, carried a $400 bag, and listened to underground hip-hop. although i have never seen her place, i bet it’s the sort of lofted apartment with white carpets, glass tables and modern artwork adorning the walls – is that an original warhol? she was – still is, i’m sure – delightful. and not just her hair and shoes. on each of the twenty-two days of the month that jess worked at the salon, she convinced no less than ten clients that they were somehow as fabulous as her. certainly, they were not. certainly, mercedez schaefer genesis spring 2016 15 sunday, and i get it. she has jesus. i decide right then that i too will have jesus. i had no interest in doing hair. i would write – and jesus and those stilettos and that white carpet would all be part of my aura. people would think, , in the same way that my cousin had once wondered aloud, how do you party as much as you do and still get straight a’s. i’d never be rich, but i’d be well sy”). i’d never be beautiful, but i’d be intriguing. i would never rock a honk if you love jesus sticker on my bumper, but i’d hang a cross from the rearview mirror of my spotless lexus. how i’d get these things was irrelevant; these things were merely attached to an idea of myself, an idea that occupied a better part of my young adult years. at one point, i became consumed with a vague notion of doing third-world humanitarian work. the church helped fund an orphanage in haiti. i’d be helping poor children, traveling, writing, adding “international experience” to my resume – talk about a grand slam. perhaps the stilettos and white carpet would be put on hold momentarily, but the path to cosmopolitanism demanded travel – did it not? all the better i adored the people i traveled to haiti with; young, ambitious, thoughtful, and high on jesus, they all held romantic notions of who they would become. even better were the haitians i met: full of energy, life, compassion, and empathy despite extreme poverty and hardship. before we’d boarded the plane, the group leader had promised each of us that this trip would change our lives forever. he was right. write that besides the mysterious climate, haiti is exactly what i expected. the poverty of the kind you see on cnn. i note the scraggly dogs, ribs protruding, hair matting, nipples dragging the dust. suddenly, ruger doesn’t seem that bad from the naked toddler, reddish hair and bulging stomach, tossing himself in the muddied water of a street ditch.” there is a charcoal boy with us, a translator with a wide smile and choppy english. he has no parents. he too grew up in the orphanage. i want to ask him a question, but i don’t know which one. we travel to a nearby village. we hear that it is worse than the others. the villagers are always without enough food, often without drinkable water. we give bread from our truck. another then there is disorder; soon, they pummel each other for precious seconds and thirds. mothers send their youngest up again and again, knowing we won’t turn away those small, bloated bodies. i wonder how long it will be before they eat again. one woman with a naked infant on her hip kicks a toddler repeatedly in his stomach until he releases the soccer ball we’ve just tossed him. we have turned them into animals. and when our supplies run out, there are still too many hungry mouths. we’ve failed them, given them nothing hello? god, it’s me, mercedez 16 genesis spring 2016 that will last until tomorrow, next month, next year. they chase after our trucks for miles, blah blah gimme un doller. our reply is a chorus: jezi renmen ou, jesus loves you. we brandish our trip with jesus’s name and promptly return to the states to indulge in burgers and fries and report on the great change we’ve made, the souls we’ve saved. make. hallelujah. as i write this, i’ve stopped attending organized churches. after haiti, i asked an elder of the church whether he, whether the church itself of people who identify with islam, hinduism, buddhism, vodoun, etc. will burn in hell eterhave an answer. it was one of those our god is a merciful god, but the book says…. he navigated skillfully around the question as christians often do. in this christians closely resemble politicians. i “jesus is love, right? it doesn’t seem to me that it matters what we call him so much as we spread love, don’t you think? seems way too human for god to be so overly concerned with whether we get his name right.” my twenty-four-year-old self, and now my sophisticated quarter-of-a-century self, still cannot make sense of it. seems so imperialistic. believe this. repeat after me. don’t question it. our way is the right way. everything else is wrong, inferior. this bread is for you, but only after you say jezi renmen ou access to those needs with your ability to repeat after the white man. doesn’t sound like love to me. these days i try to write more. i read often. i travel when i can. i own three pairs of black stilettos. my carpet is beige, and my car’s market value is well under $20,000. in an ode to emily dickenson, i search for jesus out in the world, in people, in nature, in words. i direct my prayers to jesus – old habits die hard i suppose – and i pray daily. jesus and i laugh at the idea that humans have fucked up love so monstrously, as if it could ever be so conditional. call it only this; love only this type of person; change who you are; change everyone else around you. that can’t be right, right? and just when i feel like i’m getting somewhere, like i might be onto something, my dog gets sick. i drop to my knees and hurriedly text my church-going pals: put in a good word for me. mercedez schaefer 15 olivia pretorius latina uprooted my mother never taught me to roll my "r’s" since the playground glares and “talking funny” whispers of her youth chased her into her 30’s. in red states, speaking spanish is often met with sideways glances, hushed conversations, and uttering “immigrant” like it’s stained. my abuelo tells me when a cop pulls him over, he presents his military id so that he won’t be talked down to. i used to dance cumbia with my primas in my grandparents’ living room. as jesus watched from most of the walls, i watched abuelo pray the rosary and abuela cook empanadas. abuelita rarely moved from the cracked burgundy couches where she lived in novelas. all i could say to her was te amo abuelita, buenas noches. my heritage hides like a shadow in the corner of a cathedral i don’t attend. my tongue wakes up american. i’m light enough. i will never face the fears of my abuelo when red and blue lights flash. i want to find a home in the countries i come from, but when i speak the words get tangled in my lungs. i have become a nomad girl, belonging to no flag. my culture is a ghost unseen in my body. 60 girdled roots sara nye prismacolor colored pencil, 14" x 17" 27 sorrow the face of god connor stump digitally colored graphite, 18.3" x 28.8" herd of library camels katrina tomeldan acrylic paint and colored pencil, 15" x 12" 39 41 in a world of my own shae marie mixed media, 22" x 30" 25 insomniatic elizabeth coffman-mackey the year i turned twelve, i could count my birthday gifts on one hand. shelby bought me a hardcover copy of breaking dawn, and jessica got me a team jacob t-shirt—a combo gift, of sorts. my dad wrote a letter riddled with spelling errors and gave me two hundred dollars. and you, you gave me insomniatic. the cd was two years old, but it was the most recent piece of music released by aly & aj. they called themselves twins born three years apart, and we called ourselves sisters, though we were much more and less than that. potential breakup song after my dad died, adults got into the habit of buying me ice cream. aunt nora bought me ice cream in big pink cups from the baskin robbins drive-thru on the way home from therapy sessions. grandma brought back gallon buckets of vanilla, pressing her gnarled old finger to her lips like we could keep this a secret from the whole house. marti and i even stopped by dairy barn after church, some sundays. adults buy kids ice cream when they feel bad for them is what i’m trying to tell you here. so, in a way, i almost felt worse when your mom asked if i wanted to go to culvers with her. we were fourteen that year, the year the culvers was new in marquette. in any town with a population under fifty thousand in a tax bracket that thinks twenty is a splurge, the opening of a new fast food joint was a pretty big deal. we made the nearly thirty-minute drive from their house in the middle of the woods to the tiny strip of downtown that marquette laid claim to in almost complete silence. you weren’t there to blast justin bieber, and she wasn’t 26 insomniatic my mom, though god knows she was trying to be. we got mediums because i was too polite to order large but i felt too goddamn bad for myself to get small. “how is your relationship with god?” aunt leanne asked, the words kind but stilted, like i was a stranger. for the purposes of this story, me the pathetic orphan who was being pitied, i ought to have been small and skinny, barely picking at the melting dairy, but i wasn’t good at playing my part. “i go to church,” i said. “i struggle with my faith sometimes.” i was an atheist, of course, but she had just bought me ice cream. leanne nodded. “this is just a phase she’s going through, i think,” she said. “of course, we knew the day would come when she got boy crazy, but… don’t worry, sweetie. i’ll talk to her.” “don’t!” i pleaded. “really, it’s fine.” “it’s rude,” leanne said. “you come all this way, and then…” “it’s fine, i get it,” i said. “it’s fine, really. i’ve been messaging shelby back at the house. besides, we’ll be up all night anyway. we talked about this,” we hadn’t, “and i don’t mind. i really, really don’t mind.” you don’t need me to tell you i did mind, right? you got home just before sunset, a shine in your eyes that told me what you did before you said it with your mouth. you told your parents we were going on a walk, and as soon as we were down the driveway, you had whipped out your ipod touch and hit play on “i just had sex,” (the lonely island ft. akon) you raised your plucked eyebrows at me. “how did it happen?” i asked, too bored for you. “we took a beach towel into the woods,” she said. “it was 27 elizabeth coffman-mackey beautiful.” getting fucked by your boyfriend of six months on a beach towel in the woods didn’t sound beautiful to me; it sounded like the ground would hurt your back and that there would be a danger of mosquito bites where a person really wouldn’t want mosquito bites. we did walk our usual lap. up east white bear, then white bear, all the way to 510, down to the old bridge, and up the hill to the new bridge. back down 510, past the yellow ragweed that smelled like pollen and the color of sunsets and august, it always smelled like august and michigan and you. somewhere back on white bear drive, you admit that it hurt a little. “but it was amazing,” you say. “like, i don’t know, it wasn’t that fun, i guess, but i’ve done it, you know?” we stayed up late talking, just like i promised my aunt, your mom. by one in the morning, when your parents were still watching monk in the living room, the glimmer in your eyes was less exhilaration and more fear. after you showered, it was worse. “it still hurts,” you say. “and now—now i’m, like, bleeding down there? is that supposed to happen?” “let’s google it—” “no! are you insane, what if my parents see?!” “they won’t see on my ipod—” “what if you can check, somehow? it’s their wifi! they can’t know, they can’t! am i dying?” “you’re not dying, maybe it was just—i don’t know, too big? is it your period?” “not for two weeks!” we spoke in whispers, your chest shaking. years later, someone said you either get scared before or after your first time, but i didn’t think you ever got scared. “can you just—can you just get me a bag of frozen peas? 28 insomniatic go out to the freezer and sneak the peas back here, i just have to put something down there it hurts so bad it hurts.” “what if your parents see me carrying a bag of frozen peas? what do i say?” “please!” i snuck the peas out of the freezer, hidden under my shirt while your dad asked how my day had been. you clamped them between your thighs, and asked me to sleep with you, just tonight. we were too big to share a twin bed—or, i was too big to share a twin bed, but you curled up against my side and said i just can’t sleep alone tonight, i can’t be alone, i can’t. and after all the lights were off and the glowing dials of the clock said it was well past four, you whispered what if i go to hell? and i pretended to be asleep. bullseye illinois farms could grow strawberries, with a lot of dedication and pesticide, but in general, berries grew up north, where you lived. all berries, especially blueberries. i didn’t really like blueberries, but i soon discovered blueberry picking was fun. everything that far north in michigan was rusty, the sun always hugging the horizon and bleeding the sky orange. the commerce there was all about iron, and the landscape was like a mirror of the economy. the scraggly bushes of blueberries, rowed right up to the faded red horizon were black, like twisted metal. the roads were warm too, earth that looked nothing like the brown dirt of the farmland i called home. the adults were busy, and you pointed off into the hazy sunset, voice low and husky, like we were telling scary stories. “there’s a big, abandoned house out that way,” you said. “the kids at youth group say it’s haunted, and no one’s been in there for years. they say some teenagers from ishpeming 29 elizabeth coffman-mackey went in there last year, and one of them went missing the next week.” “i didn’t hear that,” meagan said. meagan was older, but she looked like me. you were already too cool for her, but we were 12, young enough that older meant something to us. “it’s true!” you said. “there’s an abandoned house down there.” “that wasn’t what i said wasn’t true…” meagan said. i wasn’t listening. i had started walking down the road, blueberry bucket abandoned by the shoulder. “hey!” you were a runner, and you slammed your hand down on my shoulder in a second. “what do you think you’re doing?” “you said there’s an abandoned house,” i said. “i wanna see it.” the grownups were long gone, would be for a while. “that’s dangerous,” you said. “so?” i asked. “it’s abandoned. the sun’s out. what’s the worst that could happen?” “i’m not coming.” “i don’t care.” i started walking anyway. you grabbed my hand, and i shook it off. i was already angry, but i don’t remember why, not anymore. you grabbed my hand harder, and i pulled away with more force. “that’s enough!” you shouted. you took my arm and dragged, too strong for me to pull away. i tried to shake you off and fell, and you kept dragging. rusty, iron-orange dust coated me, and i screamed and thrashed. i was having a tantrum all of a sudden, and you were pulling me back to the buckets, hand on my wrist like metal. i don’t know how long this went on. i was stubborn, stupid stubborn, maybe even stubborn enough to try again, once or four times, but it ended with me sitting in the 30 insomniatic brambles and holding back tears, hands clenched around thorns to feel something, anything. “you’re not her mom!” meagan shouted. you’re not my mom, i thought again, savage. you started crying before i did. you said “well, somebody has to be!” closure the year after you dropped out of college, you didn’t want to take me back to the train station. “you don’t mind, do you?” you asked, knowing i did, voice all syrupy sweet. you’ve got this tone of voice i only ever heard you use on me, like you’re talking to a kindergartener. it’s okay sweetie everything’s fine. “it’s just, you know, zach and i were going to go up to the falls. he got some more stuff, good shit, girl scout cookie, have you ever tried girl scout cookie? makes you real mellow. and we’ve got work tomorrow, so you understand, right? i mean, we’d just be stuck in a car together for six hours.” “yeah, i understand.” earlier, when you thought i was still asleep, i heard you and your mom shouting at each other. “don’t you feel bad for her?” “of course i feel bad for her!” of course, you feel bad for me. division we fell apart during high school. it didn’t happen overnight; we never imploded on ourselves, we just drifted. i thought i cared about it more than you, but now it’s harder to say, so far removed. i still came over every summer, walking barefoot in the woods and idly picking raspberries off the bushes that grew on the sides of the road, riding right behind you the year you got a four wheeler and reading quietly in your old bedroom while you went out with friends. this year, though, the girl 31 elizabeth coffman-mackey up on the rotating cast of best friends was nicer, calmer. still a popular girl, a skinny blond with a secret love of one direction and a not so secret love of gossip and being a popular girl. but hunter didn’t look at me like something that had crawled out of the sewer, and more than that, she went out of her way to include me when you and her hung out. she was sweet. she wasn’t there that night, though, the night you went out to the backyard and made a fire while i watched, soft, city hands useless in my lap. you dragged the logs over and lit the kindling beneath them and sat on the hammock across from me, knees tucked under your chin. we didn’t talk about anything with substance anymore. we smiled politely and made believe we were friends the way we used to make believe we were witches, mermaids, superheroes. like it or leave it you promised you would take me cliff diving, told me over and over how amazing it was. i sort of expected it would be an activity for youandme, not you and me and your boyfriend and his sister, but there we were, an unhappy little family hiking through the beautiful woods. you crumpled up an empty can of arizona iced tea and threw it into the trees. when we got to the precipice i realized that the water was an awfully long way down. i said i would just go down and swim, check how deep it was first. zach gave me an odd look, but no one else responded. i asked how deep it was, and was told it was deep enough. zach took off his shirt, set down his lighter and baggie full of weed, and with a tarzanwhoop, he threw himself over the edge. kowa-fuckin-bunga, there was silence at last. zach climbed back up the cliff to us again. he was 32 insomniatic dripping and smirking, and everything about him disgusted me in that moment. “you ladies too scared?” he asked. and oh, i hated him, and were you not in love with him, you would have despised him too. unfortunately. “shut up, zach!” you said, a whiny, valley girl temporarily possessing you and wringing out her voice through your mouth. you giggled. zach jumped again. he climbed back up and made fun of us some more and there we were, trapped in limbo, you being such a girl and him being such a boy. “i’m fine with just going home now,” zach said, leaning back. he flicked your american spirits one by one into the water, letting them float on top like so much foul-smelling flotsam. “i’ve jumped twice. i’m good. if you ladies—” “shut up, zach,” i said, and i took a running leap and threw myself over the edge of the cliff. a glorious fall. a cold crash. at least i couldn’t hear either of you while i was underwater. like whoa the first time i saw you i was hiding behind a long, low, planter. you flailed out of the car and declared to the big, empty air: “my legs feel like noodles!” i stepped out from behind the planter, and we fell in step with one another instantly. did i like pokeman? no. did you like harry potter? absolutely not. did we like narnia? oh, yes, we liked narnia. we liked the jonas brothers, and disney channel, and aly & aj, and mysterious stories about little girls who could do magic. i told your dad where to find my dad, and took your hand in mind. not clammy, not sweaty, just smooth and perfectly suited to mine. i know sometimes writing to you feels like a love story, 33 elizabeth coffman-mackey and that’s because it is one. some love stories just have nothing to do with romance, nothing to do with sex. and you and i had everything to do with love. insomniatic we were up together all night, every night. in person, on the phone, i forgot how to sleep around you, because there weren’t enough hours in the day. silence we stayed on the trampoline till well past two in the morning. you and i, we didn’t really believe in normal hours of sleeping and waking. my mom always fought to wake me up in the mornings, and after she died, my dad gave up. so long as i caught the bus to school on weekdays, he didn’t really care. that summer, the best and the worst summer, we stayed up till five every morning and slept till two every afternoon. we jumped on the trampoline, took turns playing neopets on my dad’s big desktop computer, and watched teen titans on my tiny tv in the basement. aside from this, life was just one big car ride from the hospital to the house to hospice to the house to “please can we go to the mall please” to the house to the hospital to the house. dad was dying and i didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone that summer. i gave you lice and you killed my fish and aside from sitting crammed into the same leather computer chair as you, skinny twelve-year-old knees bumping together, it was a four-month blur of misery. i had a silver and blue cd player-slash-radio and one cd, so when our legs burned from hours of jumping on the trampoline and our eyes burned from hours of staring at the computer, we lay on my scratchy pink bedspread that still smelled like cedar and mothballs, and we listened to insomniatic over and over again. you thought the title track was the best, i liked silence. i think it was the morning we caught death note on 34 insomniatic adult swim. late night cartoon network played grown up cartoons, and we both liked blood and death, you because you were sheltered and i because what was the other choice? we were the last ones up when the phone rang. and we were twelve, not stupid. phones don’t ring at four in the morning. i must have said hello, but i don’t really remember speaking. the lady on the phone asked for bill mackey, and we ran upstairs, bare feet on the concrete of the unfinished basement. you shook uncle bill awake, and i handed him the phone. the summer came in flashes, see, little glimpses. watching episodes of teen titans on youtube that came in three parts because videos had to be under ten minutes, we watched in the computer room at the hospital down the hall from his room. the lights were always off in there. joe feeding dad tomato soup through a straw and crying, saying “please eat something.” nora with her hands on my shoulders promising i would get to see you all the time, and me saying “he might not die. he could get better.” jumping so high on the trampoline i thought we would clear the safety netting. playing tag in the walmart at nine at night, getting told to hush now. introducing you to my friends at turtle run, the local pool where everyone else was spending their summer. dad talking less and less in increments so slow that i never knew what the very last thing he said was. the heavy, indigo scent of britney spears perfume we doused everything in. the overwhelming weight of knowing it was you and me against the world. we stood shoulder to shoulder, the exact same height, in fuzzy bathrobes, staring at bill as he nodded, closed his eyes, said “okay” into the receiver. he hung up and started talking to joe, like we weren’t there. “hey,” you said. “what is it? what happened?” 35 elizabeth coffman-mackey he looked at me, and he didn’t even look sad. “i’m sorry, sweetie. he’s gone.” of course, we knew that, but we had to hear it. “go to bed now, chickies,” your mom said. she was the only one crying, and we walked back down the stairs, one cold step at a time. i didn’t cry. i didn’t feel that sad, but i didn’t feel tired anymore either. at first i felt nothing, and then i felt relief. we sat in front of the fuzzy tv until the sun came up, one episode of teen titans melting into the next. you didn’t say anything, and neither did i. we didn’t hug or cry. you didn’t try to tell me it was okay and i didn’t fall apart. you stayed up all night with me. if i could have you back you were, of course, invited to the wedding. you were my sister as far as i was concerned, so of course you were invited. it would not have been so bad if you hadn’t said you would come. flattery we used to talk about what it would be like when we were really sisters. i shouldn’t have looked forward to my dad dying, but when we talked about our life sharing a big basement bedroom, living in marquette, a neverending sleepover, it was hard not to be a little excited. i spent years feeling bad for staying with a different set of relatives. i hadn’t wanted to offend you, but maybe it was for the best. i’m here sometimes i think it was my fault. i told you it was okay that you didn’t want to go away to college, but when i said that, something snapped in you, i watched it. “i’m going to die here,” you said, and you started to cry. we were sitting by the fire, like we always did, because 36 that was our place. you were fire i was water you were earth and i was air and we found the meeting place of all of them outside by the fire pit. your eyes glistened with flames. “i’m going to die here!” you screamed the second time. you were so afraid of getting stuck, so afraid of never leaving, and i didn’t know what to tell you, because i agreed. you probably were. you probably are. you still live there, and god, i hope you’re happier now than you were then. insomniatic 雪花 的 故事 snow flower’s story chloe coy “children aren’t coloring books. you don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.” (hosseini 21) all of my stories have begun with being lost then found, abandoned then rescued, unloved then loved. the introduction explains that i was left on the doorstep of a teacher’s college in a basket; i went to an orphanage. the body is how i became adopted and joined my wonderful new white family. the conclusion is that i am happy. “the adoption story i'd heard so often growing up was supposed to remake me, give me everything i needed, make me feel whole. in the end, though, real growth and healing came from another kind of radical change—from finding the courage to question what i'd always been told; to seek and discover and tell another kind of story.” (chung 222) i do not exactly know how my story truly begins. but i want to acknowledge, because i never have before, that it does not begin with an infant in a basket. i was four-months-old when i was reported to the government officials as an orphan on a doorstop. four months of relationships, memories, and places / spaces are not accounted for in this story. “your age at finding increases the chance that you may have come from outside the shaoyang area, but if family planning was involved a local birth would be nearly certain. both of these characteristics create significant complexities to making the connection necessary to locate a birth family.” (“birth parent search analysis for shao xue hua”) the dozens of babies, held or led by their caretakers, are for a different set of expectant families. his new baby daughter is not amongst this group of orphans-soon-to-be-children. but he gets out his camera anyway, just to document the moment. he zooms in. the quality is grainy — definitely a 6 ‘90s video recorder — but you can still make out the rosy, chubby-cheeked girl he is trying to focus on. you can discern her light green winter snowsuit, even amongst the dozens of other babies and eager adults. you can hear the filmer’s voice, even amongst the excited squirming of younger children, chattering of parents, and crying of infants. resting on the frame solely on the rosy, chubby-cheeked baby in the light green winter snowsuit, he says (to the camera, to himself, to his wife, to his three daughters next to him), “oh my gosh. look how cute that little girl is....” veronica [sister] and i are standing at the bathroom counter. she ties my coarse, black hair in a ponytail. “i look chinese with my hair like this.” “ha! that’s because you are chinese, chlo.” “it is difficult to find the survival and revival of african cultural forms using our surface-sighted cultural eyes. those surface-sighted eyes assess a cultural body by its skin. they do not look behind, inside, below.” (kendi 86) throughout my second year of college, i truly started to understand myself as chinese. i became closer with my asian friends, had my first mentor who is a person of color, and attended apida tea talks on campus. these interactions exposed me to language for what i had (and continue to) experienced, such as model minority, inferior minority, white 7 savior complex, and perpetual foreigner. i found myself connecting to class readings, especially those from the writing center theory & practice course, which discussed essential social and / or political subjects related to racial identities and power dynamics. “‘i wadn't aware that words could hold so much. i didn't know a sentence could be so full.’” (owens 103) during the spring semester of my second year, i had a professor who decided to organize her course in four sections: regionalism & local color writing, literary realism, social darwinism & naturalism, and finally, multicultural voices. for this last section, we first were assigned to read selected pieces by indigenous authors and then to write a reflective discussion post of at least 100 words. my post was 500+ words. drawing from my research for my recent paper on great lakes native american boarding schools (for a different class), i wrote: these well-intentioned [boarding school members] are what stefanie kunze, a scholar in indigenous studies and international relations, describes as “benevolent perpetrators.” … honestly, i feel like this unit that we are currently starting, “multicultural voices,” may signify this mentality to some degree. although it is extremely important to include a variety of perspectives and to discuss voices from people of color, making them a whole separate unit feels othering…why can't native american voices be heard in the context of regionalism and local color writing? are there no asian americans at this time who wrote in the literary realism genre? the list goes on. i am home for the weekend, and my mom and i are taking our regular walk around the neighborhood. i start talking about how frustrated i am with this professor. “isn’t it ridiculous??” i ask without looking for an answer as we pass some neighbors and do the awkward neighborly *nod* and *smile*. our conversation begins to grow outside of my literature classroom and beyond my professor. “isn’t othering immoral?” i ask, now looking for a more validating response. “yes, it is,” mom admits. “then how is it that what happened — othering — not immoral?” “i have to think about it. i can’t just deem it immoral or moral. that sounds so extreme. she was coming from a good pla—” 8 “but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable! that’s exactly what some of those boarding school teachers thought — that they were helping native children. just because they thought it was right doesn’t mean they were right. that’s what i was implying in my discussion post, and that’s immoral!” we’re quiet for a few seconds as we pass the same neighbors, but now we just do the obligatory *nod*. they can obviously sense the tension. by the third time around the neighborhood, i’m lying in the middle of the road, crying. mom looks down at me, confused and sad. fortunately, the neighbors seem to have gone home. or maybe they saw me and turned around. between heavy, shaky breaths, i say, “it just hurts that you don’t understand this. that i have to explain to you why this matters, why it matters in general, and why it matters to me. because othering isn’t just a frustrating topic to me — it’s my experience. and it hurts that i have to explain... when i know that ammu and rish [two of my roommates and close friends, both of whom are people of color] don’t have to explain this to their parents, because their parents have also experienced it. and i know there are just things you’ll never fully understand, but it just hurts that i have to explain it to my own family, my own mom.” “my growing awareness of my in-betweenness peaked during this time in graduate school in a way that wasn’t possible growing up.” (conard-salvo 92) mom sighs, “i know. well, i don’t know. but i’m sorry....how have you felt othered? at school? by us?” “both. at northpoint [the homeschool co-op my siblings and i had attended growing up], in class, whenever anyone mentioned anything about asia or china, everyone would instantly look at me. obviously, grandpa. he is such a... white savior, mom. calling meg [sister], bella [sister], and i “orientals” and going on about how smart we are.” “but he does really love you. i think he says some of those because he’s proud of you.” “no, he’s really proud of you. and himself. he’s proud that he raised such a selfless daughter who married a selfless man, and together, they selflessly adopted — saved — three chinese babies. there’s also the time when i was talking about grandpa with james [cousin] and veronica, and 9 veronica totally cut me off. she started telling the story for me, like she’s the one who experiences it. and when i was talking about it around val [my maternal aunt], not even to her, she stopped me. she said that she wouldn’t hear any bad stuff about grandpa, that he has been such a great father, and nothing can change that. but that’s such a key example of white privilege. she has the privilege of knowing grandpa like that — as a loving father.” “i encourage adopted people to tell their stories, our stories, and let no one else define these experiences for us.” (chung 20) i conclude, “he can be a loving grandfather, but i also have to know him as a racist; i don’t have the choice or the privilege to just ignore that part of him.” it’s thanksgiving day 2006. i’m following jenny [sister] and avery [cousin] around. they are ten years older than me, so they’re naturally cool, and i naturally want to hangout with them. they reach the garage door. avery rushes through, and as jenny closes the door behind them, separating me and her, she laughs, “go back to china.” looking back now, what pains me the most was my mom’s response. i remember her comforting me, so at least she acknowledged that i was upset. but really nothing was done. she wasn’t especially angry or disappointed at / with jenny. it was like jenny just called me a “brat” or some other insignificant insult siblings throw around almost every day. i recently told my mom how much it hurts that she didn’t defend me. she nodded and said, “you didn’t feel seen.” randall: you just don't get it. jack: what don't i get? randall: what you said before. you felt uncomfortable on a golf course, and i probably wouldn't have been allowed on it. jack: son, i'm sorry. that was a stupid thing to say. when i look at you, i don't see color. i just see my son. randall: then you don't see me, dad. (“the club”) “...words like ‘other, ‘'alternative,’ ‘marginal,’ ‘non-traditional,’ etc. 10 these terms imply a norm, a stable center in which a ‘main’ rhetorical tradition exists and is augmented by ‘additive' traditions.’” (powell et al. 1.1) gotcha days are like birthdays without presents. instead of celebrating the days we were born, we celebrate the days we were adopted. instead of being told about how my mom went into labor at x time and was rushed to y hospital and how i was a pounds and b ounces, i’m told about where i was found and approximately how old i was and how long i was in the orphanage and how i cried for the first 30 minutes when i met my new family, but then i was a happy baby. my mom says, “you just needed to be loved.” this is one of the few instances when we talk about my past and i feel comforted. “i'd always found it difficult to imagine my birth mother pregnant with me, difficult to grasp that my existence had been entirely dependent on a woman i would never know…. when i pictured my birth mother, i did not picture her pregnant. i pictured her holding me and saying goodbye.” (chung 68) it’s bella’s 14th gotcha day. gotcha days are the one time a year we intentionally make an effort to acknowledge our chinese heritage. but when veronica enters the house and sits at the dinner table by me, things shift. nothing is the same since thanksgiving, when everything fell apart. she begins talking about the black lives matter movement, and we all, especially bella and myself, engage in the conversation. but she doesn’t just have a discussion with you about the topic — she acts like she’s convincing you that black lives really do matter, that “all lives matter” is missing the point, that the protests have actually been quite peaceful, that media coverage is biased. all these things i knew, researched, and agreed with. i respond with acknowledgement each time she mentions something in the news or pulls up a video or an article: “yeah, yeah, totally! ... yeah, i’ve already seen that video ... right?! ... oh, i actually read that a few days ago!” it’s seriously starting to annoy me. veronica leaves shortly after dinner, and i immediately share 11 my frustration with mom, meg, and bella. “she acts like she knows what it’s like to be non-white in america more than we do. i don’t mean i know what it’s like to be black, by any means. but i know more about not being white more than any textbooks or news articles can tell her.” my self-education and increasing (re)engagement with my chinese identity does not just consist of interesting historical facts and personal relationships. it also involves confronting how i, and my people, have been complicit and have perpetuated racist, white supremacist, eurocentric beliefs / attitudes / actions. namely, anti-black racism. as people of color, asians can relate to how other non-white people experience white, american hegemony. yet, many asian americans have turned against their black neighbors in order to be perceived as the “honorary white” and / or the “model minority.” to prove ourselves “better” so that we are treated better. “...we must learn our own people’s stories of how they’ve come to be in a place, and of how they’ve lived in that place, in order to walk a path of accountability and solidarity.” (doughtery) in a recent op-ed piece i wrote for one of my english literature courses, i drew from deanna pan’s boston globe article “asian-americans, long used as a racial wedge, are confronting anti-black racism in their own communities.” pan recognizes how the asian american community has and has not confronted their “fraught histories of anti-blackness.” i connected her article to the assigned course reading of jonathan swift’s gulliver’s travels, writing: swift’s intentionally unreliable and biased narrator reflects the same issue asian americans continue to deal with today: the distancing of oneself from a marginalized group, particularly black people, in order to promote their own superiority. gulliver does this with the yahoos, and asian americans have (and still do) perpetuate social injustice with anti-black racism. therefore, it is necessary for asian americans to avoid following in gulliver’s footsteps, and instead, stand with the black community in their fight for equality, inclusion, and equity. 12 mom, meg, bella, and i are sitting on the family room couch, staring at the family laptop. on the screen, there is a google hangout meeting with veronica, danielle, [my third oldest sister], and sue [the therapist]. this is the first time meg, bella, and i have joined family therapy. we begin with introductions and the questions for why all of us are here: how / why are there two distinct sides in the family? do we want to bridge this gap? if so, how? meg shares that, to some extent, the gap is natural. veronica is sixteen years older than bella. dad died when the older girls and the younger girls were at very different stages of life, with veronica being in college and bella having recently been adopted. veronica and danielle counterargue that the parental roles they have been forced to take on are unnatural, too much, unfair. bella mutters, “well there’s also the fact that we don’t look like each other.” “i know my place in my adoptive family is secure. that is not the same thing as always feeling that i belong.” (chung 207) and i feel my floodgates open. “i’d broken one of our unspoken rules: we were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure.” (walls 69) before my parents adopted me, my name was xue hua shao. xue hua means “snow flower.” i always thought it was fitting, given my love for the winter season. i also liked to romanticize the meaning by thinking of myself as a bright flower surviving — even thriving — in a harsh snowstorm. i shared the name shao, which is the equivalent of a last name, with all of the other children in the shao orphanage of the hunan province. my name is now chloe xue hua coy. it implies a mix between two cultures, two races, two families, and two very different overarching stories. it’s not always a harmonious blend, but the name fits. 13 while my identity/ies as a chinese american, transnational transracial adoptee is just one part of who i am, it has been the most difficult piece of me to learn, understand, and appreciate. it has been filled with excruciating sadness, devastating hurt, and deep anger. nevertheless, the experience and practice of educating myself has also brought me closer to others who are truly, imperfectly, and compassionately willing to see and love all of me — mom, meg, bella, phoebe, ammu, anne, rish, paul, noel, nick, and more. “i am breaching the sacred pact of our family, our once-shared belief that my race is irrelevant in the presence of their love. but withholding hard truths and my honest opinions would also sell short the love i have for them, and they for me.” (chung 208) now my stories will begin with belonging then abandonment then security. the introduction explains that i was born to a chinese mother and a chinese father; for whatever reason, i did not remain in their care for long. the body is how i joined a white family that is just as complicated, painful, and joyous as any other. the conclusion is that i am learning to be content. 14 31 ian carson a case study on love research has yielded support for the concept of propinquity—a word whose length contradicts its meaning—lovers who live close together are far more likely to meet than ones who live far apart, and yet somehow i found myself close to you, with five hundred long miles between us. further research suggests that our similarities bring us together, and yet every difference i find piques my curiosity and invites me in for further examination. the present study seeks to examine the hypothesis that we are made for each other; a lack of prior research on this topic indicates replication will be required. so i will kiss you again, and again, and again, to ensure that our love is statistically significant. a p-value of less than 0.05 is required to state with confidence that this did not occur by chance, that our manipulated variables were the source of this love, but our obtained values do not allow for this conclusion. as a result, we must state that this is a random occurrence—one of nature’s accidents brought on by a random process that has confounded our data. a love unbound by our demand characteristics, a love that, despite the perfectly designed study, has escaped the critical scope of the scientific method. we conclude, therefore, that further research is necessary to draw definitive conclusions regarding the exact nature of our love and the process by which we can explain its occurrence. the bandage project olivia m. van renterghem bandages and acrylic paint on masonite, 12" x 9" 20 30 the parpara sara lansdell photoshop painting 47 reflections of a painter rafael caro acrylics and aerosol paint on cloth 58 as robins do shannon couch i found you, in the violet heart of summer, rust and scoria. with handfuls of earth and amber, we made a home, coated in august and drenched in a fever called the fear of something new. as the robin eats the screen and builds a nest on the pane, i watch you watch me watch the sun rise in the east, and you smile as if you're seeing light for the first time. at night, you pretend to cry so i'll hold your hand when pazuzu crawls in bed with you, watching me watching you watch the sun drag the color from the sky — i'll never see you again. the robin left in december, the natural fear of being frozen in place— flew south or west or as far from me as it could get. my precious home of amber, now dust. but dust must settle somewhere, so i followed where it blew— 59 seen as guilty, desperate hands of a fool led over roots, yelling slow down, until i fell upon a mountain called something to return to. and on its face was a shade of blue that took the place of you. a home at the foot of mountain majesty, and now i'm lost in a hue that holds me tighter than the tug of jupiter. 31 hers bryttney schaible the world here glows in effervescent pinks. cotton candy clouds are strung high in the sky, and the constellations beyond them are painted with gilded color. this is the world of dreams, of limitless possibilities, and of moon-eyed wonderment. it is an endless tea party where company is always welcome, and the cake is served fresh from an easy-bake oven. the air carries currents of sparkly girlhood memories and sweetly sung lullabies, and it leaves the saccharine taste of magic on the tongue. here is the land of fairies, of princesses, of dragons for slaying. here is where blood falls; where love and light flit away into the night; where fights will be lost. here, the world will dull to muddied purples. cotton candy clouds will melt in the rain, and all the stars will tarnish and fall from the sky like teeth from a child’s mouth. dreams will deflate with the grace of popped party balloons, and possibilities will meet their limits. here is where the moon will be torn down from the sky and stomped into the dirt. tea parties will be cancelled, and all the cakes from here on out will be diet. the air will carry currents of secrets kept, of lies told, and of pillows cried into in the dead of night. the lullabies will be screamed to the heavens with the crescendo of electric guitars. the magic will take on the wicked taste of salt, tequila, and lime. the wings of fairies will be plucked away like stray hairs from an unkempt brow, and the crowns of princesses will be lost forever to the laundromat spin cycle. the dragons will always need slaying. 7 lindsey ellison tall with dark hair like ants crawling to the motion of static cableriding the freeway up and down her limbs, she stands one leg over the tub and is an exterminator with razor. blade: tiny, thin, sharp like the elizabeth taylor portrait she has hanging in her bathroom staring with sapphire eyes and a pink, half-moon smile. i sit on sink, grasping, passing the champagne neck. she fans her leg over the arm of the tub and dabs the towel softly, sensually around her upper thigh. she has no problem showing me what she is truly not. she tells me she’s not sure what to say when people say he, or sir, or boy or lady boy. she notes: she is not some porn fantasy with a smirk, because she secretly wants to be a porn star somedays, but somedays she tells me, there’s a vase between her legs. she is glass, fragile and not unbreakable to the people who do not know she stands proud with flowers and stem between her legs 8 she stands proud with flowers and stem between her legs how to water flowers or pay them enough attention so they feel alive. but i see her, in the fluorescence of the bathroom bare and womanly. 30 grandma and grandpa caroline hawkins oil on canvas, 18" x 24" 34 holy hashbrown! shae marie digital, 3" x 4.2" smiley face shelby nower acrylic on canvas 44 38 chicken paprikash madison weiss this is my people’s last rite of passage. they didn’t die in german camps for me to not master this recipe. pearled chicken bone slips and pricks me, tingeing oil and onion an ember red that is one with the paprika, and i am reminded that this dish is my blood. but did i add enough bouillon? there are no directions other than what dad told me, which tova told him, and a whole onslaught of dead ancestors grumble from their graves that there are no such things as teaspoons, only “not too much” or “not too little.” the last bit isn’t kosher, enough to where i can hear tova muttering about the foolishness of gentiles, but i splash in that lump of sour cream because i uphold no ancient law in my cuisine. it is crucial to end the rite properly: i take a bite, shrug like a jew, and say, “meh. maybe next time.” sisterhood nancy lee vitreous enamel on copper, 5" x 5" 15 32 sacrament mason farr the last time i saw you was christmas, in the nursing home. when you held that glass of gin above your head like a sacrificial dagger and said it gave you something to live for. then you plunged it into your body. sinewy hairs coated your face, since you stopped shaving, hiding the popped vessels, and lagan eyes trapped in the sunken vessel of you surrounding a mouth with lips wetted by the nectar of the gods. condensation dripping like blood, down your bruised and shriveled forearm and before i left, i held you in my arms. the frail and gruff sacrificial billy goat, dying, so the rest of us can live. 47 vagary lauren welter from her desk close to the window, emili could see the edge of the world. not actually the edge of the entire world —there were too many of those to count. no, from her vantage point inside the classroom she could see one edge of the world that bordered her small village. the teacher was drawing a diagram of their planet in sand in the center of the classroom, fingers swirling the silt across the molding floorboards. she had been teaching geography for twenty minutes now, but emili’s mind had drifted. she knew what she needed to know about the geography of her planet: it was built like a cake with four tiers. the bottom tier where emili’s village squatted was home to the lowest class of individuals. those who sold their wares or service or bodies for meager coin, living dangerously close to the edge of the world. the tier above was a bit more dignified, emili had heard. her mother was from that tier. it was home to respectable merchants and traders, those with enough money for bread every week and shoes made of leather or cloth. the tier above was even more affluent. they boasted governors and congressmen, families of high esteem that owned buggies that moved across the planet like magic. the upper-most tier was the stuff of daydreams. emili had heard whispers about their lives, though she didn’t know what was true and what was false. she had heard that there were only six families that resided there. each had a handsome family crest embossed on their doorways. they had spigots of water that shot hundreds of feet in the air in their gardens, though their gardens grew all manner of 48 vagary flowers and not tomatoes or zucchini or anything else worth eating or selling. she had heard that they enjoyed the most amount of sunlight on the planet, reveling in their long hours and throwing parties that lasted days, only ceasing to nap in their homes the size of ten of emili’s huts. they didn’t have to worry about money or food, didn’t have to scrub their faces clean every night from dust that settled thick like a second skin. emili would make it there someday. she wasn’t sure how or when, but someday she would leave the perpetual stars that dotted her sky for the light of the sun. the class ended and emili found herself outside the school, staring once more at the edge of the world. she should be hurrying home to help her father sew vests and trousers for his cart at the market, but she hesitated. craggily bushes clawed their way from the cracked soil. the ground near the edge was more split the closer emili walked to the lip, and soon she was avoiding cracks the length of her forearm, staying on the balls of her feet to avoid stumbling. one thick braid sat heavy on her shoulder, feeling like a stern hand summoning her away from the edge. she tossed her hair over onto the small of her back and lay on her belly, crawling towards the edge of the world. stars met her. not the stars that hung dim and sickly above her, drowned from the light of suns she could gather warmth from. no, these stars were unperturbed, untarnished, untouched. they burst from the fabric of the universe like pinpricks of diamond. emili’s eyes sparkled from their brilliance, and though her eyes began to burn from their heat she could not look away. this was not what she had expected. she had expected more of the same, a faded universe surrounding her faded world. a universe that moved sluggishly, greenish like a film of mildew over its surface. 49 lauren welter this was a universe of possibility, of dreams and promises. why would anyone sacrifice this view for the sun? did those at the top know what they missed out on, sitting atop the planet on their gilded pedestal? emili reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out the small nub of charcoal she used to write her times tables on her desk. she reached her hand over the lip, hand suspended out into empty space. she released the charcoal. it dropped like a fallen star, disappearing quickly down the length of the planet. emili held her breath, straining to hear when it hit the bottom. she listened intently for thirty seconds, one minute, two. at five minutes she was convinced she had missed the sound of impact and looked around for something else to drop. there was cracked slab of dirt nearly separated from the dry ground, and emily pried it the rest of the way free. she dropped it into the void, this time wriggling forward so her ear was not pressed to the dirt but instead hanging over the planet and into space. she felt a sudden sense of vertigo, of slipping from the ground, but she dug her fingers into the dirt and held steady. thirty seconds, one minute, two minutes. five minutes. seven. finally, emili scooted back so that her eyes were peering once more over the edge. she could see nothing but the fabric of space and the blooming of stars. her heart thudding, she shakily scooted away from the edge and sat up. she hadn’t heard a thud because there was no bottom. you could fall forever through space, accompanied by the stars, living in possibility. emili ran home on legs renewed of a strength she hadn’t known she had. her dreams of reaching the top of her planet streamed behind her, torn from her shoulders like an old, tattered cape she had no more use of. 50 vagary she was going to live among the stars. she just had to figure out how. * emili had decided on one thing: she was not a piece of charcoal or rock. she could not simply hurl herself over the edge and hope for the best. the thought of it made her muscles lock, her stomach clench in fear. she didn’t have the courage to throw herself into oblivion. she had to do it against her will, in a way that when fear gripped her at the final second she couldn’t stop herself. her village was perpetually cold, covered in frost that never seemed to thaw or harden into ice. she had grown up swaddled in layers of cloth and fur, wrapping her feet in it many times to keep her toes from breaking off like those who couldn’t afford extra for shoes. she had always considered this a disadvantage, fueled her longing to see the top of her planet and feel the warmth of the sun on her face. now, she saw it as an ally. there was a small body of water that was always slick and frozen over on the edges. children a few years younger than her, those who were too young to be much help at home and were better out of the house and out from underfoot, would gather there with sanded down boards of wood slicked with grease or oil on the underside. they would get a running start and throw themselves atop the plank and go skittering across the ice, whooping and hollering all the way. of course, a few of them ended up skittering towards the center of the ice and were lost to the bottom of the lake. while the thought made emili shiver, that wasn’t the part she was fixated on. the fact was that once they flopped onto the board, they were at the mercy of their own momentum. they couldn’t stop themselves if they stayed near the edge to safety or if they flung wildly to drown. 51 lauren welter that’s what emili needed. a device that would propel her into the stars, her own momentum carrying her past her own fear. the day after her discovery, she dug up the jar she had buried in her backyard. the jar was years old, the label on it so faded she had forgotten what pickled vegetable or syrupy fruit it had once held. when she pulled it from its bed, the clinking made her fingers tingle. she had been saving money for years in order to buy passage to the tier above her own. the plan had been to wait until she was done with her schooling, spend a few years learning a trade or some sort of profitable skill, and then steal away into the middle of night, unable to fathom the look of good-bye in her parents’ faces. there were other jars buried in the same vicinity, within them more clinking coin that had been intended to buy her way upward. a few coins from this jar would buy her a large board of wood from the market and a small tub of grease. she thought of all the extra jobs she had taken, sewing until her thumb bled from the needle and butchering any furry animal that wandered too close to their hut in order to sew rough pairs of slippers or hats or gloves for those who could afford them. for a moment, she hesitated. but the momentum from her discovery still hurtled through her bones and she untwisted the lid, pulled out a handful of coins, and shoved them in her trouser pocket. she left the jar beside her parent’s cot with a note written in the dirt, letting them know where the other jars were. maybe her father could take a few days off work to rest his sore hands. maybe her mother could come home for more than a few weeks at a time, leaving her hunting group for the embrace of her aging husband. 52 vagary she tried not to think of their faces when they realized she was gone. it was nearly unprecedented for a family on the lowest tier to not have more than eight children to help with collecting coin and managing whatever service the family provided. her parents had only had one, and she had never asked why and they had never offered. and here she was leaving them. it sat like a lump in her throat, but it didn’t stall her stride. wasn’t this what she had been planning to do all along? it was only a few years early. this had always been her end goal: freedom. that’s what she reminded herself when she handed over the coin for the wood and tucked it under her arm. she didn’t look the seller in the eye; she knew her father and was prone to chatter. the grease was slightly harder to come by. many people couldn’t afford their own meat and hunting was a thing that required months of time in groups, like what her mother did. their many sources of food were whatever grew in the garden and whatever wild plants could be found on a walk to and from wherever you were going. fire-warmed drink flavored with alcohol and cinnamon kept them warm from young children to the oldest villagers. emili had a flask tied to her hip and she offered the man who sold her the grease a sip. he was old and stooped, fingers cracked and face splotchy. his hands shook when he took the flask, and his eyes closed as the drink hit his lips. it dribbled down his chin and after a long moment, he handed it back. it was nearly empty now, but emili realized it didn’t matter. she wouldn’t need it out in the universe, where her own wonder would fuel her like it had the day before. emili set out with the grease slung over her shoulder and the plank jammed under her armpit. she was headed for the school then thought better of it, changing her trajectory to slightly more south where only a few huts squatted a 53 lauren welter respectable distance from the edge. she didn’t want to risk being found out and spotted from the window of the school. she hadn’t gone today, hadn’t seen the point. now, she almost wished she had said farewell to the squat building if only to affirm to herself that she craved more than what those four walls could bring her. the edge came quickly, and she found herself standing near the lip, even closer than she had ventured to stand yesterday. she took a deep breath and peered over the edge, body tilted forward, heart fluttering in her chest. the stars stole the breath from her lungs as quickly and violently as they had spirited it away the day before. somehow, they seemed even more brilliant… and this time she heard a voice. it was soft at first but grew steadily until she could make out the words. they buried their way into her chest and hooked into her heart. “leap true and jump steady,” they went. “for only those with wonder in their veins and restless spirit in their hearts can join us.” emili shakily set down the wood plank a few feet away, fingers hastily rubbing the lard across the bottom in broad strokes. suddenly, this all felt very urgent. the stars had chosen to speak to her. what if they changed their mind and decided she was not worthy? she had to act quickly. and then she was ready. she set the board down and backed up, sending one last glance around her planet. it didn’t call to her, or whisper to her longing. it sat like a thing dead around her, and she would be happy to be rid of its weight. she was running faster than she ever had, soles of her feet aching where they slapped the ground and thighs burning from exertion. 54 she pushed off the pads of her feet, leaping onto the wooden plank. she fell heavily on her bottom, teeth rattling like pebbles in her mouth. the edge of the world approached her faster, speeding towards her, carried to her by her own momentum, brought to her by her own choice and pure longing. for a moment, she was suspended between the edge of her world and the rest of the universe, and she could truly feel the gaze of the stars against her cheek. she closed her eyes and was not afraid. she joined the stars. vagary the home front corlan mccollum 1928. a diva from another era dies alone in her paris apartment. a week later, her various debt collectors find her dead. all her assets are liquidated. three of those assets, a pair of frilly pink chairs and a faux fur coat, slowly work their way into the hands of chase bank, who’d lent her far too much money when she was younger to jump-start her acting career. the depression comes. chase needs to sell as much as possible. at an auction, the chairs go to a young woman from advance, indiana, and her young husband buys her the coat as a gift. he dies when he goes off to fight in france as a volunteer. what is she left with? an empty house, decorated in frilly, pink things, and faux furs. she goes to work in a munitions plant when the war comes and her savings run out. eventually, she adopts her nephew when her brother and sister-inlaw are killed in a bombing raid on casablanca. they’re unhappy people, in a house fit for young lovers. she can’t find anybody to take the furniture, and can’t bring herself to wear the coat, so she puts them away in her mother’s attic. her mother dies. she’s in the hospital from the dangers of handling material components of artillery shells. her nephew, who never took to calling her his mother, comes home from training to sort out the estate, and the war ends. he could’ve been the pilot to drop the bomb on nagasaki. in his resentment, he sells everything, and moves to california and settles down, where his wife never makes him think about his past, and neither do his affairs. the chairs and coat split at a garage sale, the coat traveling south to west baden and the chairs moving to lebanon. the coat came back when its new owner found an unopened love letter containing one thousand dollars in a hidden inside pocket, written by the volunteer husband to the wife he’d never be able to give a child, but the nephew was long gone. they left the coat to a local history museum, but those never do well, and it closed its doors, to nobody’s notice. all the exhibits were put in booths in antique stores, like the chairs, who had gone from owner to owner, each of them discovering that pink frills pairs with nothing. except, perhaps, for faux fur coats, which they had been reunited with, and will be forever because nobody wants pink frills or faux fur. not all stories are tragic. the new owner of the coat was 26 one of the first us-based saleswomen at eli lilly. when the local history museum closed, the couple running it had more time to enjoy their retirement. the nephew had three boys and two daughters, all of which grew up to be outstanding people without traumatic childhoods. every single one of his affairs felt loved. 27 26 support group share, september 2020 georgey elaine i am always packing to leave him. forever scraping my fingertips over shiny bits of gemstone and silver; jewelry, jewels, and pants. every time i turn around there is still something left to pack. in my dreams he hides outside the door, smacking on stinking mint gum. i beat him back with a broom. he flings my hard work across the floor of my childhood bedroom with a tomato red face. in my dreams my younger siblings help me pack scraps of paper into plastic shopping bags. in the real world everyone blames me for ruining christmas by leaving my abuser. 20 cold hands hannah bryson-price cigarette smoke swirled in the air of my grandparent’s kitchen. its tiles were worn and yellowed. my family’s smiles radiated through the smoke like headlights shining in a rolling fog. i braced myself as wisps clung to my lungs. the cold seeped in from the window behind me. they fused together baring claws to chase me away. i wouldn’t let them. no frigid hands or toxic breaths would drag me from the chair where my feet barely scraped the floor. i was fixed on fluttering fingers. talking hands swept through the air, captivating my eyes. they were soundless, but oddly loud. it was strange how those signing hands generated so much noise from a person living in eternal quiet. i felt as though my fingers and palms were too small to paint the words my family used. i wanted to mimic their colors and movements, but the cold trickled its way to my shy fingers. across the wooden table my grandfather slid me a wink followed by the one sign i knew. the ring and middle finger folded down to the palm. “i love you.” 43 the quantum mechanist ayla walter the quantum mechanist is underpaid and overworked— overlooked but she will not complain. the quantum mechanist sails on un-lauded coattails, and never forgets a figure. sees the pattern she is laying but still won’t get the grant money—still rides sidesaddle in the parking lot, claws her way to tenure by a fingernail. this is what the quantum mechanist does. even as if you won’t see it— she spins the story. charms her way up and down, dances in the dark. spooky action under a distant office lab in the hours before daybreak. the quantum mechanist swans into campus bar ten minutes till last call, and orders straight tequila from a klein bottle. sits the way women aren’t supposed to sit. then gets up at 5:30 the next morning to apply concealer over the circles under her eyes, drags a brush of sealant through tear tracks and sweat beads, puts her face on with a neutral-tone smile. not red—not for work. she has a reputation to uphold on those slight shoulders. she don’t shrug off a single question—puts her time in deep gravity wells, punches that clock doppler style all the way down to deadline. all the while the administration considers her… unconventional, too emotional, her dress too something, her hair too big, her weight up for grabs, reaction for every progressive action, mass equal to energy divided by the speed of light squared— 44 einstein’s woman. she doesn’t need a name or nobel to know this bell curve is skewed by omitted data, by all the witches burned, all the points overruled, all the shades erased with a one-sided one-dimensional white board theory of everything. the quantum mechanist knows how to classify schrödinger’s cat-shit when she sees it. and she sees it. but she steps over, rises above the valence shell of every atom, she’s ionized. ready to react. still, she won’t explode, won’t let that markov chain get ahead of her. the quantum mechanist keeps her feet underneath; she’s on her toes all times looking both ways to cross the classroom. she sees in all four dimensions and more—builds a multi-matrix of directions to hand down to her students, plots her pathway to brilliance on cartesian coordinates. won’t let any budgetary committee tell her what’s possible, she knows that nothing for her is impossible. she’s high frequency and ultraviolet, shattering glass event horizons. she stays up late and gets up early; she writes her dissertation while asleep and yes! sometimes, she even takes the trash out. because that’s the quantum mechanist; strange from top to bottom, and she makes it work. the quantum mechanist fatalist ramblings caitlin price now’s a different era. it’s different than genital-free, hard plastic. polyvinyl chloride mimicked curves i’d see in long car ride, car seat daydreams. different from being a grade school outsider too queer for swimsuit clad pool parties and weekend sleepovers. kids hadn’t had the vocab, but knew i was our butch cafeteria lady type weird minus the cropped hair and sports bra flattened tits. now is different than years of straight sex splurging like one good screw could’ve proven that my parts worked because nothing felt as good as girls looked. one night, on a middle school like dare, i felt a girl’s lips against mine. drunk and sloppy, we moved like exhibitionists. i named her “fireball cinnamon whisky” and assumed she was straight as she disappeared into a crowd, leaving my life as quickly as she entered. the taste of her lips washed away with vomit and listerine, but the memory of her mouth visited me as i went home with my boyfriend and settled in for another comatose screw. now is different than the solitude like mid-days at dive bars. quarantined with catholics, i regressed to a secret dyke as my mind belonged to a body that wanted to evaporate into air. days were spent with a word processor and nights were spent with films on my old flat screen. nostalgia inspired my choices as i watched the larry clark and gregg araki movies i snuck as a preteen. i fell asleep with paris is burning, envisioning a life outside of a red state suburb. i’m in a different era now. my fingers go numb pounding into my keyboard—vomiting out verbs i can’t vocalize. i crack my knuckles and skim dating apps, finding couples looking for thirds. it feels like another year of my loner lesbianism. online musings lead me to instagram, where i find old friends getting married, having kids, and leaving the state. one day, maybe i’ll really scratch my itch, dig in until my skin tears and bleeds, and flush out “fireball cinnamon whiskey’s” mouth and all the lips, pussies, and tits i’ve experienced since then, and be able to join them. maybe i’ll live as if i have multiple bodies. one body for me and one body for my catholic parents. i’ll drive one until its miles are up and then i’ll move on to the other. 19 mansion lalaurie cameron reed ink and watercolor 13 53 i have not eaten an animal in forty-two days and i am dreaming of blood—of cow’s ribs, smoky and charred, from a stranger’s plate. i pose as a waitress so i can steal the bones, not thinking of earthlings, or of the animals at the state fair. not until i awake in horror. in another dream, i pinch the breading from a piece of kentucky fried chicken, telling myself i’m being virtuous. then i gnash at the breast, juicy with antibiotics and salt. i order sweetbreads at a fancy restaurant and savor them long after closing time, wiping my fingers on the white tablecloth. never in my waking life has the thymus gland of a sweet, tender lamb passed my lips, but in this, my perverted slumber, i relish the transgression. i carry a plastic bag of roast beef, pooling in its own fluids, through the grocery aisles of the mind. my muscles, sick of cherry-flavored b12 and protein powder, shiver with lust. claire christoff offal sick best of poetry 18 joan of arc mason farr she lays with only soldiers, then slays those lonely soldiers. she calls herself joan of arc. this spider, taking trinkets in the darkness of paris in the winter, barren. their blood will start to splinter there in the cold and misty morning. to leave their mothers mourning. she wonders about how many crosses in the cemetery she has caused. sons’ lives lost. though she isn’t proud of her linen throne, it’s the best way to bring the boys back home. 37 unexpected beauty olivia adam photography, 25" x 19" 48 huntingburg: summer, 2007 abigail hopf i’m talking about the embers of summer in the shadows of the country, back when you could jump onto the gravel mountain in your backyard and scream king of the world, when no one but the cows saw how wrong you were. those late august afternoons that slipped by like syrup —skin still sun-kissed, kids still laughing in their bus rows because school hadn’t yet sunk into their bones. it was in the depths of that season that my father would pile planks of wood into the pit, breathing deeply as the heavy heat splintered into sweetcoolsummerrelief. the wood would crack and splinter along with it. we’d sit and watch as he tamed the flames, fire tongues lapping the air and softening into ghosts of smoke, turning from roaring beast to pup licking marshmallows golden brown. over the hill and down the road, the neighbor kids would call out a chorus of one two that lingered in the fading light four five as we switched on our flashlights eight nine fireflies kissing our skin goodnight nine ten ghosts in the moonlight. sometimes, on those golden fire nights, a cousin would traipse through the corn fields and turn to us gleaming, the coyotes cackling in the dark shadow of the woods behind him. them’s witches afoot, he’d say. biding their time. waiting for the fire to die so they can tip-tip-tiptoe into children’s rooms and tear their worlds apart. but in the ember glow, against the cow's lowing and the cricket's croaking and our parent's humming, his voice sounded like honey. sinking into our skin with an inky headiness that had us closing our eyes to the diamond sky, dreams calling out for witchcraft, for firelight, for moments that slipped through your fingers like ghosts in the moonlight. 7 party is over savannah jacob acrylic on illustration board, 15" x 22" delicate zach carrico photography 70 untitled emma schwartz nupastel and charcoal, 18" x 24" 21 10 feminine, like: bingeworthy, dreamboard tiffany pierce archival inkjet print 35 rock concert david chadburn oil on canvas, 36" x 24" pansies zach carrico photography 6 29 exposure oliver spangler photography best of art 44 wild geese ayla walter watercolor painting, 30" x 22" horton's world nancy lee vitreous enamel on cooper, 6" x 6" ` 33 20 trailer trash: track one kaylee kriese i was ripened in the freckle constellations of my mother’s shoulders. rusted nails that had buried themselves in my father’s feet. dollar menu days when happy meals couldn’t be afforded. gravel roads writhing with scraped knees & spinning bicycle tires. fearless mud pie makers, with perpetually dirty fingernails. cheeks ballooning with air, poised for birthday wishes. my brother and i, grounded, kicking the screen free, shimmying out the window. mosquito scarred, dreamciclestached, my blonde-streaked tresses choking with smoke. a twisted expression when “i hate you,” was something i thought i meant. lake mucked in knee-high grasses, breathless with yearning. small hands, mirroring my mother’s, as she pieced me 21 back together when i sobbed. pocketing my heart from where i’d cupped it in my hands. i was ripened in the heart-ache of tomorrow, the arthritic a-frames of houses heavy with hope. these tender freedoms, ephemeral, these things i choose to remember. 46 slow as snails anna weeks digital (procreate), 8.5" x 11" 20 balance. michaela white tap. tap. tap. no, that wasn’t even. tap. no, too long in-between. that doesn’t feel even either. tap. tap. tap. four. four is even but it’s close to five, and multiples of five are better than even numbers. tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. now it’s even and a multiple of five. the girl sitting next to me is staring. i lower my hands and fiddle with my pencil, the itching in my face finally gone now that i’ve restored the balance. she turns away but glances back at me every so often, waiting to see if i’ll tap my face again like i’m a child —or losing my mind. i might be losing my mind. i avoid eye contact. paint. asphalt. paint. asphalt. a misstep and my shoe lands on the crosswalk paint strip with maybe an inch landing just past it. the balance is thrown off. my other shoe has to do the same; paint strip, an inch on the asphalt. that still doesn’t feel right. fine. now an inch on the paint strip, the rest on asphalt, one foot and then the other. a car honks at me. the walk sign has long passed. paint asphalt paint asphalt, i hurry to the sidewalk. can’t step on any cracks. i just want to get home. pain in my left hand. i unclench my fist to see four crescents dug into my palm—only on my left. no, i don’t want to. i need to stop. my right palm itches. i step on a crack in the sidewalk and stop, just standing there. the balance, it’s gone to hell. the itching spreads from my palm to my foot, to my brain, but i’ve had enough. i don’t want to do this anymore. i can’t do this anymore. some days it’s barely there, but days like these it stops me every few minutes, interrupting my life until it’s taking it over. balance. i need balance. a bell dings at me and a boy on a bicycle flies past. my right fist clenches tight. i step on another crack, with my other foot this time. balance is restored. god, i don’t want to do this anymore. 12 marty julia spratt the malibu the summer before my 8th grade year, i was homeless. well, to be more accurate, my home was a 2004 chevy malibu crammed full of everything my mother and i could fit in it in the hour we had after getting kicked out of my grandparents’ home. full of uncertainty and fear, we spent three months hopping from one city to the next, traversing the wilds of indiana, illinois, and missouri, my mother taking odd jobs that lasted mere days or weeks. we occasionally had enough money to stay in a hotel, and i would have to hide my cat, kiko, under the folds of a blanket in order to sneak her in. she, the cat, wasn’t a fan of such treatment, but i generally credit her current the dude-like zen attitude to the trauma of those months. what’s so strange about our time in the malibu is that i never attribute it as a bad time in my life. looking back, i was terrified, clinging to my mother like she was the last person on earth. i guess she kind of was at that point, disregarding the feline partner-incrime curled in a ball on the dashboard. but some of my favorite memories of my mom come from that summer: hitting golf balls off the top of a dinky little missouri motel, spending hours talking about our family and dreams of the future, singing along to natasha bedingfield’s “pocketful of sunshine” as it came on for the tenth time in 4 hours as we sat in less-than-a-foot-an-hour traffic in the blistering summer heat. the malibu, i will note, did not have air conditioning. i learned more about my mother in those three months than i have ever gathered since. i learned her history, her motivations, her secrets. over the course of that summer, as i distracted myself with counting clouds and figuring out exactly how much change we had left for mcdonald’s, i allowed myself to meet my mother, experience her, learn from her, learn about her, in a way i’ve never been able to replicate. those three months, the crux of our lives, were simultaneously the worst and best of my life, stuffed away with my mother and a cat, trotting along in that tiny little 2004 four-door. 13 the spark i have never been a “car person.” i understand their necessity and can appreciate their design and color schemes. i can even find comfort in their accessories and low mileage rates, but i have never changed a tire. the underside of a vehicle is a maze i’ll never find my way around. if i’m being completely transparent, i don’t have the faintest idea what the v in v8 stands for, let alone the 8. and yet when recently asked what my most valuable item was, i answered, “my car.” and let me tell you, my car is nothing to write home about. marty (named after the quintessential teenage heartthrob marty mcfly) is a 2014 chevy spark, baby blue with only three cup holders and manual door locks. he does have an automatic lock, but it’s for the trunk… for some reason. he does not have cruise control, which makes cross-state trips to visit the family absolutely miserable, and there’s no place to plug in an aux cord so you’re stuck listening to the radio (no cd or cassette player to be found). his horn sounds like a cat meow, his trunk is less than spacious, and he wobbles on the highway if the wind is blowing too hard. but he’s mine. all mine. coming from a poor family who had the power turned off on multiple occasions, i was never going to get a car for my sweet 16 or as a graduation present. hell, i rarely was trusted with the family minivan because we were so desperately reliant on it and my mother was worried i would send it careening into a lake. but marty, he’s all mine. it was my sweat, my tears, my time, my effort and determination that got him off that lot. no one else’s. some would say i have an unhealthy relationship with marty. i often talk directly to him while driving, and at least once a week i tell him how handsome he is as i lovingly pat his dashboard. with a husband allergic to dogs, he’s probably the closest thing i’ll ever get to owning a pooch, and just like a canine companion he rewards my affection with unbridled loyalty and looking like the cutest little thing on the planet. the focus last month i married a man who drives a 2013 ford focus. black, with heated seats and cruise control. its hatchback is great for storage, we can remotely start it from our apartment on cold 14 winter mornings, and it’s got cup holders galore. it’s a comfort car—nice size, nice mileage, nice radio. we didn’t have to pay for it either the perks of a wealthy father-in-law. when i picture it, i picture my husband lounging back in his heated seat, left hand gently gripping the steering wheel, right hand interlaced with mine. he’s listening to some folk song or a favorite podcast, casually navigating the twists and turns of indianapolis traffic. but when i look forward, when i imagine what would happen in a personal apocalypse, if i found myself at my lowest point, without money, without a home, i don’t imagine the comfort of that 2014 ford focus. i imagine my tiny chevy spark, baby blue and smelling like thunderstorms. i imagine finding my way, surviving, and i imagine i’m alone. 9 suspiria steffany baker oil on panel(s) 18 con cá mailinh ho oil on canvas 45 view from the harbor sara lansdell digital, 2471 x 4278px the vine grower louisa coello graphite and ink on paper, 8”x10” 10 37 shame and queer desire: a storied reading of lady audley's secret nathan marquam when i was thirteen, i told my mother that i was bisexual. “well, that’s ok, honey,” she said, “but unless you really fall in love with a girl, you should probably keep that sort of thing to yourself. otherwise, your life is going to be a lot harder.” then she told me about how she had a crush on her best friend in middle school. “it didn’t mean i was a queer,” she said. “you’re too young to know who you are. you don’t need a label.” sometimes, literary critics sound like my mother. in his essay “robert audley's secret: male homosocial desire in lady audley's secret," richard nemesvari says “i am not arguing something so simplistic as that he is homosexual…” as if queerness is a thing to be justified, an otherness that requires concrete proof. all of his words run together—something about the danger of generalizations and remembering the historical context, like he’s scolding me for looking for an image of myself. how reductive, how simplistic of me to read a character in victorian literature as queer, to think that people like me could ever have a clearly defined place in history. i spent so many years trying to keep it quiet until i knew who i was for certain, waiting for some objective proof. somewhere in there, my queerness and my silence grew together into a shame that has always kept me in its shadow. and in that shadow, i found the forbidden romance of george talboys and robert audley. * lady audley’s secret is a sensationalist novel by mary elizabeth braddon that was published in 1862. it’s got everything scandalous—murder, love affairs, mental illness, homosexual undertones, etc. these days, critics seem to be interested in it mainly for feminist reasons—lady audley is terrible and wonderful all wrapped into one, just as empowering as she is problematic. she’s hysterical and unhinged, though rightfully so. today’s critics seem to be cheering when she pushes her terrible estranged husband into a well, and honestly, i can’t say 38 shame and queer desire: a storied reading of lady audley's secret that i disagree—stories that center men’s narratives often (even and especially when those men are implied to be queer) push women’s voices to the side. and yet, there’s something unusually compelling about robert and george. the plot of the book goes something like this: there’s this man, george talboys, who leaves his wife for three and a half years (three and a half years!) in the hope of making a fortune. he comes back to find that she has died. he is devastated, unable to cope, but then he is found by robert audley, his old schoolmate. meanwhile, far away, a beautiful young lady named lucy graham marries a much older rich man—sir michael audley, robert’s uncle. robert and george roam the world together with george always being depressed and listless, and robert being more loving, cheerful, and patient than even a lover might be. they visit sir michael and his new wife, and george goes missing. it eventually comes to light that lady audley—sir michael’s new wife— is actually george’s ‘dead’ wife. and when george confronts her, she pushes him into a well. george disappears mysteriously at the end of chapter 12— barely a third of the way into the book—and yet the sweetness that existed between him and robert is woven through the rest of the narrative. the purity of robert’s obsession with finding out what happened to his friend drives the plot of the novel forward. all of the romance, the illicit affairs, and lies and deceit in the novel are carried along in the forward motion of robert’s desire. his love for george is a single, unstoppable stream, seemingly unrequited while george was present and only stronger in his absence. nemesvari posits that robert was looking for something in himself more than he was looking for george. some answer to his homosexual desires, he says, some resolution. i like my version better, but i still don’t know why it can’t be both. * as far back as i can remember, my desire was always intertwined with shame. the moment anyone beautiful would catch my eye, i’d immediately feel guilty for wanting them. i remember the first time i met elaine. i found my eye wandering to her in class—her smile, the curve of her jeans—and hastily looking away again. she had the short hair, the long gay girl 39 nathan marquam earrings, but maybe she wasn’t like me. and it shouldn’t matter anyway, i told myself—i had a boyfriend. but then she sat next to me and said hi, and i said hi back. by the end of the semester, she was sitting on the desk in front of me while i cried about how i might leave my boyfriend. “i have a pumpkin muffin,” she said. “would that make it better?” she wiped my tears away with her sleeve and let me cry on her shoulder. i clung to her, felt her fingers trace the back of my neck. i wanted to stay there forever, held in the space between her cheek and her shoulders, my face pressed against her furry winter coat. i wanted to stay in the absolute comfort and safety that i found there, a thing so vastly unlike the love i’d known before. when we said goodbye, she slipped one of her gloves into my hand. “for whenever you feel alone,” she said, “so you know i’m there for you.” i still have that glove. i still slip it onto my hand sometimes, just to remember what her fingers felt like against mine. * another literary scholar—jennifer kushnier, who i like a lot more—posits that the homoerotic/homosocial undertones of robert and george’s relationship was founded in their history as schoolboys. in her essay "educating boys to be queer: braddon’s lady audley’s secret," she says that it was likely eaton where they studied together. this school had a scandalous subculture of “fagging”—older boys enslaving younger ones—and the boys were left largely unsupervised in the evenings. this gave rise to a homosexual subculture, which would have been a relevant scandal when braddon published lady audley’s secret. it’s unknown how much of this subculture was based in those broken and strange power dynamics and how much of it was something else. but regardless, it was in this odd, isolated place where queerness was almost mainstream that robert and george found each other. the first thing i thought was that i wanted a prequel. not the prequel that braddon would have written, but a really fanfictiony one—one full of stolen glances and passionate sex in the library at night. cute boys slowly falling for each other in a world that tells them that everything that exists between them must be temporary. i want college-age robert and george 40 shame and queer desire: a storied reading of lady audley's secret laughing in the autumn leaves, robert pulling george in by the scarf to kiss him on the lips. i want everything that falls in the space between braddon’s words to spring to life, fully present and so undeniably queer that not even the most doubtful literary critics could dispute it. but then i realized that i want it to be more than fanfiction, because all of this and more is already there in the text. the chance meeting that brought the two men back together. the immediate linking of their arms, so reminiscent of their boyhoods. george’s fainting spell after learning about the death of his wife, with “robert audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate alarm.” then george waking up next to robert, them listening together to the birds singing. robert’s steady hand giving george an opiate, telling him to rest, tucking him into bed. just in the text that’s already there, braddon’s written an entire love story. it carries within it all the tenderness and intimacy of a life already lived together and lost. i know how george felt, letting himself be held and cared for by the right person at last; the collapse of every dusty year coming to bear on that moment, and the deliciousness of those arms being there to catch him. the obnoxious critic, the one who sounds like my mother—what does he think george was looking for when he went away? lady audley’s beauty was supposedly irresistible, yet he left her behind and went an ocean away. and sure, he said he did it for her. that he wanted to give her everything she deserved. but was it love for her that drove him away, or was it the shame of his boyhood dreams? the forbidden romance never quite forgotten, that strong, handsome face of his friend? perhaps i’m making broad generalizations, a reductive argument. but goddamn, i still want that prequel. * to this day, i bet elaine would say that she never cheated on her boyfriend. maybe because to her i wasn’t really a boy, and boyfriends are almost always convinced that girls don’t count, or maybe because we never actually kissed before they broke up. but even if she did cheat, it felt almost predetermined that she would. we always seem to find each other when we don’t mean to—on 41 nathan marquam street corners, in classrooms and parking garages and every space in between. it’s always unlikely, but it just keeps happening. the music at the bar was loud and harsh, but elaine’s smile was soft around the edges. my entire body was turned toward her, waiting for the moments when she’d turn and press against me. i closed my eyes, buried my face in her hair, and wound my arms around her shoulders from behind until she pulled me around to face her, one arm draped lazily over my shoulder. “hey,” she said, stroking my cheek. “what are you thinking about?” and suddenly i was talking, telling her everything that i swore i never would. that she should leave her boyfriend. that i’ve always loved her, always been an option. that i would have left my boyfriend for her in a heartbeat from the first day we met. all of the silence and restraint those long years of longing had pounded into me was gone, my desire laid bare in front of her. “i think it’s time to go home,” she said. we went back to my place, opened a bottle of chocolate wine, and put rent on the tv. she accidentally spilled wine across my lap, so i kicked off my jeans. giggling, she kicked off hers, and then we were slow dancing forehead to forehead, almost kissing—her arm soft across the small of my back, hips pressed toward mine. we almost kissed so many times, but she always pulled away at the last moment. she fell asleep against my chest that night, clutching at my shoulders and whispering that the world wouldn’t stop spinning. it’s ok, i told her. i’ve got you. my arm fell asleep, but i never moved her at all except to touch that perfect, delicate cheek with the single curl draped across it. i don’t know how much i slept and how much i didn’t, just that i woke up in the morning sober enough to drive her home. but i spent what felt like an eternity just watching the rise and fall of her breathing, worrying that i should have made her drink more water and wondering if this was all we would ever get. i wished more than anything that we could be real. that she’d kiss me on the mouth, or at least admit that she wanted to. that loving her could be more than subtext. * i would have agreed with critics who thought the 42 shame and queer desire: a storied reading of lady audley's secret representation in lady audley’s secret not quite overt enough to be canonized as queer representation. despite the sheer volume of novels that include exclusively straight characters without even the shadow of an intention of queerness, i would have let them have this one too. after all, robert did eventually fall in love with a woman. it’s right there in the text, clearly defined. it completely disregards robert’s continued dispassion for women. early in the text, he thinks "i hate women… they're bold, brazen, abominable creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their superiors.” and the woman he eventually ends up with is clara talboys, george’s sister, who has eyes exactly like his. in almost every passage about clara, robert is thinking either about how much clara resembles george or about how much he wants to be dominated by her—humiliated, even. but i guess if you look only at what’s on the page and not at all at what wasn’t allowed to be, then robert could have been straight. i would have given into that logic if not for the book’s ending. when george fell down the well, he didn’t die. he pulled himself out, one queer hand after the other across the irregular well-rock, and he escaped that place. he lived in new york for a while, friendless and alone. but something brought him back to robert, as it always seemed to. “i yearned for the strong grasp of your hand, bob,” he said, “the friendly touch of the hand which had guided me through the darkest passage of my life.” people like me don’t get happy endings. if robert’s search for george wasn’t really about george and was instead about fitting into heterosexual standards, he would have stopped when he met clara. george could have easily stayed dead—it would have been an easy write-off—but instead he came back. with clara there, the happy ending feels overfull, like clara’s just there to keep us from watching robert and george too closely. but despite that, somehow, impossibly, robert and george were reunited. * i understand how robert felt. back when i thought i was a girl, i dated a boy. i threw myself at him to be dominated, humiliated, whatever he wanted. i thought it would make me normal. the first night we spent together, he begged me to touch him until i finally said yes because i didn’t know what else to 43 nathan marquam say. after it was over and i had washed him off of my hands, he put his arm around me and said “see? it happened, and there’s nothing different. nothing different at all.” but no matter how many times i brushed my teeth, i still couldn’t wash away the taste. when he touched me, it was heavier somehow, laden with sweat and memory. there was no more tenderness left, no mystery. then there was the time i had the big fight with my mother and i showed up at his house crying. he held me against his chest and it felt good. then he held me tighter and with less clothes on, and it was still better than being alone, so i let him. he stripped me down and claimed every part of me with his mouth, and i lay as still as i could, imagining that it made me whole. i let him sleep in my bed. i signed a lease with him. i learned how to need him. i never felt anything that a person in love should feel. but all of the faking it, all those strained i love you’s didn’t stop my eyes from meeting elaine’s from across that classroom—and when she gathered me into her arms that day, i felt more intimacy than i had in two years with him. i used to stare out my bedroom window and think about her while he did whatever he wanted to do to my body. i used to imagine getting in my car and driving somewhere far, far away where he couldn’t find me, where my mother couldn’t find me, where even my own shame might fade into the distant sunrise, even if only for a moment. maybe that’s too different from robert’s situation; maybe i read too much of myself into him. but i know what might compel a person to board a ship and decide never to return until things made sense again. * i still don’t know how this trans body can mean so many different things to other people when it doesn’t even feel like it belongs to me. straight men see the clash of my boy-name and boy-clothes against my girl-body and are horrified that they used to flirt with me. straight women make out with me when they’re drunk because they think it’s funny or because they’re curious (and ashamed of their curiosity). even when i’m with a woman, i don’t feel straight. this is complicated. all of it disappeared when elaine kissed me. 44 shame and queer desire: a storied reading of lady audley's secret it started when i grabbed her hand on the drive back to my place. she was halfway through all her it’s-been-so-long-howare-you’s when i reached for her. her hand was small and steady in mine, our fingers lacing together with an aching familiarity. holding tight to me, she said that she still wasn’t over her boyfriend. that she left him, but she’s still recovering. “that’s ok,” i told her, and really thought i meant it. as soon as i’d parked, her mouth was on mine. the details of that night ran together—her messy-drunk again, sprawled out on the kitchen floor. me lying across her stomach, listening to the smooth music of her laughter. us tumbling into my bed, holding each other with all the tenderness we could manage through the drunken haze. but i do remember the way we kept pausing to ask each other questions: do you like this? and are you ok? and what do you want? i remember saying yes and meaning it. i remember crying after it was over because no one had ever asked me what i wanted before. more than anything, i remember her arms around me, holding me close into the morning light. when i went to work the next day, i kept my scarf on the whole time, kept the memory of her tucked away with the purple bruises that peeked out at the edges. i knew that when they faded, the last trace of her would be gone. we were real, but not for long. we loved like boys at eaton—all youth and haste, waiting for some need inside of us to be filled, to disappear. we always knew how that story would end. * even among queer scholars, it’s a constant push and pull between the innate queerness of how we see the world and the compulsory nature of the culture we were raised in—the need to say of course things are a certain way. to take for granted our deviation, our otherness. to warn of stereotypes and toobroad generalizations every time we see ourselves reflected in anything. i won’t settle for an ambiguously queer reading of lady audley’s secret. i won’t participate in the discourse about how queer is queer enough. i won’t accept the projection of robert’s love onto george’s sister as anything more than braddon’s need to make 45 nathan marquam robert and george’s dedication to one another less overt. straight people can have anything else that they want. they can take a picture of dorian gray—that little queer book of shame—and make it their own for all i care. i’d sooner do without it than without robert and george. the last thing elaine said was to write about her. maybe it was narcissism, or maybe it was that same aching desire to exist, but it was the best gift she could have given me. i didn’t understand that until i read lady audley’s secret and saw our story written there, our own potential reflected in those pages. at the very end of the book, braddon says “i hope that no one will take objection to my story because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace.” it’s wonderful to know that nestled safely beneath the layers of heterosexual red-herring happy endings, somewhere in that tangle of intentions and censorship, robert and george got their happily ever after. maybe elaine and i will never be brought back together by the loving hand of fate as robert and george were. maybe i will never see or talk to her again, or maybe even if we did, it would never be the same. but seeing robert and george and knowing what’s possible, what’s always been possible—that makes it easier to keep pulling myself out of the shadows one queer hand at a time. 47 at the top of kingsbury grade madison weiss the legend goes like this: an anchor dislodged from granite rock turns arthurian child into mermaid and so, she paddles to its chiseled iron her lungs constricted in sierran waters knees scraping on memories of summers in sunburned youth spent planning, heisting to no avail, the anchor remains fixed in time (summers five through fifteen) and space (beside the diving cliff) her legs remain separate, sapien 41 unlocked gabe george five 3ft x 6ft doors 15 owl ayla walter watercolor painting, 22" x 30" 22 the unkindness of the raven evan dile nevar windsor approached the coffee shop, stopping just in front of the glass doors. he pulled out his phone and opened an email thread. after double checking that the address from the email was indeed the place he was standing in front of, he made his way inside. his company, windsor enterprises, had seemingly taken off overnight. what started as a new artificial intelligence system created in windsor’s freetime to help him with everyday mundane tasks, quickly caught the eye of the entire world. within a month it was improved until the system was able to talk and act like a real person. companies like apple and microsoft raced to jump on board to work with windsor enterprises. but the workload had become too much, so he decided to take on an assistant. this would be the first of many interviews that would take place in this coffee shop for this position. the aroma of coffee was strong, and he felt as if he was breathing in the caffeine. each inhale slightly increased the buzz. “black coffee. the freshest you have, please.” the barista gave him a smile and a nod as he placed the five-dollar bill on the counter. as she made the coffee he surveyed the place, looking for a table. spotting a small table for two he grabbed the coffee and walked over, and sat facing towards the window. as he sat down he caught a glimpse of a man, easily recognizable from a picture he found online. the man had a face as if he was only twelve years old, yet he had a receding hairline and a slight beer belly. he had a polo shirt that was slightly too big for him, the armpits lined with fresh sweat stains. his khaki pant legs dragged on the ground behind him. nevar waved over to him and made eye contact. he smiled back and walked over, sitting down in the chair opposite. “you want a coffee? on me,” nevar told him. “nope. i don’t believe in that coffee shit. it’s either beer or water for me,” he chuckled, showing nevar the water bottle he had with him. nevar grimaced a bit, as it struck him as unprofessional. nevar started the interview with polite small talk, but then quickly moved to business. “start by telling me about yourself. where you grew up, what 23 drives you, previous jobs…” nevar immediately regretted this, as this man was apparently a nervous chatterer. he began from where he was born, moving slowly throughout his years. he seemed to talk himself out of breath, having to stop and gasp for air every few minutes. there was the clicking of a keyboard behind nevar. that was usually normal for a coffee shop, but something about the tapping was distracting. he listened more intently, completely tuning out the interviewee, who was now droning on about his middle school years. the man stopped to take a drink from his water bottle and the clicking stopped. after a big gulp he screwed the cap back on and continued talking. then the keyboard clicking continued. “one second,” he said, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence. he pulled out his phone as if he was receiving a call, but he was truly listening to hear if the typing had stopped in the silence of the conversation. he heard nothing. he tried this two more times to see if, in fact, it was just a coincidence. but every time the tapping seemed to link up with the conversation. “i apologize, but can we pick this up another time? something important just came up.” “no problem, boss. let me know when and where.” the man stood up looking disappointed, knowing he did not get the position. nevar pretended to take a call while he watched him stroll out of the coffee shop. nevar removed the phone from his ear. “do you want my email so you can send me that transcript of our conversation?” he asked as he turned around in his chair. sitting with her laptop was a woman with long dark hair. her face was round, but her cheekbones were well-defined. she wore a jean jacket over an old black ac/dc shirt. he could tell she was tall even though she was sitting down. her face lit up with different shades of red. “do i know you?” she murmured in a nervous voice. “i don’t know, do you? you seem pretty interested in my conversations.” he switched from an aggressive tone to being slightly teasing. she laughed, showing off her straight white teeth, contrasted against her tanned skin. “i can explain that.” “please do!” nevar turned his chair completely so that they were sitting at the same table. “i’m working on a book, but i’m stuck on one of my characters. so, i decided to come here and study a stranger, and maybe base my character off of them.” “why’d you pick our conversation?” he asked, genuinely intrigued. “okay, well you walked in and you instantly gave off these con24 fident and powerful vibes. i could tell you were waiting for someone, so i sat down nearby and decided to see what happens, expecting you to be waiting for a date. you just seemed to be someone important.” she looked at him, and he felt as if she was still trying to analyze him. she was trying to read his whole life through his eyes. he broke the eye contact, afraid of what she might find. he gazed out the window. “well i’d love to make some notes about your observations of me, but i’ve got to be across town in twenty minutes. how about dinner thursday night?” she laughed as if he had made a joke. “you don’t even know my name and you want to take me out to dinner?” “you’re right. hi, i’m nevar. the ‘confident’ and ‘powerful’ guy from the coffee shop,” he mocked, putting air quotes over the descriptions. she smiled. “okay, nevar. i’m traeh. the stalker writer from the coffeeshop.” she scribbled her phone number on a napkin and handed it over to him. he glanced at it, then shoved it in his shirt pocket. “thursday night!” he shouted, as he stood up and walked to the door. he could still feel her eyes as he left the coffee shop, analyzing everything about him. * * * the view from nevar’s 32nd floor apartment was truly gorgeous. it overlooked central park, making the people that bustled through it seem miniscule. trees appeared as small orange and red bushes, as the leaves were changing with the autumn. the rooftops of the buildings he overlooked stretched far below him. rained spattered, streaking down the window as if the glass was crying. he could see a raven perched on the balcony of a building close by, cocking his head as if trying to understand what the rain was. he leaned against the window, blinking hard as if it would push away the thoughts in his head. behind him, the apartment was chaotic. tables and chairs were overturned, shattered glass sprinkled throughout the hardwood floor, and a broken picture frame displaying nevar and traeh laid fragmented on the floor. her words rang in his head repeatedly. “nothing will ever be enough for you.” “you’re an emotionless asshole.” “all you care about is your damn company. what about me, nevar?” he hadn’t cried. he can’t remember the last time a tear rolled down his face. traeh’s face was red, her eyes swollen with tears, sniffling the snot running from her nose between her screams. but nevar stood there and only watched. he knew she wasn’t wrong. windsor enterprises had become the 25 fastest growing company america has ever witnessed. he kept working harder and harder, hoping to satisfy something in himself. but with every hour of strenuous work he added to his schedule, he slowly began to realize something that he had been trying to prove untrue to himself from the beginning: he could never feel satisfied. it had been three years since that day at the coffee shop, and he had loved her ever since then. but he pushed her out intentionally. he wanted to take back everything during their fight. to explain that he was afraid of himself, that he was broken inside. but something stopped him. something told him this was the easiest way for everyone. so instead, he just watched her, and she stormed out of the apartment. a nervous voice from behind him spoke feebly, “mr. windsor?” nevar whipped around to see ashley, the assistant he had finally chosen after his hundreds of hours worth of interviews years ago. she was looking at the mess of his apartment. he glanced at the watch on his wrist. the hands read 10:00 a.m. his fight with traeh had happened at midnight the night before. he had been at the window ever since. when he hadn’t answered, ashley continued. “would you like me to call the maid to clean this up?” “that would be great. and how’s the work going with finding my successor?” “i have someone set to meet with you today in the afternoon. should i reschedule…” “no, no. today works great. thank you, ashley.” she retreated from the apartment. * * * the walls of nevar’s office were blank, painted a light grey. his desk was made of dark mahogany wood, the top littered with papers and folders. two wooden chairs sat on the opposite side of the room. he sat behind his desk, staring at the wall, examining it as a critique would analyze a work of art. a knock at the door snapped him out of his trance. ashley poked her head in his office. “it’s time for the interview. for your successor position.” “you can send him in.” nevar quickly shuffled some of the papers on his desk to the side. the door swung open and a man walked in, wearing a bright blue suit. the tight fit showed he was slightly muscular. he had a closely shaven haircut that seemed to continue throughout his face in the form of a five o’clock shadow. without speaking a word he grabbed one of the wooden chairs, dragged it so that it was only a couple of feet from the desk, and sat down. 26 it was silent. neither one of them spoke. they both just stared at each other, analyzing one another. nevar recognized this as a power move, but he decided to break the silence anyways. “what’s your name?” the man gave a grin, realizing he succeeded in his power move. “evod, but everyone just calls me ev.” “fair enough, ev. do you have a resumé?” ev laid a piece of paper on the desk. nevar grabbed it and proceeded to look it over. nevar had a confused expression while reading. there were only two previous jobs listed, and both seemed to be internships. another thing caught his eye: he had only graduated from college a year prior to this. “you don’t have much experience. why are you here?” nevar asked. ev let out a laugh. “well i was doing some job searching and came across this place. i sent your assistant, ashley i think it was, an email with my resumé. she told me i was underqualified, but you know what i always say? persistence is key! so i sent another email and she graciously set me up with an interview. so here i am!” he was chuckling. nevar smiled back. “ashley is stubborn. what did you say that made her change her mind?” “i told her that when i set my mind on something, i’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it. and i was damned set on getting that interview!” from anyone else, this would have come off as threatening. but from ev, it came off as charming, and nevar believed him. it was something about his smile and the way he presented himself. he seemed intelligent and genuine. it reminded nevar of himself, only happier and more driven. nevar believed that if ashley kept denying him the interview, he probably would have still showed up to the office. nevar and ev sat in the office for over an hour. nevar talked about the future of the company, struggles they were facing currently, and competitors. ev not only listened, but he gave input and suggestions on what he would do. some of which nevar never thought of, even after day's worth of brainstorming with teams of experts. when they were done talking the office had started to close. they shook hands, exchanged information, and ev left with the crowd of workers streaming out the door for the night. ashley peeked her head into nevar’s office, as if she had been waiting outside for the meeting to be over. “the next person comes in tomorrow at the same time.” “cancel it. he was the one.” 27 she grinned. “great, i’ll contact him tomorrow and get the paperwork set up.” nevar left the office late that night. he felt a feeling of relief, and for a brief amount of time, it seemed to lift some weight off of him. * * * the next week, everyone knew of evod. biographies were in every newspaper and on every news channel. but this also raised the question as to why nevar was in search of a successor. he was bombarded by news interviews and paparazzi. rumors that he had a terminal illness or that he could no longer handle his position soon filled the same newspapers and news channels. ashley did her best to deny the rumors, but within a couple of weeks it seemed that everyone had forgotten anyways. it had been a month since the fight with traeh. nevar’s apartment now looked as if the fight with traeh had never happened. the glass had been swept, the tables and chairs back upright where they belong, and the picture of him and traeh in a new frame. he tried several times to get rid of the photo, but he could not bring himself to do it. he thought of her every minute anyways, so what was one more reminder. nevar looked out his window with content this time. it was a clear night, but the city was still glowing. central park looked to be empty. the trees that had once looked like bushes were no longer visible, as the leaves had fully fallen off. a black streak caught his eye as he saw a raven fly downwards. nevar wondered to himself if it was possible that it was the same bird as before. he opened the window and took a deep breath. he held the cold, wintery air in his lungs before exhaling through his mouth. the sounds of the city rang even louder now. police sirens, cars honking, glass bottles breaking. leaving the window open, he sat on a couch behind him. on a glass table to his right was an old revolver. he lifted it up, holding it in his hand as if it was as light as a feather. he took one more deep breath of the city air and pulled the hammer back on the revolver. for the first time that he could remember, nevar felt satisfied. * * * a tall woman stood at the front of an audience. her long and dark hair brushed against her sharp cheekbones, as her face tilted down towards a heavy book in her hands. with a shaky voice, traeh read from the end of the book, “loving nevar was so easy for everyone but himself. i spent so long thinking that i was never enough. it gnawed away at me, tearing at my insides until i 28 couldn’t take it. it wasn’t until after he died that i realized the problem wasn’t me. he wasn’t good enough for himself. i believe he was trying to prove to himself that he could be good enough, whether it was through money or by owning one of the most successful companies in the country. but in his head, he ended up proving that he would never be happy. i only wish i would have stayed with him to tell him that he was enough for me.” her eyes glistened as she closed the book. the audience clapped quietly as she held back her tears. after a couple minutes the audience began to shuffle and talk amongst themselves. a few people walked up to either thank her for a well-written book or to give their sympathies for her loss. an elderly lady came up to traeh with a copy of her book. “would you mind signing this for me?” she asked nervously. “i loved being able to see into the mind of such a genius like mr. windsor, and it’s so upsetting for him to leave the way he did.” “of course, thank you so much for your support,” traeh said. but while she reached for the book, she caught a glimpse of someone in the audience. it was a man in a bright blue suit, tight enough to see his muscles. however, his undershirt was slightly untucked, and his beard, once neatly trimmed, was now scraggly and unkempt. traeh could see a guilt inside him. it was the guilt of a man who craved power and success, but who achieved it through someone else’s pain and suffering. evod, the new owner of windsor enterprises, met traeh’s eyes for a second, giving a sympathetic smile. he then lowered his head and shuffled to the exit. the banshee curtis williamson digital; 9" x 11" 88 cirque de parfume megan vogeler chalk pastel 22 38 the final blow emily lemke india ink, adobe photoshop, 11" x 14" 39 swinging, leaping, landing sara lansdell charcoal pencil, 14" x 17" 40 there's a reason we eat latkes madison weiss i knew that my grandpa was jewish, but for a long time, i didn’t understand what that meant. he had different holidays than me, but that was fine. we went to christmas at gramma’s, passover at papa’s. even after the incident with the gefilte fish, in which i had two helpings to be nice, nearly puking in the meantime, i longed to take part in that ancient remembrance of the jews’ exodus from egypt. like the angel of death, i learned to “pass over,” and skipped the processed fish in favor of brisket or potato kugel. the jewish customs of my father’s family permeated my childhood home, even though we were very christian. it wasn’t as though the jewish-ness was “other,” or that one religion was more correct. sundays were for church and jesus and customs from the old country were for at home. instead of making pancakes, my dad made latkes. i didn’t have chicken-noodle soup when sick; i had matzo-ball. our cupboards were stocked with matzah crackers, simply divine when smothered with butter for a quick snack. we were scrambling to hold onto the traditions of our ancestors, even if we didn’t quite know what they were. for the longest time, i didn’t know that my grandpa had a name other than papa. i laughed when i first heard it. “yehuda? but papa, that’s silly!” “and so it is. that’s why in america, i go by harry.” “yehuda,” i repeated to myself, the taste of the word foreign on my tongue. i dismissed the feeling for many years. he was just papa to me, someone who gave me candy and occasionally sang in hebrew. years later, when i was in middle school, i asked him about israel. “what was it like? what do you remember?” “i was only five when we emigrated. i don’t remember a whole lot.” i was a stubborn preteen and i begged him for more. after a while, he relented. “fine. i can scrounge up some memories for you, but it’ll cost you a hug and a kiss.” he sang of orange trees in the backyard, of a house by a train track. the air was hot and sweet and he ran around ramat gan with his twin sister and his cousin. but, they left. that is the way with the jews; they are always leaving. 41 i was in high school before i thought to ask again. now, i am ashamed that i didn’t ask sooner. what was i waiting for? “papa, tell me what happened to your mother and father.” it was a sunny august afternoon, my attic bedroom humid with the heat. i had him on the phone, and the pause was unbearable. maybe because i couldn’t see his face. “what do you mean?” he finally replied. it was my turn to pause. i could hardly get the word out, so heavy with its burden. “the holocaust. tell me what happened.” and he did. i laid there for a long while, silence screaming from my throat. he asked me if i was okay, but i quickly hung up. there was a lot to process, and my breathing was stunted with grief. he told me how his father had been sent off to be a forced-labor slave. how his two-year-old half-brother and grandparents had been immediately gassed at auschwitz. how his father’s sisters, esther and suzy, died in the camp as well. one while working. one on the way to ambulance during liberation. papa’s sisters are named after them. how his father’s first wife remarried after the war, assuming his father to be dead. how his mother, my great-grandma, tova, narrowly escaped a ghetto. how she lived in a cave in the mountains for a year. how his parents met, with his father using a new name for a new life and a new wife. later, israel. the birth of himself and his twin. moving across an ocean. pushing away the darkness. not talking about it for fifty years. well, we were talking about it now. i wanted to know so much more about my family, and so every chance i got i had him tell me another story about them. i assembled a family tree, contacted organizations throughout europe, including auschwitz, to see if i could find records of my family. my searches were fruitless. to the world, my family does not exist. i felt like i owed it to my family. without their deaths and sacrifice i would not be alive, and it made for a guilty conscious. i thought that by learning about them and finding their names in a census somewhere, proof that they had lived, i was paying them back. but nothing i ever did was going to be enough. they were murdered, and i was standing because 42 of it. it felt like i was the result of blood money. it wasn’t until i visited my great-grandma tova again that i finally found perspective. i had met her a few times in my youth, but after my family moved to the midwest, we were able to visit her more frequently. in fact, once a year for passover. she was tiny in stature, but her attitude could knock down a giant. tova often joked, her voice thickly accented, about the stupid people in our family. “idiots,” she would say, shrugging in her orange chair. “they’re all idiots.” tova also laughed about how dumb her friends were, friends that she had been playing bridge with for over fifty years. one afternoon, i was sitting on the floor by her knees, rolling about in discomfort after she essentially force-fed us an entire feast (egg salad, fried chicken, blintzes; she was then offended when we were too full to eat the torte cake). “i wrote something down for you,” she said, “but i will not read it out loud. harry can read it to you.” her veiny hands shook as she pulled out a neatly folded paper. “it is my story.” this moment is poignant as far as memories go. i can still feel the carpet beneath me, the sound of her little voice as she helped pronounce names and cities. tova is dead now, but her words are echoed in my heart: “i still dream about german soldiers chasing me, but when i wake up i say to myself how lucky we are compared to others who lost [more of] their loved ones. i promise to tell this story to my children, because the only way it will never happen again, is to remember.” the wise words of my great-grandmother transformed me. i had nothing to feel guilty about. i didn’t need to repay them. i need only remember. remember their sacrifice, their deaths, their lives. remember their courage, their children, their recipes. remember, like how we recount the hebrews’ escape from egypt. remember, like how we recall the eight days the candles kept burning. remember, like how we mourn the six million jews of the holocaust. remember, she told me. and i will. 27 claire cristoff you planted the tree in my front yard— sugar or paperbark, it doesn’t matter— with gnarled roots and boughs for squirrels and snowfall. i never knew you, but i picture you now, parting the earth with careful fingers, long hair obscuring your face, soft young breasts already gravid with rot. years later, a woman arrives unannounced on my doorstep—yours— to admire her daughter’s sole descendant, impervious to chainsaws, band saws, and bitter january. note to a dead girl 24 nomenclature hannah bryson-price names society gave my body: fat repulsive undesirable disgusting cow project fetish big my body is big. its gelatin hills on my back jiggle comfortably in my hoodie as my feet fly on the treadmill. my body is big and it likes to run. despite my cuddlebear plushness, don’t be surprised when i roll my eyes if they say, “you’re pretty for a big girl.” “you’re strong for a big girl.” “you’re smart for a big girl.” “you’re sexy for a big girl.” as if no one expected my bounding bigness to shake their foundations. my body is big but it’s not all of me. they saw my body has fat so they called me fat with daggers in their spit. they saw craters in my thighs and named me careless. they claimed love 25 for my body and called it a trend asking for my thanks. they saw my stomach drooping down and named me heifer. they heard me walking and swore they heard a stampede. funny how ears mistake my footsteps for the earth trembling beneath me; for thunder shattering the sky after lightning electrocutes the ground i stand on returning flashes of light to storm clouds leaving remnants of energy in my skin called stretch marks. yes, my body is big. it’s necessary to hold the force of nature cemented in the woman i am. the names i gave my body: big powerful beautiful worthy strong relentless enough idyllic pasts nostalgic futures edward whatley pen and ink with digital coloring in clip studio paint; 13" x 10" 92 low rent ghost story ayla walter i pretend to have a ghost that i scavenged for it’s picture frame from the parking lot dumpster of my dad’s apartment building in valparaiso. the frame turned out to be plastic but i kept her anyway in the back of my car for months named her lenore, and then marcelle, and eventually disassembled her frame to paste her up on the inside front door of my own apartment. i like to think that she’s mounted high enough for her scribbly black eyes to see out the window. that the little doll figure of her picture might be happy to be recused from the dump and given a place where her faded pink background offsets so nicely the dark wood of the door. and in exchange for the kindness of being able to watch daily movement of sunlight across the walls and cheap wooden floors, i pretend that my ghost protects my apartment. i pretend that she gets along with my cat that they both play together while i am out. i made meaningless symbols in red crayon on a white glass plate and burnt the welcome letter from building management before her in the entrance alcove. i’m no practitioner, but i definitely don’t have to pretend that marcel cares more about my residency wellbeing than the landlord does. at least the rent is cheap and ghosts, especially pretend ones, have very few needs. i don’t believe in ghosts, that should be clear, if i did perhaps i would not invite and love marcelle into my home as much as i do, and i do. but i am no big believer in anything beyond the fact that there is so much i don’t know. so i don’t believe in ghosts but not so much that i’m interested in hearing about how your second cousin or your best friend’s friend had something totally impossible and spooky happen to them and they saw a ghost with their own eyes just so you can try to prove it to me or expect me to try and disprove it 32 back to you– like most people, i’m not that interested in proof. all i can tell you is that things going bump in the night are just bumping noises that happen all the time in the night to me. one more of those banal mysteries to fill in the corners of the world like dry brown leaves each one with it’s own story i’m sure, but i don’t know them. i don’t know marcelle’s story, all i can tell you is that most likely it’s just an old commercial art print, maybe one of hundreds meant for a kitschy wall, and it doesn’t even look that haunted in the daylight when it’s not reflecting a dim streetlamp from fake gold edges and leaning up against a dumpster in the late hours of the evening but i decided to take her home with me. on a lark. i decided to love her. and i don’t believe in magic but, i do believe in magic. or at least, magical thinking. for free, i will tell you that everyone no-matter how analytical or practical they claim themselves to be has at least one totally irrational belief. deep down in their shifty gut it’s a human right i think, or a gift to see what isn’t there. i mean, without the vision who makes the art? and without the art who makes the future? and without ghosts how could we say goodbye without losing what we can’t survive the loss of? so i pretend to have a ghost, who watches over my apartment in exchange for the kindness of being able to watch daily movement of sunlight across the walls and cheap wooden floors. and more than anything i believe that we do not offer kindness because it is deserved, we offer kindness because we deserve to be kind beings. because love however received–or not received– doesn’t go to waste. i don’t know where it goes, but i have faith in that. 33 17 there were 87 work-related real estate deaths in 2019 corlan mccollum you walk into a room, and there’s a pony and a man who’s clearly been trampled to death, bled out in the corner. you assume the pony did it, but it’s a small room in a regular house, and the door wasn’t blocked, and the pony doesn’t look very aggressive or even very big. the dude could’ve gotten out, probably. but holy shit, there’s a dead body, and you were just trying to get this house ready to show to this young couple looking for a starter home, and they didn’t sign up for this! you didn’t sign up for this! so you take the rug out of the living room and roll up the body, and the entire time you’ve got this pony breathing down your neck. how did a pony get here? who even is this guy? so you unroll the rug and check his pockets, which are empty, except for a few dog treats. all that for nothing. you give the treats to the pony, because you don’t know, maybe they like them. it seems like it does. so you roll the body back up, drag it to the backyard, and put it in the shed. the pony follows you out, expecting more treats, but not being too forward about it. this horse is so chill, you think, there’s no way it could’ve killed this dude. you can’t have this pony following you around while you try to show the house, though, so you lock it in the shed with the body. then you go and clean up the blood and hoof prints just in time for the buyers to arrive, and the first thing they do is comment on how they’ll have to get a rug for the living room. you laugh at that a bit, and they ask you what’s so funny. you don’t know, so you tell them that there’s one in the shed, but they’ll have to wait until someone comes and changes the lock because the current owners lost the key. so you take them around the house, and they think it’s charming. and you come to the room that you found the pony in, and there’s nothing special about it, and the couple is planning to use it as an office, or a nursery maybe. and then as you’re all walking back into the living room, and they’re all excited about buying, you hear a wood door cracking outside and the bray of an unbridled and bloodthirsty pony charging out of the shed. you run to the back door, a sliding glass door that leads out onto the back deck, and you see the rug has fallen out of the shed and unrolled to expose the corpse to the world. and the beast is lined up with you, kicking the earth, preparing to charge. so you think to yourself, oh, it was probably the treats, and the pony bursts through the glass and rams into you, sending you flying across the room and you break your spine when you hit the wall and die instantly. 13 fungal body thalia mcintire maybe i should embrace the black mold. lean into it, you know, allow it to the point where looking at me induces nausea. let any eyes that lay upon me be glazed over with gray lichen in punishment for their crime. i could be a home for so much life, the spores in my lungs that wheeze when i speak, the worms boring holes beyond my eye sockets, the rats and rodents carving out a den in my abdomen. a corvid could make a nest in the space where my heart used to beat. i could be a walking reminder of mortality. fog like a veil katherine scott fog like a veil drapes a pale buick bride driven down the aisle by her trucker uncles, hoping they will press her hand to the grit of the familiar driveway. hushed music accompanies this slow march through the peaks when semis, soaring past in a free fall, strew gravel like petals as they gallop by the sleep drunk party, counting deer as they pass sprawl torpid arms over buckles. while the driver's baby blues contract and contort, attempting to wheedle road dashes through a film of lace cascading over night. one hand clenches the wheel, the other a procession of coffee cups and sleet presses kisses to her windscreen. unconscious copilots, holding their peace, will never know how elusive runaway grooms can be. 30 7 dissociation danielle harrell acrylic paint, watercolor, colored pencil, marker, collage; 17”x30” 40 “the hồ down” mailinh ho oil on canvas, 50" x 70" ode to gray men alex spurling i’m no spring chicken inside i feel rowdy young and tempestuous i am tawdry and bold never mild smoking in corners flying by the seams violating étiquettes the trumpeting troubadour! a hot iron skillet, a grease fire hoppin’ out of the pan the residue of boyhood– powder kegs with short fuses mighty roar! mighty squeak! no longer, nimble in the feet no longer, sound in the mind i’m still a grease fire and i’m no spring chicken. 68 15 rest and fire, black child mariah ivey may you dance as if the fire is beneath you chassé your fears into plied position scorching pavements with radical affirmation promising to always be kind to yourself may you burn down broken systems tethered to black tears emmett tills and ticking timebombs, only to ring-shout your way into safe spaces of emotional release may you awaken without apology on your tongue but joy beneath your wings laughing as if healing and resistance share one body may you remember your body—not as america’s sacrificial lamb but as a harmonious vessel of ancestral hymns singing songs of sweetness and soul liberation will come from a black thing may your palms, as they are, blessed with golden warmth and grandmama’s prayers, hold vinyl record memories worth replaying on sundays may your days feel a lot warmer there not as an escape of your reality but an extension of the reimagined ease belongs to you ease has always belonged to you rest and fire. rest in fire. rest and fire, black child. 31 la rosa julieanna childs he still sneaks away from the women in his family to take his smoke breaks; it’s as much of a tradition in their italian home as mass and lasagna on sundays. sofia knew about his smoking, of course, just like she knew about the whiskey breaks he took in their early years together before the children came along. grumbling his frustrations whenever she caught him escaping, he’d argue, “a hard-working man should be able to sit in his own home and enjoy a stiff one at the end of a hard day’s work without shame.” he stood up to her on those nights when he was this side of a three-fingered pour, and she had a way of letting him know where he’d sleep that night if he finished it. after 49 years of marriage, he’d never known her to pick a battle she couldn’t win. sofia held everyone under their roof to the same catholic standards she was raised with by her parents. he’d seen jameson take down more than its fair share of tough guys in the neighborhood, but he’d never met a whiskey that could go toe-to-toe with his beautiful wife. he’d talk a big game to her, but he was more afraid of her than anyone he’d ever met. along the way, she’d figured that out. today, he sits at their youngest granddaughter’s wedding reception, his heart overflowing with pride and joy. he begins to sneak away before anyone notices, but sofia’s loving gaze catches him. the young man inside him still yearns to wrap her inside his embrace. but his old bones take longer to move these days. he looks over his shoulder at her. weightlessly, she makes her way around the room, briefly pausing to acknowledge his exit with a smile. they speak their own language, seen and heard by no one else. his nerves remind him that he’ll give his speech shortly. he slips out the back door and into the fresh air. beyond the beams of sunlight, he finds a group of well-dressed men forging a wall against the brick corner of the building. their smoke billows up overhead, dismissing them as it rolls away and down the garden state parkway. one of the younger 32 la rosa men lights his cigar and congratulations are all around. he pats a tired hand to his breast pocket making sure sofia’s handkerchief is there. as the group makes their way back inside, he excuses himself to the men’s room. shaking any remaining smoke from his tuxedo jacket, he washes his hands and attends to the image reflected at him. he thinks back to those years of hard work, building the family’s construction business from nothing. and it was worth every minute just to see the joy and laughter of his family today. a smile nudges the wrinkles towards his ears. he straightens himself in the full-length mirror, remembering the day he gave their daughter teresa away at her own wedding. never without her handkerchief, sofia wiping the tears throughout the day. their daughter has done a great job raising all four of her girls. adriana turned out especially well, finishing school early and now applying for legal jobs in new york. the last few years have been hard on teresa, her husband traveling for work most of the time. she’s a tough italian woman though, raised by an even tougher italian mother. the night before teresa’s wedding, sofia gave her an antique trousseau. the hope chest included recipes handed down through the generations, linens, art pieces, and clothing items from italy they’d brought over when they migrated to the states in the 1960s. the handkerchief in his pocket was sofia’s favorite linen they’d saved from the old country; delicate, beautiful, and strong—just like his girls. last night teresa gave adriana a trousseau of her own, including some of the original items from the trunk that sailed with them when they began their new life in america. cleaning his glasses, he remembers when adriana’s boyfriend came to him a year ago to ask for her hand in marriage. he was honored to support adriana marrying her high-school sweetheart, just like he and sofia had been. while he makes his way past the head table where his family sits, sofia continues to float around, fussing over the arrangements. he pauses to finish his glass of chianti. adriana joins him, holding his arm as they step up onto the stage. 33 julieanna childs unsteady on his feet, he reaches the microphone. with his speech in one hand, he feels for the handkerchief with the other. the linen rests in his pocket, always paying tribute to la rosa (the rose). he knows he isn’t strong enough to hold his own. from somewhere inside the ballroom a guest taps their glass, gathering the attention of the room. he squints into the crowd, questioning his courage, struggling to adjust his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. he needs sofia to hold his hand in these moments when his strength fades. his eyes scan the mass of familiar and unknown faces. he wonders if she has gone. standing beside her grandfather, adriana takes his hand. she’s as graceful as any bride he’s ever seen. squeezing his hand, she whispers “nonna is here, papa. i can feel her.” her presence calms his concerns. he kisses her forehead. “she’d be so proud of you today, sweetheart,” he whispers into the lace cascading around her face. and then sofia’s spirit finds him again. sometimes she’s standing near their children, other times she sits beside them. freeing her handkerchief from his pocket, he wipes his eye. after all these years, it still holds the aroma of her rose perfume. 24 a far-off country gabriel akre oil on canvas, 48" x 42" 29 the face of love bailey kinder prismacolor pencils, 16" x 20" 16 autopsy nathan marquam i’ve searched for something good in you, like apple carved down to the bone. found tire swings and skipping stones. i’ve searched for something good in you, found worm-gut nails and walls punched through, the strongest hands i’ve ever known— i’ve searched for something good in you, like apple carved down to the bone. 62 how beautiful it is that we exist gabriel akre oil on canvas, 18" x 24" stargazing teresa copenhaver ink drawing on multimedia paper, 12"x9" 23 17 the hoosier dome shannon couch deadbeats and faux gutter-rats litter the sidewalk outside. run the gauntlet of smoke and wild-thinkers, glass and punk-purists – now properly initiated, enter. the omnipresent eyes of bathroom lumberjack jesus survey as the rafters sag from the weight of hanging bodies and the windows buzz in resonance with the youth behind them. “caleb was here,” reads the hole in the wall. forever unrepaired, chosen to keep, as the preservation of memory outweighs structural integrity. stereocilia, dead and dying, as the gore becomes gospel to starving, dirty hands. bassline pulse-drive and mechanical starry sky – this shroud is a battle cry, power incarnate. steam street kimberly balding, 2006 photography 101 white english: a satire juan taylor, 1981 84 few pieces of literature have given me more insight on myself than peter farb’s essay on black english. he brought out conclusions about a whole race of people that i am sure the majority of the public, especially the black public, are not aware of. after reading this essay, i began to understand that objectivity, not insight, is what one must possess in order to understand cultures different from one’s own. then i began to notice how strange the caucasian dialect actually is. (i must emphasize that my discussion of the history of white english is highly controversial.) down at leon’s barber shop, there are at least three different opinions on the matter: that white english is a completely different language from regular english, that it is only a different dialect, and the “let’s change the subject” viewpoint. after extensive research i feel that the first opinion is the most accurate one. the whole subject of white english is so tied up with both racism and good intentions that it is rarely discussed calmly, even by the linguistic experts at leon’s barber shop. at one end we have the racist who attributes the white hyperactive use of words to some physical characteristic such as thinness of lips and tongue. on the other end we have those of goodwill who try to rationalize that white english is simply an americanized english and that it is no more incorrect than any other dialect because hardly any of us speaks pure english anymore. noted linguist, chico gomez, says that the whole theory of white english is, in his words, “a bunch of chit.” (i assume that the word “chit” is referring to the phrase “chit-chat” or small talk.) both of these views are wrong though. white english has nothing to do with the anatomy of a race or with the “americanization” of the language. the history of the english spoken by new world europeans show that it has been different from the beginning. of course, not all whites speak “white english.” some speak just as we do, but besides wolfman jack, these cases are rare. by “white english” i do not mean that quaint vocabulary adopted by some non-europeans in order to pretend to be white. these rich and metaphoric words are just common slang, although even we who speak regular english sometimes use such words to express feelings. such words and phrases as “mr. hard guy,” “jerk,” “gross,” and “mercedes” (rather than the more typical “cadillac”) are now used by speakers of standard english. when i refer to white english, i am speaking of a different history, a different sound system, and a different basic structure. peter farb had one definite advantage in his research that i have not had. because all blacks came from the plantation and formed ghettos up north, 85 he was able to observe them without too much trouble. in addition, mr. farb had that wonderful research paper done by lorenzo dow turner, in which mr. turner studied the speech patterns of blacks in the deep south. i personally had a hard time going along with this research work; i just assumed that natives of the deep south had a distinct dialect; i expressed this thought to my mother, and she replied, “you makin’ sense, but you don’t be makin’ sense.” because the white population is more diverse than the black population, i had to find a group that would represent the white race. my three representatives were the kennedy family, the carter family, and the students of iupui. another wonderful source of research was the daytime soap opera. here, i could observe europeans in a natural setting communicating with one another. all these sources helped me formulate the theory i will endeavor to explain to you now. since people from all over europe had to ride the same ships over to the new world, and since they all did not speak the same language, a form of communication had to be established; the need resulted in what is known as “pidgin” english. (it is reported that the first words used were obscenities and ethnic slurs. these words are the bases of many words that we use even today.) therefore, most of the europeans arriving in the new world could communicate at some level with each other, and eventually they taught this language to their black employees. as the nation grew, white english began to diversify, but these variations are minor in comparison to the major differences between white english and regular english. it would take a novel to discuss these distinctions sufficiently, but i will point out a few of the differences between white english and regular english. in the kennedy family, for example, the “r” is left off the ends of words, so “car” is pronounced “ca” and “rear” is pronounced “rea.” in the case of the carter family, some words are unrecognizable. for example, “sure” is pronounced “show,” “bulb” is pronounced “bub,” and “far away” is pronounced “way over yonder.” the grammar the europeans use should be examined closely also. it is apparent that young caucasians have a hard time forming thoughts into words, so many of them use “filler” words such as “i go” to help link their thoughts. a typical conversation at iupui will sound like this: “i go, ‘are you taking me out tonight?’ then he goes, ‘i can’t.’ i go, ‘why not?’ then he goes, ‘i’ve got to go to the store.’ then i go, ‘can i go too?’ he goes, ‘sure.’ so i went.’’ after viewing soap operas, i noticed that the use of phrases like “i go” was superseded by use of more sophisticated words. in one episode i heard a woman say, “his exuberant behavior at the funeral was reprehensible. he acted like a debased imbecile.’’ i had to get my dictionary out to see whether she liked the man or not. some of the experts at leon’s have theorized that because whites have no rhythm, they cannot space their words properly, so instead, they 86 use enormous words, such as “irreconcilable,” to keep their speech fluent. some argue that my findings are not valid. they say i cannot judge a whole race on a few examples. some accuse me of inadequately defining “regular english” and point out that no one form of english is universal. but i feel that mr. farb’s research has set a precedent that all researchers can now follow. my only hope is that my subsequent studies of red, yellow, and brown english will not cause this much controversy. 46 stained glass, steel rod abby franke intimates best of art reality built megan vogeler oil on stretched canvas, 30”x40” 16 3 letter from the editors in every issue since its inception in 1972, genesis has provided a window into the minds and hearts of its contributors. flipping through its pages gives insight into what iupui students are thinking about, what is angering or exciting them, and what gives them hope. this semester, we sent out a special call for submissions across the u.s.—a first for genesis—in search of writing and art inspired by the work of ray bradbury, the prolific american midwestern-born author whose books such as fahrenheit 451 and the martian chronicles have captivated the imagination of people throughout the world. bradbury’s work contains key elements that are relevant now more than ever: exploration of what we do not yet understand in the universe, pursuit of life’s wonders, advocacy for intellectual and creative freedom, and an overall love for the written word. appropriately enough for this special issue, the work in this collection (both from students and from contributors across the u.s.) also shares in this fascination with what it means to be human and to inhabit this world while also dreaming of other worlds. in bradbury’s book zen in the art of writing, he wrote, “we are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. the trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” this collection of work reflects this idea. we each contain multitudes. we are filled with grief, anger, the desire to know the truth shielded from us, the love of those gone too soon, and questions about aging and how it affects our identity, self-image, and relationships with those closest to us. out of that complex fullness, life spills over—terrible and wonderful—and gives way to something remarkable. we would like to give special thanks to the ray bradbury center team for collaborating with us on this project. we are so grateful for everyone who made this issue possible, from our staff to our faculty advisor, sarah layden, to the writers and artists who poured themselves out onto these pages. these contributors have all let some beautiful things out. we are honored to be the ones who collect and present them to you. shannon kucaj and monica simmons managing editors 40 -40 i showered every single day for three years. i thought it could clean me, scrub away the fingerprints and bruises. i was afraid that if i went a day or even sometimes half a day without it, i would see them again – the bruises around my neck, around my arms, everywhere. though i gathered them gradually over time, i could picture them all together in my head, and the sensation of being touched without wanting it crawled on my skin like bugs. i wanted to stop being afraid of something that was gone. i wanted to stop waking up with my hand around my throat, wanted to stop flinching whenever i saw a silver sedan. i wanted to stop sleeping with my bedroom door locked, to stop locking my car over and over and over while i was getting gas or walking into the store, into school. locks didn’t save me anyway. i’ve tried to stop showering every day, and it works sometimes, but then i reach my breaking point again, and i find myself in the shower at three in the morning, scrubbing until my skin is raw and sometimes bleeding. then i have to walk across the hall in the dark, shivering, wet, and in pain. the fucked up thing is that i was never afraid of the dark as a child. i didn’t think monsters were real. but every so often, the short walk from my driveway to my house takes my breath away and collapses me onto my knees when i’m safely in the light because what if? what if i wasn’t alone? i think i’m being followed constantly, watch the cars behind me, that person in the gas station, that group of people in the parking lot. yet, when i think about it, the worst part of all of this is that it could have been worse, couldn’t it? it could have been worse. but when i’m locked in a public restroom, and i’m curled up on the floor because i can’t breathe, well, i know that it could have been a hell of a lot better, too. michaela white trauma. best of creative nonfiction 42 combat sport corlan mccollum conductors at the ready, baton twirlers armed and poised, the band is en garde, ready, fence, and the symphony begins with the first chair lunging, the brass section coming alive as sabers clash, parry, riposte, the touch goes to your opponent. go back to your en garde position, twist your back foot perpendicular to your front, squeak the rubber of your sole on the floor. shoulder width apart, find your balance, bend your knees, hear fence! and summon the drums, stomp your foot and stop your opponent. time stops, the orchestra lulls. you have the right of way! move! as fast as the strings of a violin warble, aim to cut across the chest, the blade whistling as you swing. then the horns resound again, they parry, you beat, and the light chimes the touch goes to your dueler. the opera approaches its climax, the diva is belting her final notes. find a strategy, bend your knees, fence! arm up, blade straight out, foot forward, classic, obvious prise de fer, so they stop advancing and cut across your vest. your guts would spill on the battlefield, centuries ago. you sigh with the woodwinds, the bout goes to the enemy. 54 isolationism brooke holmes photography 23 the sun veronica breach digital; 8.6" x 4.7" 6 (w)hole in the head nathan maquam “daddy, do you think that people have souls?” i asked. we were folding clothes on his bed. the bed was so tall that i had to scramble up onto it to grab more clothes to fold. my father shrugged. “that depends on how you define the word ‘soul.’” he said. “whatever the soul is, it’s made up of cells. brain cells. neurons and synapses.” “but you can’t prove that,” i said. “i can,” he said. “there was once a man who had a metal spike go all the way through his head. he survived, but his personality changed.” “how did it change?” “he was a good man before the accident, and a bad one after,” my father said. “after the accident, he made inappropriate comments to women and swore all the time. before, he wasn’t like that at all.” “did you know this man?” “no, he lived a long time ago.” “did he ever recover?” “no,” my father said, folding the last shirt in the basket. “he was bad until the day he died.” * phineas gage was a twenty-five year old railroad foreman. he was well-liked by his peers until the accident happened. lots of details about the accident are under scrutiny, but here is what we know: in 1848, phineas was packing blasting powder into holes to prepare the roadbed. distracted by his men, something caused an explosion with his head right in the line of fire. his tamping iron was shot upward through the left front of his skull and out the back 7 of his head. the tamping iron was greasy with blood and fatty brain matter. here is where the details get fuzzy: some accounts say that phineas passed out briefly and was carried to the wagon so he could be taken into town. other accounts assert that he never lost consciousness and climbed up into the wagon of his own accord. he was definitely conscious when the men got him into town. while they waited for the doctor, he sat outside and chatted with passersby. when the first doctor arrived, phineas greeted him by saying “here’s enough business for you.” the doctor who would save his life, dr. john harlow, would not arrive until 6pm that day—an hour and a half after the accident. dr. harlow reached into his skull and pulled out fragments of bone, managing to slow the bleeding. phineas remained composed and rational throughout this whole process. the next day, phineas was socializing with visitors under dr. harlow’s watchful eye, convinced that he would be back to work in no time. his health began to plummet within the next few days, however, as his brain developed a fungal infection and he lapsed into a coma. a coffin was commissioned for him, but phineas made a surprising physical recovery except for his left eye, which would stay sewn shut for the rest of his life. he returned home with his family. here is where things get really fuzzy, and the mass speculation begins to cloud the few eyewitness details that we have. we know that phineas’s personality underwent serious changes after the accident. dr. harlow wrote that he was “fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity, which was not previously his custom.” he seemed incapable of long-term planning, or of handling and understanding money. previous evaluations of him making a ‘full recovery’ only took into consideration his ability to walk and talk—family and friends insisted that he was “no longer nathan marquam 8 (w)hole in the head gage” to them. there are wild and contradictory tales of his demeanor. some accounts feature him as lewd and inappropriate, propositioning any woman he laid eyes on. other accounts paint him as being altogether disinterested in sex. some people even speculated that when his left frontal lobe was destroyed, his soul was as well. people understood him to be a godless creature, a monster with “animalistic tendencies.” save his closest family, people generally stayed away. * it’s evening, and my stepfather is putting his son to bed. my mother and i are in the living room. she’s working on her third glass of wine. “you remind me of your father sometimes,” she says. “that’s not a bad thing.” i shrug, noncommittal. “i loved your father,” she says. “i really did.” “i loved him too,” i say. “that wasn’t him in the end, you know,” she says. “your father never would have said those things to you. so if you are like him, it’s not the end of the world.” “ok,” i say. “he was a brilliant man,” she says. “and all he wanted was to be a father. he was always home by four-thirty to be with you, even if he had to be at work at five a.m. to pull it off.” “i remember,” i say. “i was there.” she drains her wine glass and pads sloppily across the kitchen for more. “i should go,” i say. i hug her goodbye, but my body does not feel it. on the drive home, i think that something is following me, is in the car with me. my dog sleeps peacefully in the backseat. i tell myself that if the dog feels nothing, then 9 nathan marquam there really is nothing. everything is fine. what’s dead is dead. * the story of phineas gage is one that almost everyone knows, but many people don’t remember his name. they just know him as the man whose personality was changed by a railroad spike (even though it was a tamping iron). though so many of the details of his case are unclear, people keep coming back to him. why? phineas’s case was the first one that showed a definitive connection between personality and the brain, proving what scientists had suspected all along. his case became the measuring stick against which all head injury cases are compared. most people only know the basics of his story: much as my father told it, people believe that phineas was a good person before the accident and a bad one after. however, this is a gross caricature of what he actually went through. most likely, phineas’s major shifts in personality—the profanity, the rudeness, etc—lasted only two to three years. viewed in this light, phineas’s story becomes one of a man damaged and recovered, not a man made into a monster by a freak accident. but people want to believe that morality works that simply—maybe because if a good man could be made bad by nothing more than a blow through his frontal lobe, then maybe a bad man could also be made good. in an effort to make sense of phineas’s story, the sensationalist media of the time blurred the vision of those in the future trying to look back. since phineas’s death, scientists have recreated models of his skull and brain in a number of ways, trying to figure out definitively what part of him was destroyed. but i want to know who he was before the accident, and if any of that old spark came back. i want to know if phineas knew when he was being mean, or if he was merely frustrated and could 10 (w)hole in the head no longer control his emotions. i want to know if he cried at night—and if he did, who was there to hold him. if he truly got better, i want to know if he got back the parts of who he was, or if he became someone else entirely. what was it about phineas that made him survive the unsurvivable? did he want to keep on living, or was life merely a thing that he was cursed with? * my father wasn’t admitted into the hospital until 2013, but i knew that something was wrong starting about two years before that, when i was twelve. he got mad when i talked to my friends on the phone instead of talking to him. he made fun of my hobbies, told me that my poetry was nothing more than “words puked across the page.” years before, when i had taken up balloon-twisting, my father had filled his car with all of my creations to show his coworkers. before he left for work in the morning, at his request, i’d get up early to fill his car with deformed giraffes, monkeys on lopsided palm trees, and balloon dogs with disproportionately long bodies. but when i printed my first plath-inspired piece for him to put in his cubicle, he didn’t even wait until i left the room to throw it away. when i try to draw a line between dad and not-dad, it gets fuzzy. a week after he threw my poem away, he read the bukowski book i left on the kitchen table so that we could talk about it. he left cd’s on my desk for me to try, always made sure that my computer stayed updated, and took me to halloween stores. these are the things that i tell myself were definitely my father. but what to make of that thanksgiving in 2012 when he, in front of everyone, declared that i was an unreasonable, impossible, and shallow child? his mother apologized to me and said, “that’s not who i raised him to be. that’s not him.” who was it, then? * 11 nathan marquam i still don’t know if i believe in souls. whenever i think of the dead, i can feel them watching me. my father always told me that it was in my head. the night my drama teacher died, i curled up next to my father in bed just as i’d done as a much younger child. pressed tight against his arm, i laid there and listened to his steady breathing, trying to escape the growing chill i felt from the side of the room that faced my back. i fell asleep right before my father left for work. i remember him pulling the blanket across my legs and placing my stuffed animal back under my arm. i am twenty-one years old now. still, as i pick through the various eyewitness accounts of phineas before and after his accident, i feel that same, dull chill. every article about phineas uses one of two pictures—there are only two known photographs of him, and even those weren’t confirmed until around 2009. with most old pictures, i look at them and see nothing. these photos are different. there’s something of phineas captured there, something proud and unkillable. he looks smart and ruggedly handsome even in his disfigurement. he holds his tamping iron like a knight holds his sword, staring slightly offcamera with his single, fixed eye. i look directly into his gaze, then shiver. it’s all in your head, i remember my father telling me. i shiver again, remembering my father. i try not to think about my father or phineas gage or anything else until my roommates are home, but i can’t stop. i’ll feel better when there are voices and light and real, live people there to remind me what’s real and what’s in the past. * in april of 2013, my father was admitted to the hospital for the first time. we thought he was having heart trouble because he was having a hard time climbing the stairs. it turned out that in addition to his diabetes, 12 (w)hole in the head he had developed lupus. the doctors prescribed him new medications and better nutrition to rescue what little kidney function he had left. “you need micronutrients,” the doctors said. my mother bought him a juicer, which he only used twice. my mother and i kept finding pizza in the fridge, ice cream in the freezer. my father only got sicker. i’d come home from school and hear him in the bathroom vomiting, then see him eating a poptart just a few minutes later. at first, it was weird when he was away at the hospital. after a while, it was weird when he was home. i’d automatically reach for three plates instead of four when i set the table. the health complications seemed to stack on top of each other, the words overlapping: dialysis, kidney failure, labile. one minute, he’d say i was the best kid a father could ask for. the next, i was a coldhearted bitch just like my mother. he caught a staph infection from the dialysis, which went to his heart. the doctors opened him up and put in a graft that would last ten years at most. the day after the surgery, my father was covered in wires, twitching in the hospital bed as my mother pulled the blanket over his thin legs. though he survived, the chill still followed me home that night. i begged the universe to let him stay, then cried uncontrollably when he came back from the hospital. the chill was gone when he left for assisted living for six weeks. he never came home again. i walked into the house one night and my mother’s face was so quiet and tired that she almost didn’t have to tell me. she pulled me into her arms, and i stared at his teacup still hanging on the wall. i wanted to throw it into the void at my back, the thing waiting for me to be alone. it’s all in your head, i told myself. i’m still in your head, it became, with his dry, labile laugh to accompany. which voice actually belonged to my father? when i tell 13 nathan marquam people about him, what parts do i include? what parts do i leave out to make a better story? * there’s only one film adaptation of phineas’s story that i can find: a fifteen-minute short film titled gage, released in 2014. overall, the film consists of hits and misses in equal measure. phineas doesn’t deliver his iconic line to the first doctor (“here’s enough business for you!”). he doesn’t remain calm and rational during the surgery, but rather screams in pain and fear. he leers at passing women, often with a beer bottle in his hand. in these moments, i wonder if the film is interested in who phineas was or in the stories people tell about him. the film is bookended by phineas making an appearance in a travelling circus. in many ways, it feels as though the film exists to make yet another spectacle of him. but there’s one moment in the film that for me, redeems almost anything. after months of trying to control phineas’s erratic behavior, dr. harlow places a gun to phineas’s head in a moment of desperation. phineas grabs the gun and moves it right over the scar left by the tamping iron, daring him to pull the trigger. dr. harlow does not pull the trigger. it cuts to phineas and dr. harlow standing outside, and phineas explaining to dr. harlow how to hold the gun, how to shoot straight. when phineas takes his turn, the gun does not fire. there is a brief, terrible moment of helplessness that he’s left with before he lumbers away, a beer bottle swinging in his hand. there’s no record of this scene actually happening, but it represents phineas in a way that makes sense. he had all his old memories—he remembered all his friends and family, and even who he used to be. but whenever he tried to interact with them, the necessary parts of his brain just wouldn’t fire. 14 (w)hole in the head * phineas lived for twelve years after his accident. he is remembered mainly for his erratic behavior in the immediate few years that followed, not for the rest of those twelve years. for a good portion of those years, he was a stagecoach driver in chile. driving a stagecoach requires precise movements, patience, dexterity, and even handling money—certainly not a job for an individual who matches the descriptions of phineas right after the accident. yet he did this job successfully. neuroscientists believe that he was able to hold this job due to a mixture of brain plasticity and the strict, regular routine of his stagecoach job. i’m sure this is probably the correct way to look at it, but i prefer to believe that phineas survived due at least in part to his tenacity and will to live. maybe, even in the darkest moments when phineas allegedly swore at children or propositioned married women, there was some tiny bit of him left, buried so deep inside that even the tamping iron could not scrape it out. maybe it just took time and patience to get it back. maybe he survived thanks to the loving support of his family, who were there through every leg of his illness. this may have been a burden his family was happy to bear, but memories of my father make me think otherwise. i’m sure phineas’s family hated him more than the newspapers ever could, that the juxtaposition of having him and not having him was slowly killing them. maybe he started working again because he wanted to, or maybe it was because his family made him go back to work just to get him out of the house. how did he learn to manage money again? did someone teach him, or did he teach himself ? before the open heart surgery, my father liked to wander around grocery stores. he’d come home with strange, overpriced vegetables that we didn’t need, blowing large portions of our already-tight food budget. my mother 15 nathan marquam finally took his credit cards away, rationing out cash for him instead. he spent all of that money on strange food that he usually threw up anyway. who taught phineas to manage his money? who taught him how to keep on living when all the newspapers said he had no soul, when the only people who wanted him for hire were travelling carnivals? who taught him how to step forward onto that stage and offer those gawking faces his handsome, fixed stare, daring them to see him as anything less than complete? who taught him how to survive? * a month after my father first went into the hospital, i knew he was going to die. most people (including my mother) didn’t know until after the open-heart surgery, but i knew because he told me. it was the day after he had surgery for his diabetes-induced retinopathy. “it’s too late,” he said, turning to look at me with his oneeyed stare. “it’s not!” i said. “look at that juicer mom bought you. i’ll help you put it together.” “no,” he said. “it’s too late. i don’t want to be here in this stupid old man body that’s shaped like a pear, slowly shutting down. no one told me anything until it was too late. it’s too late.” nothing i said could convince him otherwise. my father believed that humans are just clusters of cells that either live or die. there’s no in between, no before or after—just life powered by biological supercomputers in our skulls, and death when those cells die. i can find no mention of what phineas believed, if he believed in anything other than himself. maybe he didn’t need to. i want to believe that phineas was a good person, that he apologized to the people he had wronged after the accident. i want to imagine him accompanying the town’s 16 (w)hole in the head children to church on sundays and making small talk with the passengers aboard his coach, learning slowly how to rebuild. i want to know who he was, who he loved, why he decided to keep on living. i want to give phineas all of the grace and understanding i still cannot give my father. is there such a thing as a soul? is there something essentially human about us that transcends the fatty supercomputer of our brains? scientists look at what happened to phineas as proof that we are our brains, but the real story of phineas teaches the exact opposite: phineas was his tenacity and his kindness. his social reintegration teaches us that the brain will heal itself, forge new connections— that it is possible to survive the unsurvivable. had my father thought of it like that, maybe things would have been different for him, or maybe they wouldn’t have. all i really know is that it’s my choice how the story gets told. it changes a little every time—the details are fuzzy around the edges— but i tell his story just the same. 3 letter from the editors this issue began its incubation under the promise of a new era. we began to craft it in the energetic atmosphere of our staff room and were forced to complete it from several separate spaces. none of us foresaw the challenges we would face several months into the process. fostering artistic community is a role genesis has filled for nearly fifty years, sharing student work and hosting events that bring artists, readers, and editors together in their love of art. disconnected and uncertain times prove the value of tending to our community even more. as we move ahead in these present challenges, we take heart in creating a historical record of art, grounding us in the current moment and providing a foundation for the future. several pieces included in this issue such as the return, a hunger artist, under my wing, and “calavera...calavera…” see artists pulling inspiration from well-known pieces of art to provide unique contexts for their own realities. these pieces speak to one of the most important functions of art: providing comfort and inspiration for creative minds. in this moment and moving forward, we hope this issue of genesis offers solace for readers and artists alike. joseph alcala, jordan kalt, and trenna soderling managing editors 137 23” x 23” mixed media on stonehenge paper yuko kyutoku new york blue botanical garden #1 32 prayer of the unrequited lover corlan mccollum for all i gain to be in the same space as you to breathe in the same air to share in the same memories, a part of me becomes… inaccessible. a part of me that consists mostly of hope. it is a warm part of my heart that cannot burn if i am too close to you. a fire that suffocates in the reality of who and what we are. god help our souls. are we who we’re meant to be? is this what was intended for us? how could we be anything other than the idols, the totems we construct of ourselves to display to others and say “see this image, and know me by my work.” we are under so much pressure, if not to be somebody then to be anybody, and we have so little time to grow slowly and naturally as people, without the knowing gaze of others. when you are alone, in the quiet, in the empty space where the only thing to fill the room is the volume of your soul, who are you? and how do you love me then, i wonder? it is not a love i could ever know, by virtue of it being so private, but it is a love that shy chamber of my heart bleeds for, a love that can’t be shared when we’re together. god help us to save us from ourselves, and the awful things we do and think. may he deliver us from temptation and impulse, and into the arms of a righteous and destined future. somewhere warm with sunshine. i don’t care if the rivers flow with milk and honey. i don’t care if it’s nirvana or eden or the kingdom of heaven. i know that we go together, and the world may pull us apart or say otherwise, but lord, there is nothing more pure or divine than love, and i love you, and the best laid plans of men could not keep this love down. if this isn’t holy then there is nothing sacred worth keeping. his will is done, on earth as it is in heaven, and we are a part of it. this is my prayer, and my promise in god’s name, amen. 47 where was jesus? danielle harrell marker and colored pencil; 22”x30” modernized illustration from the original chi rho page from the book of kells. best of art rainbow fish danielle harrell craft felt, fabric paint, and embroidery; 15.5" x 12.5" 28 18 -18 self portrait chloe greenberg digital collage & acrylic, 10" x 5" 46 13 chanya ruby oil on canvas, 20" x 24" safety brief siren hand 14 one wrong move: that curb becomes my headstone. i saw it in american history x and didn’t know that cruelty could happen in real life until the news showed it. the cop pushed the old man backwards, his head cracked back against the brick. the blood poured from his ear and pooled baptismal, a halo around the whole puddle be(/ a)ware: this time stay on the sidewalks. the woman driving the van in monument circle said she feared for her life when she stepped on the gas. he punched out her back window, sliced his arm on the shards as she swerved past him. when you think the march is over, leave immediately. in bloomington, another woman tore through us after driving two hours, fuming from the protest announcement in the papers. neither of them used their horns. do not drink water offered to you by someone you don’t know. the video showed how people can poison it all without breaking the tamper seal. do not march through the streets here, this time. do not block oncoming traffic with your vehicles: they will press charges when you draw on their revving engines. link arms like in brazil. protect the organizers. don’t be shaken by the fourth of july fireworks outside the ice facility— double-barrel pressed into the protestor chest waiting for first flinch. make sure protestors with wheelchairs and walkers are not being harassed or targeted; the march pace reaches fever pitch and the bullhorn, chanting pulls away from 2.5 miles an hour. tear to the highway back through nazi-salute lined sidewalks. watch for their horses, switch the route up to confront head on: otherwise they will kettle. the tear gas is expired could concentrate here, explode like a gender reveal bomb, congrats! it’s expired! it’s inhumane! all wildfires starting with inspired spark. the old man’s skull is cradled firmly by cracks of the sidewalk, concrete angel cooing: shhh, shh. because of this, perhaps this year things will change. 15 111 7” x 9” intaglio hardground etching kira taylor twisted sedna molly wolfe digital art, 9" x 17" 36 last memories of you megan fisher digital 57 53 december christopher cassetty splendour oft’ is rare upon the winter morn— where hangs on low our eve’s deceitful fruit, and tears away the pall o’ gloaming skies the moonly breast o’ ensorcelled selene, and thus am i remember’d well the dreary night so long ago; july warmth burn’d the midnight air, and wherefore blazed the moon to mock the dousèd sun by sea repressèd, doth she wither embers unto nyx’s bleak december. whispers ‘pon the parchment-glass the quill to horror: the soft and gelid touch o’ winter’s sooth; or e’er the comet-dust fell, hypnos’ nepenthe bless’d, beseem’d the starless morn the night i well remember. for were it without selene’s endymion torture, ‘pon her zeus’s blessing to have undying youth, would sleep be not the unfortunate egress from the moonlit nights o’ nyx’s bleak december. philtres form’d from whisper’d words and winter’s lore are too the mind’s sweet lullabies of youth; beware this tincture, brewed o’ weeping skies’ depression, melts the icy carapace with fierce inferno embers. ‘fore, her ash, the lachryma-dust of flames, scorching earth from the gelid burns o’ melancholy gaze o’ moon, was once the steam o’ river lethe’s breath, borne to earth to warm our nyx’s bleak december. tender is the sun in waking from his torpor when he descries the fiery lands bedewed, and wherefrom wept the winter skies, the morning crest o’ moon, and ‘pon this sight, selene doth scream in ghastly tremor. for were it without selene’s endymion torture, ‘pon her zeus’s blessing to have undying youth, would i need not the morning sultry death o’ moon, to sleep at ease in nyx’s bleak december. growth megan fisher digital art, 2"x8" 38 fantasyland emma yuan fecteau “jia raised her metal fans and a windstorm of flames erupted around lord ren, engulfing the once proud northern invader. he screamed as he died, clawing at the flames that blistered his skin. she did not turn away until the dark lord fell to the ground with a thud. the war was over, and the pyromancers of kai’an were safe at last.” -warrior of fire by lianna chen as a general rule, main characters possess a great deal of luck. jia was no exception. her luck began with her beauty, milk skin that never blemished and hair that never tangled and black eyes that could enchant the heart of any man. on the battlefield, when her enemies sent thousands of flaming arrows in her direction, she would emerge unscathed. soldiers who dared to oppose jia always attacked one at a time and were tripped by suddenly appearing holes or blinded by convenient rays of sunlight. in fact, it was common knowledge that any opponent who had the misfortune of encountering jia on the field ought to run in the opposite direction. the reason was simple: jia was lianna’s main character, and even the most skillful of enemies were no match for the power of a writer’s pen. over two years had passed since lianna chen had finished jia’s story for good. the northern invaders were defeated, and the remaining soldiers from lord ren’s dark armies rotted away in dungeon cells. jia now tottered on the tallest roof in the district of pearls. the sunbaked tiles felt warm beneath her cloth slippers. there was a swift snapping sound as she opened two fans, one balanced in either hand. the sleeves of her black hanfu billowed around her, giving her the appearance of an eager crow. from her vantage point, jia could survey the city for miles. lianna chen was fascinated by ancient cultures, and the world she’d created reflected that. anjiang, the capital of kai'an, was built into the sloped shoulder of a yellow mountain, with a peak that scraped the orange sun. wood-thatched slums retreated towards the tumbling waters of the xianhe river, while others disappeared among the red pines of the weida forest. the lotus palace was built into a cliffside at the highest point in the city and cast a creeping shadow over the lesser dwellings. few knew the true measure of its size and grandeur, though jia had dined with emperor ming himself on many occasions. “how do you know lord yan is coming this way?” asked shen, who 18 19 crouched beside her. his own fans were tucked neatly into his billowing sleeves, and his lined face was fixed into a permanent frown. he wore his gray hair drawn into a too-tight knot, which gave his face an eternally strained appearance. “there are dozens of paths from the hatchery, he might’ve taken any of them.” “i can sense it,” said jia. “how?” bo snorted. he was the last of jia’s rooftop comrades. nineteen and bulky, his own two fans were dwarfed by the size of his massive fists. there was an impish grin on his broad face, the look of a boy who beckoned trouble. “trust me,” said jia. “and if you can’t trust me, trust lianna. my writer still guides me.” it was true. she felt drawn to this narrow road, though it wasn’t any different than any other in lower anjiang. peasant women peddled carts of apples and persimmons, a trio of elderly men hauled jars of water from the well on the street corner, and barefooted children ran from door to door trying not to get underfoot. the establishment where they were perched was an old bath house whose patrons were prone to carelessness where clothing was concerned. minutes passed while the three pyromancers baked beneath the unwavering sun. shen remained still. jia placed one fan between her teeth to free her left hand, which she used to wipe wisps of sweaty hair from her forehead. bo took out his mobile cell phone and began to text. “please tell me why you insist on bringing that accursed artifact everywhere?” grumbled shen. “relax,” said bo. “i’m just letting my friend know i’ll be a bit late for dinner. he’ll get worried if i don’t call.” “our ancestors have used kai’anese carrier pigeons for generations.” the lines on shen’s forehead tripled as he spoke. “this generation has no respect for old traditions.” bo smacked at the device, and jia saw the screen had gone dark. “the internet service is so awful here. i bet this never happens in other realms.” “other realms are not our concern.” shen’s eyebrows, which resembled rain clouds, had disappeared into his hair. “lianna built a beautiful ancient world for us. shouldn’t we fight to preserve what she created rather than trying to change it?” bo shrugged. “we only have to preserve our world if lianna’s writing a sequel, and warrior of fire’s been finished for over two years now. which is a shame, really. i always hoped she’d make me the main character of her next book. no offense, jia, but you have to admit i do provide a certain comedic appeal. perhaps i ought to cross the fourth wall and sell lianna on the idea myself.” 20 “no fictional character has left fantasyland for years,” said shen. “besides, you wouldn’t last five minutes in the realworld.” “i’d last longer than you—” “he is here,” interrupted jia. shen and bo fell silent. on the dirt path far below, four soldiers marched alongside a horse-drawn carriage. they wore only leather breastplates and shoulderpads over their black hanfus. the red feathers sticking from their caps bounced with each step. they were household guards, jia guessed, hired to protect a lord who was rich enough to afford them but not important enough to justify a royal escort. no match for three seasoned pyromancers. “this should be quick,” shen began. “we have the advantage of surprise. i’ll take care of the two in front. jia, you aim for the—” a garish tune erupted from bo’s cellphone, a modern jingle that sounded out of place among the bustling streets of lower anjiang. the people below, peasants and guards alike, all looked up. “now!” jia shrieked. she sprang down from her perch and crashed down onto the nearest soldier. he crumpled beneath her and groped for his fallen spear. jia knocked him senseless against the side of the lacquered carriage. the soldier ahead of her unsheathed his sword, but before he could advance, jia swung her fan in an arc. orange flames burst from the silk tips and flared outwards. the maneuver merely singed the guard’s silk robes. the young guard’s pimpled face stretched wide as he recognized her, and he was on his knees in an instant. “spare me, lady jia! begging your pardon a thousand, thousand times.” more flames flashed from bo and shen’s fans; they made quick work of the remaining guards while jia pulled the carriage door open. a lord quivered within, stinking of sweat and silk. his watery eyes were stretched wide. “what are you doing here?” he squealed. “did you think i wouldn’t find the man who stole from my sister?” jia demanded. “you’ll need to find another way to pay off your bad debts, lord yan. now tell me where it is.” lord yan’s round face turned a brilliant shade of red, and jia was reminded of the lanterns that decorated the district of pearls. as he stood, the top of his balding head brushed the padded ceiling. he lifted his seat to reveal a hidden compartment, where a quaking sound came from within. the bird fluttered its gold-tipped feathers and fixed jia with two pearly ochre eyes. in their depths, jia 21 detected a strange wisdom that surpassed lesser animals. shen pulled the disgraced lord from the carriage while jia lifted the goose out of the carriage. lord yan’s youngest guard was still apologizing profusely. “talk about a wild goose chase,” said bo. “comedic appeal,” shen scoffed. “as if !” lord yan’s beady eyes were trained on the animal in jia’s arms. “how did you know where to find me? does the house of everburning flames have spies in their employment now? what foul modern devices do you possess?” just lianna’s luck, jia thought. “regarding foul modern devices.” shen glared at bo. “next time you’re on an important stealth mission, i suggest you silence your phone.” ... hours later, jia brooded over one of many balconies that protruded from the stately manors in the district of pearls. “so this is what great heroes do when their stories have ended,” said mei. jia’s sister was a thin woman, with glittering black eyes and a face rounder and paler than a full moon. “i never imagined i’d witness the savior of kai'an staging an ambush for a goose thief.” jia withdrew from the balcony and into her room. flames burned in braziers at every corner, as they did all over jia’s manor. the estate was the ancestral home of a treasonous lord, granted to her by the emperor himself after lord ren’s defeat. it was a far cry from the filthy orphanage of her childhood. halls of vermilion timber posts led to spare bedrooms, libraries filled with dusted scrolls, and luxurious lounges. jia’s bed was so massive that a family of seven could’ve laid side by side. a steamed bath filled with lotus petals seethed in the corner, guarded by two stone lions. wooden lattice windows lined each wall, tinted red by the lanterns that glowed in the streets beyond. “the city watch already knew,” said mei. she was heating up an ancient teapot in a microwave. “they were waiting at lord yan’s house to arrest him. your interference was unnecessary, as it is often these days. but you already knew that. you just wanted to take the credit. song jia, savior of kai'an, the guardian of geese. the defender of ducks. you must be very proud.” “you should be thanking me.” jia settled on the sprawling bed. “the eggs 22 of golden geese are more valuable than any other export in anjiang, and we both know that a dozen members of the city watch aren’t equal to a fully-trained pyromancer.” “perhaps.” mei removed the teapot from the microwave, dipped her finger in the water, shook her head, and then placed it back inside. she watched the teapot rotating through the window like a giddy toddler. “try not to blow this one up, will you? putting out fires is much harder than starting them.” “it’s not as if we can’t afford it,” said mei. “we are fortunate that the foreign realms love our golden eggs.” the microwave wasn’t the only modern appliance in the house. jia still did a double take whenever she saw the washers and dryers in her bathroom, and their stainless steel refrigerator never looked quite right in the traditional kitchen no matter where they moved it. mei was head of the royal hatchery which bred golden geese for the emperor. the foreign realms of chicago and cedarbrooke were always happy to trade modern appliances for rare kai’anese gold. mei lifted the jade teapot and poured two cups. “admit it, you just like showing off.” jia placed one hand over her chest. “me? never.” “lianna chen isn’t coming back. she isn’t writing another book. your adventures are over, jia.” “i don’t have your talent for calligraphy or silkweaving or tea making.” jia pulled away her silk hair ribbon, and a curtain of dark hair tumbled to her waist. “protecting people is the only thing i know how to do.” “which is precisely why you should join the council of heroes.” at once, jia became fixated on unwinding her braids. “i know their laws,” her sister continued. “you’re of age now.” “we’ve been through this,” said jia, as she dragged a bamboo comb through her scalp. the tresses parted without interruption, as always. “there are ninety-nine realms in fantasyland. haven’t you always wanted to see the city of valor and the fourth wall?” jia shrugged. “why should i? i like my life here.” “you just like being special.” mei set a cup of tea beside her. “you like being the only one around here who can do any good. what have you actually done since lord ren was defeated?” 23 “you never know when there could be another invasion.” jia put the comb aside. “people around here like feeling protected, and i like protecting them. it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.” mei stood, and her silver hanfu rippled. a butterfly pin, their mother’s, held her hair in its complex updo. “you’re already a hero, jia. you don’t have to keep proving it to all of us. but beyond the borders of kai'an there are at least ninety-eight other main characters in fantasyland with stories of their own, and most of them are training in the city of valor. imagine what you could learn from them! but as i said, you like being special. you like being the only main character around. it makes you feel better about the fact that you have no purpose anymore.” jia sipped the tea. “you’ve added too much water, mei. this batch is bland.” “i know you, jia. you only insult me when you know i’m right.” her sister swept out of the room. jia tucked the comb back in her drawers, and rummaged around in the sea of hairpins and undergarments to withdraw a small photograph, which depicted three people. the tallest was professor henry monroe, a cheery man with bright cheeks and a glass monocle tucked near one eye. two young women flanked him; ellie monroe, a straight-backed blonde girl who had inherited her father’s pink cheeks and poor vision, and lianna chen. lianna’s black bangs marched across her pale forehead. her black eyes kissed in the corners, just like jia’s. jia’s mind wandered to a warm winter morning many months before. ... for a single day the snows had relented and the whirling winds stopped. the xianhe river thawed and buds burst on every tree, even though spring was months away. the long grass tickled jia’s legs as she walked with lianna through the weeping weida forest, their stomachs filled with mei’s delicious tea. snubnosed monkeys swung from the defrosted trees, where they called out to each other and pointed at lianna. herds of reindeer ran across the paths ahead, their black snouts flaring, their curved ivory antlers and slim heads cocked towards the two women. “they know who you are,” jia guessed. “they know you created them.” “it’s amazing.” lianna beamed. there was a smattering of freckles across her nose, and strands of her bangs peeked beneath the brim of her hat. “they’re 24 just as i imagined them in my head. everything is, especially you.” jia felt a warmth spread through her, not unlike the unexpected spring. “i’m almost done with warrior of fire,” lianna continued. “the final draft is due next friday, and professor monroe’s pretty strict about due dates. i’m in the final phase of editing.” “i see.” “some main characters have special requests for their writers,” said lianna. “i wanted to ask if you had any for me?” “i destroy lord ren’s armies?” jia asked. “i become the savior of kai’an?” “you do,” lianna vowed. “then there is nothing else that i want.” “nothing?” lianna frowned. “don’t you want to be with bo?” “i don’t love him.” lianna tucked a flyaway hair behind her ear. “i guess i’m not as good at writing romance as i thought.” “i didn’t mean to insult you.” jia shifted her boots, which crunched in the half-melted snow. “bo’s wonderful, he’s the best friend i’ve ever known. but i don’t want to be with him. i don’t want to be with anyone. not all stories need to be about love, do they?” “i guess not,” said lianna. her gaze was fixed on two twittering partridges, which hopped on a gray branch above their heads. they walked a bit further. “so you’ve always wanted to be a writer?” said jia. lianna smiled, and a clump of nearby peonies burst into bloom. “pretty much. when i was applying to college i tried to convince myself that i was going to be an engineer. for the money, you know? but i barely lasted a semester.” “do writers not make a lot of money in the realworld?” “nope.” lianna’s thin shoulders slumped a little. “i mean sometimes, but it’s super rare. i never would’ve switched majors if i hadn’t met ellie’s dad. he showed me the portalstone and the way into fantasyland.” jia nodded, astonished that a craft so integral to her own existence could be so undervalued. “it’s hard keeping fantasyland a secret,” said lianna. “but i understand why. if other people at whiteriver state found out what the portalstone can do, 25 everything would go to shit. the u.s. government would probably take it and try to make bombs with it or something.” she gazed at anjiang with all the fondness of a mother seeing her firstborn. the orange sun seemed to gleam a shade brighter. “god, i’m so glad i didn’t go to purdue.” “purdue?” “it’s another college in indiana,” lianna added. “which is the last state you’d expect to find any magic. but i’m glad my family moved from cali. meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” “will you come back and visit?” “i promise,” said lianna. she handed jia a slip of paper. “this is for you. professor monroe takes photos for his class wall and he had a few extras. just so you have something to remember me by?” “it’s perfect,” said jia. ... jia clung to the photograph and traced the outline of lianna with her fingers. why hadn’t lianna returned? there could be any number of reasons. perhaps lianna died in a freak accident. perhaps she’d quarreled with professor monroe, and he wouldn’t let her enter the portalstone anymore. perhaps she’d abandoned jia and was writing a new story. the thought of this made hot tears fill jia’s eyes. what had become of the woman who created her? “what am i supposed to do without you?” jia muttered, as she clutched the wrinkled paper to her chest. 18 unnamed poem 6 christopher cassetty this poem was written firsthand during the events described in a notebook later found with my belongings being checked into the hospital; it is transcribed digitally here. i lay atop my bed with clouds for eyes; these wretched liquid tears beseem me well, for nightly days and daily nights have come to be ubiquitous so with these storms. a crying–crying so well taught from birth. how comical ‘tis, to cry like this from then, to now, and neither is there sight of end– of end; i beg the stars to make it end. the moon aflame the night wants too to die, a flutter ‘twixt the clouds o’ dreary hell; she weeps, and tears besmirch the whilom ‘drum arras o’ sky; her flames ignite the swarm of thoughts–of thoughts of which there was a dearth– to die, to take the hand o’ moon and then— ignite, the round o’ chamber, make my end, to call my days forgone, by means of scend, and was it well, decided i, the perfect night to … [sic, page torn] 40 rusted geometry gabe george three 3ft x 2ft rusted steel plates untitled (tampon) emma schwartz oil on canvas, 45"x55" 46 queen of hearts veronica breach digital, 4400x5600 pixels 70 29 questions for the sculptor sage justice who are the angels a: beggars cupping hot thermoses lapping up milk with shriveled tongues who are the devils a: there are none then who commits the atrocities a: swines in uniforms squealing for stolen mothers who are the cherubs a: skeletons cutting out valentines with safety scissors who are the ghosts a: city rats scouring empty nests in human skulls retching bile and tar what is heaven a: a blank canvas what is hell a: she’s sealing letters with red wax then who is the punisher a: the cracked silver hand mirror buried in the backyard and who is the god a: threadbare hands caked with clay 9 hummingbird eulogy zoey hunsinger a flower-kisser collapsed on the ground. he refused to sing, wouldn’t flutter his wings and wouldn’t sip nectar from a trumpet. he was imprinted into cement after the daring revolving door wouldn’t let him through. i didn’t know his name, no one ever does. but i watched him every day from the cheap-seats of university grass. he sucked up to the peonies and licked the daylilies. his saturated red gorget zoomed in the clouds, caught amongst the fallen stars. he danced with anna around hedges until the pink throat hummed a blue note. now his wings give one last beat and his eyes close. i lay a honeysuckle petal by his four toes. give it a day, the gardener will sweep him up. whale watching lifan fan, 2016 oil on canvas 92 22 a midnight heartbreak christopher cassetty upon the sun’s faint dying breath, as twilight lies in sombre death, do i descry the pallid moon, so doleful, whole, so dismal, too; and up above the clouds so high, she weeps agleam her tears of white, a crying sight so full of woe, wherein her sins the night bestows. a dream beseems this dreary night, for all it crawls with things of fright: the gothic moth in search of gore; the mystic witch who reads of lore; as well, her spell, the peccant bane; and last, the ghast, of vile disdain. and i, thereby, am last to go, to cry whereby the moon doth glow. to cry, and die, am i so tempt’, as dreams appease the night’s contempt, and wherefore werewolves turn to howl, whereby the nightly moon befouls the midnight grid of blazing stars, our twain, ill-fated, broken hearts, as werewolves share parts man and wolf, and rarely dares feel woe the wolf. when only grown to don my fur, enthrall’d by all the moon’s allure, with teeth agleam from moonlit dreams—the ichor crying from my teeth— as well, the knell before the sheep, my droning groan for more to eat, beware the air so moon-kiss’d cold, … as werewolf dare i favour wolf. 4 letter from the editors we are honored to share this special 50th anniversary issue of genesis. iupui students have been contributing to and creating our magazine since 1972. in each issue, we are amazed by the talent and dedication displayed by our editors and contributors; as we reflect on 50 years of genesis, we are further moved by the work of those who came before us. our issue contains art lovingly crafted by current iupui students as well as pieces selected from the past five decades. the contemporary pieces consider different topics and perspectives. they contemplate identity, comment on personal and social tensions, explore science fiction, and enkindle warmth. we are truly grateful for our fellow editors, our faculty advisor sarah layden, and all artists brave enough to submit their work. our time with the magazine has allowed us to build connections and community while doing what we love—talking about art. this is our last issue as managing editors, and we are proud to share it with you. we hope it reflects the experiences of current iupui students while acknowledging the history and legacy of past genesis issues. thank you for picking up a copy. abby, kelsey, & zoe managing editors 104 11” x 14” ink on synthetic yupo paper clayton keehn nostalgia is a sweet and suffocating aroma 11 self-portrait in a thunderstorm ashley wilson the rain patters against my flesh, the sideways slant creating a curtain against the blackness. i relish in the feeling as it rolls down my skin, creating rivulets on my cheeks. i watch in wonder as lightning strikes, a mere mile from where i stand, ensconced by the thin glass of my balcony and no more. seconds later comes the thunder, roaring through the sky like a beast who missed a few meals. i want the rain to consume me, soaking through my clothes, skin and bones, ravaging my body until there is nothing left. until the scent of the rain wafting up from the cement underneath my feet becomes my new favorite perfume. until i become the lightning, a brilliant spectacle which lights up the dark. until i feel the thunder, as it permeates my soul and swallows me whole. 43 48” x 36” acrylic paint on canvas elise dobson fool for love the scythe curtis williamson digital; 9" x 11" 68 el movimiento del dolor louisa coello digital procreate, 11”x14” 45 65 a boy briesa koch the niros were always flamboyant. they had a big house, four cars, an in-ground pool and basement arcade to boot. yet they chose to have their home built in an average income suburban neighborhood. the husband, bastian, was the president of a hospital in the neighboring city, just eight miles north. the wife charlotte, a rather large woman in size compared to her husband, ran a home daycare on the weekends. during the weeknights she was often seen out at the local bars and clubs with ‘friends.’ it was no surprise that the niros had money. the rest of the neighborhood, myself included, came up with the idea that bastian’s family came from old money. that charlotte seduced bastian and was living off what he could provide for her. it was a baseless assumption really, but the entire neighborhood was full of gossips and the niro’s were easiest to gossip about. not that anyone was marked off the list. everyone always had something to say about someone. but the niros were typically the number one choice in terms of outrageous discussion. none of us ever really saw them save for when bastian left for work or we brought our kids over to their house for charlotte to babysit. so, it was utterly shocking when i opened my mailbox on a saturday afternoon to find an invitation neatly tucked into my monthly time magazine subscription. i ran back inside my house, nearly slipping on the damp grass from the previous evening's rain. the neighborhood facebook group (which bastian and charlotte were left out of, for obvious reasons) was in uproar. the newest group discussion post read in big bold letters: the niros are having a baby?! the comments on the page were a mix of excitement or disbelief. some had even posted pictures of their invitations. everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the celebration. it was to be extravagant, as the invitation so opulently 66 a boy exclaimed, to celebrate the awaited arrival of a new member of the niro family. “impossible,” posted brenda bennet who lived just four houses down from me. she was tall and blonde, her skin forcefully darkened. gregory hicham sr., the older man who brought my daughter treats when she was younger wrote: “what a sudden surprise.” while old ingrid, as the neighborhood had named her, simply asked who was planning to attend the event and what we planned to bring. not everyone commented and i didn’t blame them. i hated posting on that page but reading what was posted was an entirely different matter. gifts for the baby are not required but would be highly appreciated. i was slightly offended by that sentence when i read the invitation, though i still found myself at walmart the next morning looking for the most gender-neutral baby clothes i could possibly find. i decided instead on three pairs of animal themed socks, two sippy cups and a grey rattle toy. it was more than i had wanted to buy, but once i started, i couldn’t stop thinking about the faces that the niros would make at the number of gifts i brought with me. because they hadn’t asked for them. not really. i even bought a gift bag with red polka-dotted tissue paper. it remained stuffed away in the corner of my closet and when my daughter asked me what was in the bag, i dismissed her question and asked about her day at school instead. she rolled her eyes at me, catching my attempted subject change. that night we ate dinner at our small rounded table, talking about the party, discussing this supposed baby. i continued thinking about the niros into the night, peaking out of my window and looking at the house nestled at the end of the cul-de-sac. the clouds parted, the moon escaping through and illuminating the niro’s home. i shivered in my robe and settled into the large expanse of my bed. i felt myself missing the feel of arms around me as i tucked my hands underneath my pillow and turned onto my side. i briefly wondered if charlotte was trying to fall asleep as well, with 67 briesa koch bastian’s warmth surrounding her. i felt my mind numbing as i fell asleep to the sounds of the night. the whistling of an owl, the rustling of the pine tree just outside my window. it was to my great disappointment that when i arrived at the niro's house on the day of the celebration there were dozens of gifts lined up on a foldable table. all with colored bags and even more colorful paper. there was hardly any room left on the table for mine. i gave the gift to charlotte when she opened the door to let me and my daughter (who was annoyed that i had dragged her along) inside. i told charlotte that we both had a hand in picking out the gift. she thanked us, her cheeks bunching up as she smiled. we drank, laughed, congratulated, though the neighborhood mostly stuck together. the niros were the ones who had to mingle. the children, young and old, had gone to swim in the pool or play one of the games in the basement. screaming and laughing, high-pitched cries of utter joy could be heard. i saw mr. hicham blowing up party balloons and twisting them into fun little characters. an orange dog, a blue giraffe. he squeezed the end of it a little too hard and the balloon popped. the child in front of him started to cry. my head throbbed at the sound. he tried to calm her down but she showed no signs of stopping. he eventually turned to the remaining group of kids, blowing up more balloons and twisting them together. more children were running throughout the house. one was thrown into the pool. another one jumped off the diving board. i almost didn’t notice charlotte approach me until she broke into my peripheral view. she was holding her hands over her belly, though because of her weight, i couldn’t see the baby bump. she was watching bastian as he spoke to a group of three women. the one in the middle, who happened to be brenda bennet, was smiling and laughing at each joke bastian made. she had been the person to start the neighborhood facebook group. her oldest kid was a soccer player. her youngest, a pianist. “how far along are you?” i asked charlotte. 68 a boy her blonde hair was neatly tied up in a bun, her cheeks were red from exertion. she huffed as she spoke. “18 weeks.” “oh wow,” i marveled, taking a sip of the lemonade in my red solo cup. “how does bastian feel about it?” “he’s really excited actually, i told him just last week.” “last week? that’s a little long to keep a pregnancy secret don’t you think?” charlotte chuckled softly, “he’s always working and i’m busy too. i just never found the time, i guess.” i nodded in understanding, thinking of my own failed relationship. i felt suddenly out of place next to her. there was still another 45 minutes before we were all to be herded into the yard like cattle. all just to pop the giant green balloon tied to a post to reveal the baby’s gender. it needed to happen sooner; i was ready to go. it was hot and miserable, not to mention awkward. i had no history with this woman. i could have stayed home. “he’ll be a good dad i’m sure,” i said, mostly to break the silence, less because i thought it was true. “you think so?” “of course, he gives off dad vibes.” “dad vibes?” i nodded again, taking yet another sip. the lemonade was doing absolutely nothing to cool me down. the regret of going for the flavored drink instead of the cold water crossed my mind briefly. “he just seems like the kind of guy who would be good with kids.” charlotte continued to watch bastian. he was still talking with the same group of women; brenda was laughing a little too hard. she leaned onto bastian, looping her arm in his. bastian in turn wrapped his arm around her waist, using his other hand to wipe tears from his eyes, though his chuckling did not cease. “bastian wants a boy,” charlotte said. it was almost inaudible. “not a girl?” 69 briesa koch “no. but it makes sense if you think about it. boys aren’t walked all over like girls are. they can do anything they want to do, act any way they want to act.” she paused to take a breath, “if we ever have a son, bastian said he’d teach him to play football, to drive a car. he’ll show him how to ask a girl to prom. how to cut his own hair and get a real job. things like that.” “do you want a boy?” charlotte shrugged, “it doesn’t really matter what i want, the body is the decider this time around.” i laughed at her comment, though charlotte’s lack of response made me go quiet. her previous words flooded my mind, bringing up memories. broken glass, a bruised hand, my daughter’s tear-streaked face as she begged us to stop fighting. i rubbed my cheek where the long-faded bruises had once been. i could still smell the coppery taste of blood in my mouth, though it had been years since that time. there was a dull ache in my chest but it faded quickly, my focus floating back down from the clouds. my mouth opened to formulate a response but charlotte looked at me before i had a chance, a small smile cracking her serious expression. “we should have cake before we do the reveal. don’t you think?” she was looking at me expectantly, so what else could i do but nod enthusiastically and follow her into the kitchen? i trailed after her a bit reluctantly. my thoughts flickered to my daughter, wondering when she had left my side. though the concern i felt for her was second compared to the spike of worry that shot through me as a child bounded in through the open screen door that led into the backyard. he was screaming, another kid was in hot pursuit, a water gun in hand. “not in the house ki—” charlotte started, but before she could finish the child slammed into her stomach. i gripped the cup in my hand feeling it buckle beneath the pressure. charlotte caught the child in her arms, stopping his pursuer in the process. she bent down rather quickly despite her 70 a boy condition. “no water guns in the house boys,” she said, dragging out the "y" in boys. they huffed, running around the corner. i saw one of the boys turn around and stick his tongue out at charlotte before they disappeared, their laughter continued. “are you okay?” i asked almost immediately after. “of course, why would i not be?” “well it’s just, i thought…” i trailed off, looking down the empty hall where the two boys had gone. “your baby—” “is perfectly fine,” she finished. as if to reinforce her point she rubbed her belly. when we reached the kitchen, she called for bastian who appeared in the doorway, a look of mild annoyance on his face which instantly dissipated when he saw me. “let’s serve cake,” she said, holding the knife firmly in her hands. he complained the entire way as he approached the counter then turned and regarded me with a blank stare, wrapping his arms around charlotte’s middle. he kissed charlotte’s cheek, rubbing the bulk of her stomach. he pressed into it and charlotte flinched away. “what are you doing?” she asked him, accusingly. bastian shrugged. “i’m trying to feel the baby.” “not right now, we have guests,” charlotte said, her eyes flickering to me. i felt myself begin to sweat even though i was wearing a sleeveless shirt. bastian dismissed her comment and began to reach for her again but she pulled away and opened a cabinet, taking paper plates, forks and knives from within it. i turned away from the pair and took a large drink from my cup, unsure of why i had even come with charlotte in the first place. “could you grab the napkins?” charlotte asked. i only realized that charlotte had been talking to me when i felt her hand on my shoulder. i nodded enthusiastically, a raspy “of course,” spilling from my lips. then the couple called to the rest of the group, announcing the cutting of the cake. children swarmed in, brushing past me. other people from the neighborhood filtered into the large kitchen grabbing paper plates and 71 briesa koch plastic forks. some, though unnecessarily, took photos of the pair as they held the knife together and cut into the spongy dessert, brenda being one of them. it was like a wedding all over again. completely over the top, an event soon to be forgotten, tossed aside like most things in life. there was more mingling and small talk. i meandered around looking at the photos plastered all around the front room. i saw bastian and charlotte in venice, kissing on a gondola. the one next to it showed the two bundled up from head to toe in winter wear as they stood upon a large sheet of ice. though why anyone would take a photo while ice skating was beyond me. there were many more pictures. all of them featured some expensive place or exotic island. i felt jealous of charlotte. i wondered what life could have been like had my partner and i been more financially fortunate. if they hadn’t run off, despite my best efforts to keep things together. i shook my head and turned away from the wall, heading out into the blistering summer heat. i ate my rather small slice of cake and then found my daughter. she was sitting at the edge of the pool with her feet dipped in the water staring across the yard at one of the older boys. he was shirtless and his swim shorts were stuck against him, dripping with water. he was kicking around a battered ball with a girl his age. she laughed and screamed. her braided pigtails flying as she ran around. occasionally he would look over at my daughter, flashing a toothy grin. i wanted to stomp over to him and wipe that smile off his face. but i didn’t. someone had moved the table of gifts so that it was placed right next to the giant green balloon. bastian and charlotte were there, sorting through gifts. people were gathered about, begging the couple to open their gifts first. there were collective ooh’s and aah’s as they revealed multiple articles of clothing, diapers, pacifiers, toys. there were quite a few repetitive gifts. “it’s alright,” charlotte had said, “we’ll just give the duplicates to goodwill.” bastian had insisted that they keep them all, saying that 72 a boy it was poor behavior to give away gifts, though i was sure he was specifically referring to the gift that was bought by brenda who ended up purchasing the same pair of pajamas as old ingrid who was housed just across the street from her. charlotte temporarily gave up persisting about donating the gifts and instead insisted that it was time for the reveal. my daughter was next to me now, looking down at her phone, completely uninterested. i was still holding my cup, habitually taking another sip only to find that there was no more lemonade left in it. there was chattering and the snap of cameras as the niros both gripped the string tied to the green balloon. someone had started a countdown from ten. nine eight seven six five their fingers tightened around the string; bastian’s face was pulled taught in concentration. four three everyone standing around the niros began to raise their cameras in unison. i passed my empty cup to my daughter who took it absent-mindedly, still scrolling on her phone. two i grabbed my phone from my pocket, opening my camera, my thumb hovering over the red button. one they pulled the string and the balloon popped, blue confetti spilling everywhere. it showered over the niros, pooling at their feet. “it’s a boy!” bastian yelled, taking charlotte in his arms, though he could not lift her. there was barely any room between them, her belly pushing flat against bastian’s as they embraced. the crowd cheered, the muted snap of cameras ensued, the neighborhood broke into chatter, descending upon the niros. bastian was still hugging charlotte and crying into her shoulder. i kept my distance and clicked into my gallery 73 briesa koch to look at the photo. the angle was jagged and blurry. i cursed my shaky hands and moved to erase the photo but i was stopped dead in my tracks. the picture i took had been just a moment before the balloon had ripped open, small pockets of blue confetti peeking out. in the picture, bastian’s eyes were focused up. a large smile stretched across his face. charlotte was not looking at the balloon, instead she stared straight ahead. she wasn’t smiling, her mouth downturned in the beginnings of a frown. i used my thumb and index finger to zoom in and get a better look. no one had caught her expression in the chaos of it all. only the camera. in that picture, charlotte’s face was forever contorted in complete and utter misery. i pressed delete and the photo disappeared. taking the only tangible evidence of that moment with it. sirens louisa coello graphite on paper, 11”x14” 27 burning butterflies david brent johnson, 1990 104 after i was born, my father brought me home from the hospital, placed a giant stereo speaker on each side of my crib, and welcomed me into this world with the voice of jim morrison screaming “break on through (to the other side).” i’ve told you this already, i know. i’m telling it to you again only because we are both lsd babies, red and purple microdot children conceived and born in the year 1967, when the summer of love burned to an end in the streets of detroit and newark, when robert kennedy and martin luther king were both breathing and well on their way to the year 1968. i told this to you on our first date, in the dim place we called coffeehouse hell, with windmill fans and huge potted plants that hung just a few feet above our table. you ordered lemonade and when the waiter brought you iced tea instead, you held the glass up and said, see? that’s the story of my life. then you laughed and banged your head on the table. i must seem like such a freak, you said. so i told you my story and when it was over we both looked up at the potted plants and you said, we’d better get out of here. where we went from there—the flood of young-body passion, the careful lowering of guards that is like nuclear disarmament, the inevitable disappointment of discovering the other will not solve all your problems—felt like familiar territory, but you refused to erect the usual signposts. you never said i love you; you thought it destroyed something, began the bogging-down of conventional commitment. when we decided to live together, you insisted that we rent separate apartments across the hallway from each other. when i pointed out the economic impracticality of this arrangement, you fell on my couch and bit a cushion, exasperated with my ignorance of your spiritual practicalities. even then, you must have sensed that some day you would disappear. you’ve disappeared before. you drove to california to see if the swallows really do return to capistrano. you called from carbondale, illinois, and asked me if i wanted to run away to wyoming with you. wyoming, i said. why wyoming? we could be cows there, you said. we could sit in a field and eat alfalfa sprouts all day. this is indiana, i said. we can be cows here, i said. but i want to be a cow in wyoming, you said. you’ve disappeared before, i know, and i’m sorry if i’m being unbearably paternal. i’ve always had the urge to take care of you, feed you, take out your trash, water your plants. i came over to your apartment today for the sole purpose of watering your plants. we keep a vigil at your windowsill, your plants and i. i play a game: i stare at the droopy green leaves and try to make them rise with the force of my eyes. so far, the leaves still droop. 105 you left a pair of sunglasses on your kitchen table. i put them on, i look at your world through transparent circles of green, i pretend that i am you. for a few moments, we share the creation of a green glass mind. i listen to this dummy oracle, not wanting to lift the glasses from my face, but the only secrets it has to offer are the ones i never told you. through your window i watch a flock of black birds in the grey sky, swirling like ashes in the wind. leaves flutter like butterflies as they fall. you thought that you would go to hell because you burned a butterfly once when you were little. you caught it and set fire to its delicate green and black wings that reminded you of an oriental fan. and when you woke up the next day, you started to cry. you discovered that the bed forgives everything, but the morning offers no repentance. you went to church that weekend and when you picked up the program, it said, welcome to our sunday service. the story of your life. you walked home and prayed to god to change the rain into flowers. and when he didn’t, you walked home and drew a picture of it. you warned me, i must admit. once, drunk on the roof outside your kitchen window, you told me i was another butterfly. i’m in love with doom, you said, and i laughed at how seriously you took yourself. i turned my collar up, dracula-like, and moved with bared teeth towards your neck. it’s not funny, you said. i’m happy being unhappy, if you know what i mean. go to hell, it’s where you want to go anyway, i told you the last time i saw you. still, sometimes it seemed the only place to go. we both understood the lure of a statue in a cemetery at night. dissect a joke and it’s not funny anymore, we knew that too. you are what you beat, we used to say. an aroma of spices and soap is most of what’s left of you here. i can’t embrace the air, the clothes in your closet are bodies without souls. your sunglasses stare at me from the kitchen table, green circle green circle do not add up to eyes. if you were here right now, i know what you’d say. this, you’d say, makes all the sense of a vegetarian hamburger. well, they exist. vegetarian hamburgers are everywhere. i step outside and the night comes down around me like a coat i love to wear. we were the kind of people who don’t turn on their lights as soon as it gets dark. sometimes i still worry about you. i worry that the star inside you will collapse and turn into a black hole. you will walk alone with a ruined face and nobody will say hello. you will have what you thought you wanted, and you will try to cry, but only moses could draw water from a stone. how will you avoid it? you might kiss a statue. you might touch your face to see if it’s still there. you might pray for a rain of flowers on the funeral pyre of a butterfly. moon mother kat scott her thumb gouges deep as the night unfolds. lifting to pour sticky jam in divots, tart and overwhelming. as she looms heavy and round, pregnant with disappointment. with a face, so faithfully dusted concealing acne craters, the voice of mother through still air reminds you to floss. then, from rocky silence, regards your new lover, taking notes. so then, what is the name your pillow calls? perhaps your father’s already half-full the moniker, a mould. asking, is the door unlocked do the birds have covers? until a horizon, pink with sleep is duly impressed with her pale pale thumbprint. she accedes and we arrive. 24 nyc subway emma schwartz collage, 22"x30" 47 122 11” x 14” ink on synthetic yupo paper clayton keehn hdykam? 61 bloom trent mcintire leaves and petals bloom, hidden in the crack of a burning desert, outstretched on the peak of a broken mountain, digging between boulders and a ravine wall, choking on a 5th story balcony, where no other seed would dare fall, but where the soil is rich and black, and invites intrusions, where worms burrow, bees float beside birds who sing and saturate the air with life, the beauty of a single blossom drowns in a sea of its kin. my partner shaves my head in the bathtub sage justice and the porcelain soothes my restive fingers; wandering flurries of hair drift around me like dove feathers. he steadies himself on me, hand on my shoulder, blows hair from the clipper blade. four glinting window tiles, blooming glass flowers, are embedded in the wall behind the shower. the evening rays peer through them, kiss our naked heads as i lower myself under the running water. a warm stream rinses the locks to the drain stop and i am blessed, bare and bald as i was after c-section. removed, i was, not born. extracted from the cavity of my mother as i now uproot myself from her, clip the umbilical cord growing from my head and baptize my new name in the saliva of my lover’s mouth. church pews line my bathroom walls, empty but for my partner, and i rise, dripping, holy and whole as a babe bathed in afternoon sunlight. 80 devils in the livery of heaven kaiti shannon 43 “...stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” frederick douglass using religion as a justification for slavery goes far back into the creation of america, for in new england the puritans thought it acceptable to take over anyone whom they felt was lesser. according to zinn, they “...appealed to the bible, psalms 2:8: ‘ask of me, and i shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession’” (14). they used this scripture to defend their enslavement of the native americans and then later the africans. as slaves in america, harriett jacobs and frederick douglass both experienced and understood how religion was used—specifically in the south. in their memoirs, they examine the hypocrisy of religion being used to moralize treatment and excuse atrocities done towards slaves. they also examine how slaveowners condoned their actions under religious guise by practicing religion and not spirituality, using religion as a ticket to improve reputation and excuse actions, and as a form of control. finally, jacobs and douglass demonstrate the distinction between the religion and spirituality of christianity through their interactions with others and, despite everything, had their own spiritual relationships with god. despite the adoption of religion, unbelievable hypocrisy was passed down to and practiced by the slaveowners of the south in how they moralized the treatment of their slaves for monetary gain. like their puritans forefathers, they looked upon the africans as heathens to be mistreated while simultaneously helping heathens in other countries. as jacobs says, “they seem to satisfy their consciences with the doctrine that god created the africans to be slaves. what a libel upon the heavenly father, who ‘made of one blood all nations of men!’ and then who are africans? who can measure the amount of anglo-saxon blood coursing in the veins of american slaves?” (69). africans were considered to be heathens, and therefore, slave-worthy, despite how intermixed was the blood of many slaves with that of the whites. many masters would have sexual relations and children with their female slaves and consider it perfectly moral, despite clearly going against the biblical commandment against adultery—not to mention rape. they were “represented as professing to love god whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. they love the heathen on the other side of the globe...while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors” (douglass 104). douglass shows the tip of the iceberg of southern christian hypocrisy in this quote where the slaveowners of the south did not care whether a slave was a heathen to be loved or what the bible commands but whether religion could justify using someone viewed as lesser for a slaveowners’ profit. the religion of the south was used as an excuse for atrocities done towards slaves. douglass says that, “the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection” (67). the religion that ruled the land was framed in such a way to allow for all sorts of mistreatment to slaves including rape, starvation, abuse, and more. because men could call themselves religious and say they were just treating the heathen as they should be treated, religion was the perfect justifier. slaveowners who converted to the religion of the south not only rejected christianity’s teachings of love and grace but were crueler because of it for it allowed them to condone their actions under a religious guise. it is also clear that what they adopted was the religious part of christianity and not the spirituality aspect. when douglass was with mr. auld, he hoped that after his master attended a meeting and learned about religion that auld would come back the better for it, and maybe even free his slaves; however, auld’s conversion made him even crueler than before. for “prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty” (douglass 47). the religion he ascribed to not only neglected to better him but aided in making him even less humane by justifying his actions by letting him believe he was in the right. auld only ascribed to the religious element of christianity, for he went through the rituals required of him and said he believed what he needed to believe. he made pretensions of being extremely devout and religious, but he didn’t truly attempt to have a spiritual relationship of his own with god. because masters were able to use their association with religion as a ticket to excuse their actions and improve their reputation, they were some of the basest slaveowners around. jacobs witnessed her master take up religion and become worse for it as well, for he, like auld, used it to justify his actions, and he also did it largely to improve his reputation. jacobs said she “...supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men; but the worst persecutions i endured from him were after he was a communicant. the conversation of the doctor, the day after he had been confirmed, certainly gave me no indication that he had ‘renounced the devil and all his works’” (115). he hadn’t joined the church to become a holy person or to follow god. he joined, as he told her, to improve his reputation with the community so his actions of abuse and general cruelty towards his slaves would be less frowned upon (115). as a doctor, he needed to keep the reputation he’d built up, and religion was a prime way to do so. religion gave him a guise of goodness to hide underneath and gave him a way to condone 44 the way he treated jacobs and the rest of his slaves in the eyes of the community. douglass says in his memoir, “being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. for of all slaveholders with whom i have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. i have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. it was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists (67). for, like dr. flint, mr. covey also joined the church to increase his rank in society and the way he was viewed by those around him. in fact, his rank as a christian even increased his ability in the eyes of the town to break slaves because he had religion to back him up. religion was a way not to become close to god or to be a better person but to help masters justify the actions of themselves and those around them. however, slave owners didn’t only use religion to ease their own consciences and bring them up in society. religion was also used as a form of control towards the slaves because masters could use slaves’ religious devotion against them for their own benefit. according to zinn, “a book consulted by many planters was the cotton plantation record and account book, which gave these instructions to overseers: ‘you will find that an hour devoted every sabbath morning to their moral and religious instruction would prove a great aid to you in bringing about a better state of things amongst the negroes’” (160). the masters of this time most definitely took up determined to use this advice and encouraged their slaves towards religious instruction. religion was not held back from the slaves but was orchestrated in such a way that would be beneficial to the slaveowners. in jacobs' narrative, she explains how the services arranged for slaves were of a singularly manipulative nature, pushing towards the master’s agenda. the minister preached on the text, “'servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto christ'” which is the king james version of ephesians 6:5 in the bible, but it’s doubtful that the apostle paul ever intended the minister’s twist to be put upon it. he said, “'although your masters may not find you out, god sees you; and he will punish you. you must forsake your sinful ways, and be faithful servants. obey your old master and your young master—your old mistress and your young mistress. if you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly master. you must obey god’s commandments'” (jacobs 106). as religion was used to back up the actions of the masters, it was also used to convince slaves of their errors and how they could obey their masters better to be more valuable to them. this sermon clearly was preached in order to gain control over the slaves and encourage them to have complete submission towards their masters. despite witnessing the horrible ways that religion was interpreted and acted out towards him, douglass still understood what christianity ought to be and the distinction between religion and spirituality. he clarifies at the end of his memoir that he isn’t trying to insult christianity as a whole, but the religion 45 of the south. he says, “i mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to christianity proper; for, between the christianity of this land, and the christianity of christ, i recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked” (douglass 101). to douglass, there is a difference between the way he was treated by these so-called christians and the real, true religion of christianity. again, we can see the difference between spirituality and religion. douglass understands that god is a good god and that having a relationship with him is valuable, but he also understands that religion is something that is corrupt and used for masters’ gain. similar to douglass, jacobs was also able to see the distinction between spirituality and the religion of the south. jacobs had two opportunities to see christianity lived out in a more spiritual aspect in contrast to the religious one of her master and other so-called christians of the south. after the sermon when the preacher explained the importance of obeying their masters, she also heard a sermon where the minister spoke to the black congregation with a completely different goal. he said, “‘try to live according to the word of god, my friends. your skin is darker than mine; but god judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their skins.’ this was strange doctrine from a southern pulpit. it was very offensive to slaveholders” (jacobs 111). instead of catering to the slave owners and sticking to the status quo, this minister spoke biblical truth to his audience without an agenda for obedience and profit. jacobs also knew a young lady who had some authenticity in her religion, for, “she taught her slaves to lead pure lives, and wished them to enjoy the fruit of their own industry. her religion was not a garb put on for sunday, and laid aside till sunday returned again” (77). jacobs was able to recognize this and see the charade of the religion practiced by dr. flint and many other slaveowners in contrast to an example of true christianity. douglass and jacobs also had their own relationships with god, which is surprising after all the torture they faced with their masters doing their work “in god’s name.” while religion was used to control them, it was also a way for them to retain their independence, for “music, magic, art, religion, were all ways... for slaves to hold on to their humanity” (zinn 163). it allowed them to maintain their humanity against the inhumane treatment they suffered, for they were able to have their own relationship with god distinct from the religion of the time or the way religion was used to control them. both jacobs and douglass appealed to god in times of trial. they never stopped praying, hoping that he would deliver them. they did have their doubts, however, for jacobs was stuck in the garret, it seemed to her there “was no justice or mercy in the divine government. i asked why the curse of slavery was permitted to exist, and why i had been so persecuted and wronged from youth upward” (186). she questioned why god had let all these things happen to her, but she still prayed and sought god for comfort amid 46 her trials (202). she understood the distinction between religion and spirituality and took spirituality upon herself in the midst of these trials even when the religion claiming to practice following the same god she worshipped had failed her. similarly, douglass sought for god, ridden with similar doubts as jacobs, when he was seeking freedom: “o god, save me! god, deliver me! let me be free! is there any god? why am i a slave?” (56). it is no wonder that both jacobs and douglass sought for god (and questioned if he existed) because of what happened to them, but it is important to note that they did seek him despite it all. the religion of the south was an atrocity to the name of christianity and of god. at the end of his book, douglass says, “indeed, i can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land christianity. i look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in’” (101), and this could not be a more accurate description. the way religion was used in the south to justify the cruelty done to the slaves, to control them, and to take away their independence is a direct attack not only on people but on the name of christianity. christianity is a religion about a kind god coming down, dying for his people, and encouraging them to love their neighbor as themselves. the southern slaveholders used it to justify cruelty, giving it a reputation of hatred. however, the way jacobs and douglass still chose to have spirituality and seek after god despite their experiences shows that this religion can be stronger than what men try to turn it into, for the religion of the south was truly full of devils in the livery of heaven. 47 sweet dreams carmen nobbe ebony pencil and white gel pen; 8" x 10" 35 157 12.5” x 6” silk screen print abby franke rainy day alive megan vogeler oil paint and sawdust on stretched canvas, 18"x24" 12 wavering dark thought lauren pickering digital photoshop brushes, 11"x14" 300 dpi 37 51 the lucky candidate lynae golder listen, honey, i want you to understand how lucky you are to be here. out of fifty-odd-something candidates, i selected you. i looked at your resume and knew it was you that i wanted. i knew you were perfect for the job. you’ll draw people in, and when they see you—your eyes and your lips and your body— they’ll want to trust us. you’ll trust me, too, once you see what good you do for me, what good i can do for you, and how well we work together. no need to look away. relax. the job is easy. listen, honey, you’ll come in each morning, and you’ll stand behind your desk looking professional—professionally beautiful, professionally delicious, professionally forbidden—with your freshly-pressed suit jacket and that nice little pencil skirt of yours. rick will hand you some paperwork to file, but really, you’ll watch for people coming in and out—and maybe you’ll wink at them some to catch their eye—and say to them, “what can i do for you?” you see, these people think they’re coming in here to book a room at our five-star hotel, but really, they’re paying for a conversation with you, they’re paying for your smile, they’re paying to see such a pretty woman sitting at the counter when they walk in, ready to attend to them like their own personal servant. that’s what we’re looking for, you know? someone ready to serve our guests, to make them feel at home, to make sure they find comfort here, to make sure they keep coming back. no need to look down at the floor. relax. you’ll make them come back. listen, honey, there’s a reason i chose you. there was no other competition when you stood next to everyone else, especially considering how you look, how you smile, and how you listen so well. i looked at your resumé, and sure, it was impressive, but nothing held me like that fierce expression on your face—and that goddamn silhouette—the one that told me you knew you were getting the job. it’s as if you knew we’d be perfect for each other. it’s as if you knew how good you’d be for me. no need to stir in your seat. relax. as long as you keep yourself looking like you do—with your hair nice, your lips plump, your eyes bright, your neckline low, your skirt tight—you’ll be here for a long while. i’m not foolish enough to let you go so soon. listen, honey, you’re lucky to be here. you’re lucky to be mine. introduction to the bradbury-inspired anthology “everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. or a garden planted. something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. it doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. the difference between the [person] who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. the lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” ― ray bradbury, fahrenheit 451 ray bradbury left many things behind when he passed away in june of 2012—his stories, poems, films, plays, work with disney, and his relentless advocacy for freedom of imagination, space exploration, libraries, and literacy. how fortunate we are that we’re able to interact with vestiges of bradbury’s creative genius by reading his books, watching his films, or looking at our moon’s dandelion crater through a telescope.1 but, bradbury did not become an internationally renowned author overnight. he was a child of the depression who couldn’t afford college. he even had to take remedial english during his senior year of high school because his grammar was poor. he learned to write by studying his favorite authors at his local library, and he sought out advice and mentorship from legendary pulp fiction authors such as leigh brackett, c. l. moore, and henry kuttner. he cherished the way these authors coached him, and after he achieved broad acclaim, he paid it forward by coaching and encouraging a new generation of writers—from the margaret atwoods, stephen kings, neil gaimans, clive barkers, and charles johnsons to the writers that grace the pages of this magazine. ray bradbury’s creative grandchildren and great-grandchildren are right here, waiting to be read. bradbury often cautioned aspiring writers against being too ambitious by writing novels. “the problem with novels is that you can spend a whole year writing one, and it might not turn out well, because you haven’t learned to write yet. beginning and intermediate writers should write a hell of a lot of short 1 scientists and astronauts who came of age reading bradbury’s works have named a moon crater, an asteroid, and several martian terrain features in his honor. a digital copy of bradbury’s the martian chronicles resides on mars thanks to the phoenix lander. 56 57 stories and poems. if you can write a poem or a short story a week, it doesn’t matter what the quality is, because you’re practicing. and at the end of a year, you’ll have 52 short stories and i defy anyone to write 52 bad short stories in a row! […] after a year, you’ll have at least one thing that’s absolutely wonderful. i began writing when i was 12, and i was 22 before i wrote my first decent short story.” this special issue of genesis reflects bradbury’s desire to see aspiring writers blossom. what’s absent from these pages are the failed attempts, false starts, error-riddled drafts, tears, frustration, and all other vestiges of a messy writing process. what you see is the final product, the harvest that comes from tilling the soil of one’s imagination—the product of the hard work required to produce “something absolutely wonderful.” i’m eager to see how the creative careers of these authors evolve in the coming years, but i hope that they’ll look back on this issue with pride, that they’ll view it as an important milestone—a touchpoint that they’ve left behind. jason aukerman, phd director, ray bradbury center 57 36 d.c. al coda siren hand i (a) “drill sergeant, can you burn my flag?” i wave away his smirk and motion, give it here. the private pries the velcro flag from his uniform fuzzy from wear (fuzzier than his rank), embroidery tension-frayed from everyday tear. the sparkstart of a lighter a flame a flashpoint— this is one thing, among us, i say, but be careful who’s watching: we wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea. it’s one thing, to burn the edges of this patch, make it good as new, acceptable for wear. it’s another to burn it out of boredom. this is your flag, too. care for it as you need to. the questioning refrain: and when people burn it for protest? covered under free speech. all of it: the right to burn a flag to kneel with it, to fly it upside down in distress— if a protestor feels there’s need for it. this cloth is voice, and presence, and power. if not for all, then for whom? ii (a) it’s 12:49pm. my heart is pounding the drumroll of another civil war in my throat in hours of/and seconds in prayer in refrain beating like a flagpole on the capitol steps and there is no place for this type of wrong: 37 this spark of a flashpoint, a flame, a warning: this is one thing, among us, but be careful who’s watching some dead flag parades the halls as a living victor. i wonder if the hands of clio’s clock stopped if she watched from the hallways of the house, wonder if her gaze was in glee or horror, if it was some rebirth of a nation, again. how many has she midwifed? i (b) private, are you asking because in august a black football player kneeled (kneeled: as in protest as in prayer as in reverence as in acknowledgement) instead of burning it, or putting his hand over his heart, instead of complying to violence? some considered this the greatest offense, disrespect to our flag— never like recoloring it black and blue (as in brutality, as in bruising from the finger-deep press to find a pulse of the black cadaver). iii this cloth is voice, and presence, and power. if not for all, then for whom? give a name to the distress. signal however you can. make your grief unmistakable— your questions, unavoidable. the sacrifice of symbols is a sacred voice people will always judge you for it seek ways to invalidate it. you. your life heart beating in refrain: 38 this is your flag, too. care for it as you need to. burn make new, acceptable . you have the right. if there’s need for it. ii (b) i emailed the architect of the capitol to ask if any clocks were broken during the riots. “none of the historic clocks were damaged on january 6,” as if time kept going, with or without the whole nation behind it. d.c. al coda the thread from his flag shrinks from the heat coiling tightly blackening into crumbling rubbing into good-as-new into january 7th, into some refrain of a spotless nation put back as it was supposed to be— no one ever the wiser. a different perspective megan vogeler oil on wooden panel, 45"x35" 31 herbie sits in a field for 10 years mason runkel digital photograph 15 evil among us megan vogeler oil paint on stretched canvases, 36”x72” 26 recovering eden louisa coello oil pastel on paper, 18”x24” 33 better fences siren hand 58 my therapist asks me to describe what guilt looks like, where it sits in my body. i fidget with the brass buttons stitched around the border of the couch pillow as i piece the words together. i tell her guilt is bitty, miss valentine’s pit bull. she asks me when the first time i encountered bitty as guilt. i tell her, well, it wasn’t the first time but this one time she was in the house party’s doorway in high school, after i kissed marta’s best friend. then i saw her again at the stop shop when i misdirected a customer into the service well during an oil change. i saw her little grey muzzle poking down at me through the gap left by the tilted car. my wrist twists, and my fidgeting pops a button free. i clap a hand over it, stop it from rolling. i tell her that most recently, bitty sat at the foot of my bed when i forced a cough and gritted my teeth to let my mother know: i was too sick to go visit her for her birthday. i just didn’t want the hassle of the trip, but instead i traded it for another, to her funeral later that year. tomás, she interrupts my spiraling, tell me about the first time. i tell her i try to live every day not seeing that dog. i tell her when i see bitty, i’m almost always sitting with my head in my hands. the pit bull beside me sets her gray, meaty head on my thigh and nudges my elbows away from supporting. my head lulls, but i catch myself before it drops completely. bitty wags her tail at me. her body sways gently, hopeful for a good ear scratch. i oblige, even when i know what’s coming. i tickle her ribs and massage her neck, fingers finding bald lines in the patches of her fur. i scratch the fuzz under her jaw, smoosh her jowls and cheeks together, and run a slow seam up her nose with my nails. then, they catch on an edge of her skin. i pull my hand back, tear away from her, and my palms are bright and bloody. we were nine then. summer days started early with kids running our long, straight street as soon as the sun gave them permission. our houses were packed close together, a crowded row of teeth, the gumline cut short by the fill and highway that separated both parts of east perry street. some houses, like zion’s, had a large yard with the house built at the back of the lot. miss valentine’s brown house, across from mine, squatted right in the middle of hers. my family’s house sat at the front of our property with a gravel driveway running the depth of the back yard, so my dad could park his hvac van and still have room for my cousins, aunts, and uncles. we always had a visitor and somehow managed space for them. after my mother drove to work, her vacant space left a perfect halfcourt for zion and me to play basketball in, until she got home in time to start dinner. our basketball games were only ever interrupted by drivers revving their car engines, wanting to peel down the road’s straightaway. or, by dogs barking. the door to the brown house opened and the dogs spilled out into the plank-fenced yard. the burly husky ambled to the fence with his nose in the air, while the little pit bull raced around the outside of the house in a circuit. zion pushed the basketball to me. “they good?” “i think so, but i’ve only ever seen them in that yard,” i responded. he’d been nervous about the neighborhood dogs for weeks, after a german shepherd on hanna broke through the fence to chase him on his bike. the ball bounced off the back of the hoop. zion caught my rebound, squared up his feet, and shot a beautiful failure. “they ever try to jump the fence? no? well, i’m fine as long as they stay there, and i stay here, and you get the ball if it goes over that way.” “yeah, i got you.” i dribbled, i shot, and missed the backboard completely. he ran after it. i called, “zee, you got plans for the fourth? we’re doing fireworks in the street again.” “you know my mom doesn’t let me go out after dark.” “but my parents are going to be there, so they might. just ask them, already.” zion scratched at his scalp. “yeah, i guess. i might, i just need to wait until they’re in a better mood.” “what happened this time?” “they caught me making an extra sandwich.” zion was the oldest and only boy of five kids. they all moved to east perry street from greenwood just after that new year, so his dad could live closer to the shipping warehouse in plainfield. most families in bean creek kept to themselves until they got to know the neighbors, know which ones were safe or who was best avoided. it wasn’t even a week after they moved in, before my mother told me i would never be playing or visiting at zion’s house. his family had taken to fighting so loud we could see them rolling in the street or hear them shouting behind closed doors and shaded windows. i first met him walking on his own to the bus stop for school. he was holding and rubbing his arm, trailing behind the girls when i caught up. “you hurt?” i asked. “yeah. i got a whuppin this morning.” “what’s a whuppin?” he sucked his teeth. “come on, you don’t know what it is? you ever 59 make a mistake or mess anything up, and they hit you?” “oh! yeah, sure. sorry.” i didn’t actually know who they were. they could have been his sisters ahead of us or the lanky, greasy high school boys that hung out at the bus stop on their dirt bikes. the boys loved riding behind our bus to school, making crude faces and flipping off the kids on-board. we’d slouch in our seats, hoping to duck low enough to avoid the harassment. the they he was most likely talking about were his parents, i figured. only because it was early in the morning and i didn’t know who else he might’ve seen in such a short time. i couldn’t speak much from experience. while threats of getting set right were numerous in my house, the only times they became promises were when i misbehaved at school and cut my mom’s work short to come pick me up. even then it only happened twice. a sore ass later, i figured i’d behave for a while. i knew that if i listened to this kid, he’d probably tell me what happened, and who they was. he did. we got so carried away talking, he told me everything except for his name the first three days. he even told me the they was his parents. barks braided in between strands of yapping and whining as the mailman opened the box across the street. if zion jumped a mile, the basketball flew two—and it was a brick. “hush, you’re not scary,” the mailman teased over the fence, “you’re a teddy bear. just a big bear! you don’t scare me, you giant fluffball.” “al! al, i’m so sorry! i let them out—i thought you’d already come by.” she hurried, yelling from the brown house, this darkhaired, short, thin woman. she was dressed in gray sweats with a head of black ringlets that twisted chaos around her like a stormy crown. she clapped her hands to pull the attention of the dogs. it didn’t work. “here. miss valentine, here! you’re already out here, anyways,” al offered the mail over the fence as the dogs scuffled at their feet and pressed against the gate. she took it and showed it to the husky, who sniffed and inspected the junk mail. sensing no threat, he grew bored and ran off with the pit bull to wrestle. the woman’s gaze swept the street. she spotted us and waved. zion waved back. “y’all doing ok out here? it’s hot, boys. you drinking water?” she asked. her accent leaned heavy into the summer air. zion and i looked at each other, and zion let her know we hadn’t been; we just went inside for water when we got thirsty. she retreated to her house and came back with a whole gallon, and it was chilled. “i’m sorry, it’s all i have, but it’s too hot to not be drinking water.” 60 “you got cups?” “sorry, i don’t, i’m washing the dishes right now.” “it’s okay—we can waterfall. tomás, waterfall!” i squatted down a bit with my mouth opened skyward like a baby bird’s. he uncapped the jug and carefully tipped a steady stream of water into my mouth. the cold soothed my throat and spilled out the sides, chilly rivers that tore me away from the haze of summer. “hey, your dogs. do they bite?” zion asked her. she leaned against the fence on her elbows and laughed. “not really, just each other. they’ll roughhouse. the big guy, sampson, will wrap his mouth around your arm, but he just wants you to think he’s in charge. he’s not in charge of anything, though. bitty is the little one, and she’s scared of everything so she won’t stop barking. together, they’re not a bad alarm system.” bitty had circled the house and returned to the front gate. i offered miss valentine back her gallon, but she held up a hand and shook her head. “keep it,” she said, “just keep drinking water. we don’t need you passing out on the street, with these idiots driving so fast through here. need anything else?” with no hesitation, zion spat out, “you got any food?” the creases between her brows deepened. even thinking about it now, i only really saw miss valentine frown a handful of times: one when she told me not to worry about what happened to bitty, that she would be okay, and another was this very time when zion asked for food. any of the times i saw miss valentine frown, it didn’t seem to be from disapproval or disappointment. it was from sadness. “i’m sorry, i don’t really have anything to make—my payday’s tomorrow. wait, what are y’all doing tomorrow? i know it doesn’t help much now, but i could make sandwiches. y’all like grilled cheese, right?” she had a voice like sun tea that was too sweet to resist. zion asked his parents, who said it was fine if she fed all his sisters, too, and they wouldn’t worry about dinner whichever night. mine might have said it differently, but they meant the same thing the roths did. the meal was a relief. it was nothing fancy, but still appreciated. it was one that my parents didn’t have to cook, and a novelty i could happily eat. the next day miss valentine made good with napkins and paper plates for all six of us kids, crunchy grilled cheese—some with dried tomato, potato chips, and a couple gallons of ice-cold apple juice. she handed them over the fence, over the hopeful dogs’ heads, and shuttled back and forth to her small brown house to make more. her garbage bin sat right outside the gate for us to throw our trash into. at first, she did it every payday, then all the fridays in between. we 61 looked forward to the grilled cheese fridays at miss valentine’s fence. we even snuck sampson and bitty more than their fair share through the gaps in the planks. the dogs would snap up the scraps and crunch at the toasted cheesy crusts, sneaking them out of earshot from miss valentine. i picked at the wooden crate that we used for our front step and listened to the crying from down the street. zion sobbed as his mom yanked him by his elbow to the small brown house. everything about her was large: her square shoulders, broad chest, and full stomach. her feet. her hands, which pulled zion through miss valentine’s open gate and straight to her front door. mrs. roth pounded it with the side of her fist, police-knocking until it opened. “zion said you aren’t going to be in town next week?” “oh, hello, miss roth. no, i won’t be. i wanted to make sure y’all could make arrangements.” miss valentine was small but still offered a cheeriness, even as mrs. roth loomed over her. “why not?” “i’m sorry?” zion’s mom leaned in, at least a good head taller than miss valentine. “i asked why you won’t be here. we’ve got five kids, and every friday this summer you gave them grilled cheese, chips and juice. why not next one?” “missus roth, i don’t mind helping out, but i’m not going to physically be here. i can give you money for the food, if you’d like?” “i don’t have time to make all that, either!” “ma’am, i don’t know what you want me to do. zion, i’m sad i won’t be here, too, but i’ll make sure to give you the money for the food and teach you how to make the plates, if that would help?” “he doesn’t cook.” miss valentine tried to wave it away, saying, “that’s no problem, i can teach him.” “i don’t think you understand: he’s not allowed to cook. his sisters do.” tension hung between them. i sat frozen and unnoticed on my stoop. i only knew mrs. roth had taken the fridays the children were occupied in the neighborhood and used that time do get as much done with errands as she could. she didn’t have to cook or clean, so she’d take the city bus to get groceries. sometimes, she made it back by the time her husband’s swing shift ended. either way, paying a babysitter and getting food for at least six children was out of the question. it was quiet but crystal clear. “i’m sorry.” mrs. roth stormed home. zion sank down next to me, cradling his arm. i asked if he was allowed 62 to go to a&a’s for a snack before it got too dark. he just sat there. i grabbed the basketball and started dribbling into the street. turn, shoot. made it; dribbled back. turn, juke, layup, shoot—it bounced off the rim and spun across the street. the ball bounced into miss valentine’s gate and settled into smaller skips. “i got it,” zion called, jumping up and swooping to get it. as he snatched the ball up, i swear i saw him pause for a beat with his hand at the gate latch. before i could ask, he turned and pushed the ball from his chest. “shoot again,” he challenged. i don’t know why i didn’t take a closer look at the gate latch, or why i thought it wasn’t my business, but business between the roths and miss valentine. the boundary of the wooden fence buzzed electric with that tension. all i know was that we stopped basketball for the truck that peeled down our road right when bitty bolted across the yard, through the unlatched gate, straight into its wheels. bitty wags her tail at me. her body sways gently, hopeful for a good ear scratch. i oblige, even when i know what’s coming. i tickle her ribs and massage her neck, fingers finding bald lines in the patches of her fur. i scratch the fuzz under her jaw, smoosh her jowls and cheeks together, and run a slow seam up her nose with my nails. they catch on an edge of her skin and pull back, bright and bloody. each time i recoil in this dream, i wish the dog would just unravel like a sweater. even once, i wish for her to be filled with insulation fluff. i wish for wasps or birds to escape from the nest of her body; or maybe music instead, pouring out from her like a jewelry box. i’ve even wished for her to be empty. instead, i tug and her skin peels from one side of her body, zigzagging in a long fleshy strip where the wheels of the truck dragged her along east perry street. i see her lungs quiver against the fence of her ribs. she leans further into my lap and i push her away, my hand sinking deep into the soft pulsing of guts and muscle. i taste copper. bitty is still panting and wagging her tail. her ear hangs off the side of her skull, flapping loose and on-level with her empty eye socket. her tongue falls out the side of a bony jaw, frothing bright red as she licks me awake. the lights flicked on in the laundry room. “tomás, what the hell is wrong with you?” my mother hissed so loud, i jumped. she caught me standing naked and barefoot on the cold basement floor, my arms full of my wet sheets and pajamas. my throat coiled tightly around my words. 63 i knew my mother would think it was silly to fear dreams, and i knew it was a dream. in it, this time, i was sitting at the end of my bed instead of on my wooden front step, and bitty came right for me, nudging me like i was the only one who could fix her. bitty’s face was halfway scraped off where the truck caught her behind the jaw and dragged her. she nudged me, pushed to lick my mouth, whined her hurt. i tasted her blood in my dreams and i tasted it when i woke up and my pillow was all bloody and my nose hurt. “mama, please—don’t be angry, mama, please don’t.” "i already am, and i don't even know why. why am i angry right now, tomás?" i looked to see the white knuckles pressing through her skin. i pleaded. "mama, really, please don't. i had a bad dream, and i was really scared. i woke up and i promise i didn't try to pee the bed." my mother's shoulders relaxed a bit. her knuckles returned to their sandy color. "and what about the rest of you? you look like you lost a fight." i lifted up my arms to wipe my nose on the back of my wrist and got a huge whiff of old pee. i kept my face from scrunching up. i was already embarrased enough without being called stupid too. the sheets dripped on my feet as i tried to explain. "my nosebleed." "was it another dream about your father?" i shook my head. "is it the dog across the way? the little one?" i nodded. "the one that got hit?" i shook my head no, but no turned into yes and i nodded again and harder and faster. i started crying and i couldn't stop it. my mother came to hug me, but i tried to push her away. i didn't care about being naked. i didn't even care about the stupid pee. i cared that i saw zion undo the gate and i didn't say anything, didn't tell him no or ask him if that's what i saw—that samson and bitty got out. i know that zion didn't do it to get bitty hit with the truck. i knew that all i just wanted the grilled cheese sandwhiches miss valentine promised us every friday like clockwork, tapping on her wrist. i wanted her to know it's not okay to break promises, even those promises, even for me. and i didn't need the grilled cheese, unlike the roths. mama took my sheets and they fell to the cement with a wet thwap. she steered me to the bathroom, where i sat on the toilet lid while she turned on the shower. i heard her tell me to wash up and then go to bed, and that she'd check with miss valentine tomorrow to see if there's anything we could do for her. it was a long time before i could fall back asleep. 64 in my dream, bitty is still panting and wagging her tail. her ear is hanging off the side of her skull, flapping on level with an empty eye socket. her tongue falls out the side of a bony jaw, frothing bright red as she comes closer. i can smell the jumgle of her breath and see earth and gravel and stick bits stuck to her. i remind myself, this is not her. she's dead. surely by now, she's dead. she can't do anything to you now. just let her lick you. 65 midwestern gothic road trip sage justice frost clings to the corn fields that line roads with no painted lines, no names, just numbers like prisoner 9860 trudging through solemn dirt. a billboard warning hell is real stands outside the house with its roof sunken like a boulder dropped on the family that called it home. it’s antler shedding season– ribbons of red flesh hang from a buck’s head as it darts from fields to quaking aspens whose eyes haunt the cloven imprints left in the earth. hell is indeed real in indiana, its devils crossing the corn fields late at night when the january winds tousle the tresses of the aspens and its angels’ bones are buried beneath the fallen leaves, golden and raw, dipped in honey and blood. 20 laid to rest in lilacs julia dryer colored pencil on black paper, 11"x14" 73 40 surrogate father sestina nathan marquam losing a tooth is like losing a father— another soon grows in its place, though not immediately. first comes the blood-black absence, the small cavern hidden inside. then one day, it fills with jagged rock, something small and alive within you, that’s of you, but haunted. i grew so fast i could hear my bones crack, outgrew skirts and sweaters, friends, my name, the father i was born with. he was an exoskeleton, not alive the moment i left him, just the cells to die. not my fault, people said, but with each passing day i was a different shape— bigger in his absence and brave, no walls of him to contain me, and absence became me, something exponential in the way i grew, formless and large, more myself each passing day— but like a poem, i wanted to be restrained. no father, no curfew, no shotgun warning for the boys. not alone, but reaching always for something alive until i reached and found something alive. he tasted of salt, morning breath, the absence of death, of fathers, the word no. before, i had not known something worse than death. i grew fond of my own decay, eyes like my father’s blue and terribly still, counting days spent watching the sun pass me by, days spent afraid to let the world see me alive, and the fathers lined up to save me. fathers with blackened lungs, charred in the absence of children and wives, fathers who grew fond of me, of what i could fill in them. not best of poetry 41 out of obligation, they said, but love— not worth it when my chatter filled their days with incessant noise. i watched as they grew bored of my damage, but they were alive, a line between me and the absence of me, chain wallet fathers, bar stool fathers, fathers i killed while they were still alive. i spent my days collecting each absence, grew into the shape of a man, a not-father. 28 poppy sage justice helios creeps along a red sky spider sulking on the ceiling, reclusive in the hot midnight. a corpse woven in silk waits to be plucked and hand-delivered into the arms of loving death, mouth slacked, slivered eyes, the sweetness of rot not yet settled in. yellowed skin hung like drapes over frail, unfeeling bones, pale in the shivering clover fields, september chill slithering through cracks in the windows. no you left in this body. no use clutching its cold claw. outside, quaking aspens shudder, their unseeing eyes frozen as wind carries through them the spirits of the gone. the worker of the woods hammers away in early morning, nails his ghost to every tree. when helios first touches the land if you crane your neck just so, you may hear him. 3 letter from the editors we are honored to present the fall 2022 issue of genesis. we recently celebrated 50 years of our magazine, reflecting on the years past—these magazine issues represent themes that we all grapple with as we begin to understand ourselves and the ups and downs of our lives. our magazine has been publishing these conversations since 1972, with the editorial process completed by our very own dedicated iupui student editors. we are grateful to read the work submitted to genesis, and we take great care in the work that we do. our fall 2022 selected works feature important, needed conversations about the need for change in our world and in our country’s societal structure. these conversations raise awareness of the importance of mental health. they navigate love, loss, questioning, frustration, and hope. they work to define our individual places in the world. this body of work prompts reflection and leaves powerful impressions. we would like to thank our editors for their thoughtful contributions and hard work. thank you to sarah layden, our faculty advisor, for her support and her unwavering confidence and faith in us. thank you to our amazing contributors—you all breathe life into these pages, and we are so grateful for your explorations. finally, thank you to the friends of genesis and to our readers—your involvement helps us flourish. shannon kucaj & monica simmons managing editors 25 dirt town truitt anweiler my siblings and i had already turned my mom’s garden into a dinosaur excavation site, so when it changed again, my parents were prepped in a way, but we children weren’t in the slightest. it seemed to happen overnight in the mind of a child. one day it wasn’t there, and the next day it materialized before us. i remember my siblings shrieking and squealing with excitement as i waddled out. as the piercing voices reverberated in my eardrums, they beckoned and pushed me out into our yard. obliviously, i was ready for one of our adventures outside. i was ready to take up our stick swords and swashbuckle on our familiar island of grass surrounded by seas of wisping corn and country roads. my parents watched through the kitchen window as their children braved the midwestern yard on the journey there. waving from the window, they knew that the adventure was set to begin and that we would not return for some time. i could feel the sockets of my arms pulling as my sister, carolotta, dragged me past our playset. my older brothers, gabe and nate, continued to bicker and chatter as i desperately squealed for answers. hands gripped under my armpits and swung me forward like a puppet being staged up front. that’s when i saw it towering over all of us. it stood taller than our house, piling what seemed like miles into the air. this, this mound of dirt, was our new world. the earthy scent wafted all around us as it radiated from the deep brown mass. a cool draft danced off the edge of the mound. it offered a natural comfort on a sweltering day. it smelt like a fresh rain even as the ocean blue sky and sun bore down on us. my parents didn’t realize, when they were constructing an addition to the house, that under the ground of that old yard laid something far better than any tile room or porch. they could have dug up a new mansion to live in, and we still would have been more enthralled by the mound of dirt they left in our yard. what was once my mother’s garden, then our excavation site, was now our very own mountain! beams of summer sun flooded into our eyes as we attempted to gaze upward to see it towering over our small bodies. awestruck, i watch as my sister and brothers made the tentative first barefooted imprints onto the freshly pulled dirt. i took a breath, letting my lungs remain full with a puffed up toddler chest, and followed after. it felt like we were stepping onto the moon. our feet sank as dirt wrapped around our heels. the chilled soil was foreign territory. we were stunned, nervous even, and yet boisterous glee followed. we raced to the top, and clumps of dirt flew through the air as our hands and feet dug deep with every step. i reached the summit shortly after the rest, smudging all the dirt they kicked into my face till it looked like i had kissed the dirt rather than climbed it. i turned to face the yard and we could see everything. we could see all the possibilities from this mountaintop. it was anything we wanted it to be. this dirt took us to faraway lands and shifted our world into something entirely different. with every different world we visited, the dirt changed, and we changed with it. we were kings. we were outlaws. we were superheroes. we were soldiers. we were builders. we were anything we needed to be, because we could be, and there was unadulterated freedom in that. worlds and stories were crafted by simply beginning to climb. in my mind, i never questioned whether the dirt would go anywhere. i had assumed it would eternally sit in the yard and forever be an escape from reality for my siblings and me. i know now that my parents hadn’t originally planned on keeping it, but it was after day after day seeing us trail out and climb up that mound together that they changed their minds. they saw their oldest, carolotta, helping pull up the youngest. they saw their sons gabe and nate wide-mouthed in laughter rather than insults. inside the house things would turn sour fast, but out there it was different. we spent countless days outside on top of that dirt. we would climb each day to find new stories. where others saw a chore of digging holes, we found joy. tunnels, caves, beds, castles, and even thrones that looked oddly closer to toilets were shaped. we all had nearly permanent dirt crescents resting under our fingernails. over time, the name dirt town was coined. it was our own sanctuary; no one else had anything quite like this. it seemed nothing stopped us from finding joy there. on sunny days, our bony hands would white-knuckle around a branch as we charged into battle. our arms and legs would ferociously pump through the humid air as our army would press up towards the peak of dirt town. even on rainy days, we found a way to enjoy it. we had dug our own holes in the top of dirt town, then we waited. the gray sky swirled into a deep, endless blue. the wind whistled through ears as a heavy drop of water plinked against my forehead. downpour ensued. gabe gleefully hollered, squinting into the sky as each of our personal dirt bathtubs began to fill past our legs. we jumped from hole to hole, splashing each other, trying to catch our fleeting breath that left with every belly laugh. the mud filled each hole till the murky water bounced and rippled with every drop of rain. i remember plunging my head under, baptizing myself into the dirt. sitting under the water, i could still hear nate and gabe, even through the pitter patter of rain. joyous yelps and cackles pierced through water, dirt, all of it. dirt town made those moments louder than any bickering. the wind then began to dry out the mud as it caked around our bodies and tightened up. the dirt cracked and split, leaving scale-like patterns riddled across our bodies. why my parents let us take mud baths is beyond me. maybe it was for the laughs they got as we comically shivered under the garden hose, cleaning us off with icy water drawing any breath out of our small lungs. 26 dirt town 27 we had years going up and down that dirt. the worms got to know us on a personal level as we made our way out as frequently as possible. the soil packed down and was much lighter than before. the lumber-like brown was more desert-like, harsher. time passed; dirt town eroded a bit after carolotta eventually stopped adventuring out with us. our mountain was a bit smaller now. the dirt was dryer, much tighter-packed into the ground around it. dirt town had changed, and so did we. my younger sister mei had begun to journey out with us, and new games began! there were days we dug for hours, building up our ever-changing world. gabe led us on adventures fending off invaders from attacking dirt town. we’d stand as mightily as our kiddish builds could muster. “charge!” gabe would call out as we’d echo in suit. stick sword in hand, we would charge down the mound, kicking clouds of dust high into the air behind us. gabe was invigorated to keep playing, and it felt as if it would never end, but as we grew, he spent less and less time there. he then stopped all together. nate loved it but didn’t have the same zeal gabe shared to fight for it; he pulled away soon after that. the dirt was dry and cracked, but our much smaller group would venture out now and again. our shoes would scrape and scratch against the beatdown ground, it seemed our shovels even had a hard time breaking it. the blade of the shovel found more rocks than dirt as metallic clangs rang out. dust would kick up in the air and you could see it swept off into the yard aimlessly. our time became dwindled out there. slender weeds twisted through the breaks in the ground where footprints used to be; my siblings and i planted our feet elsewhere. slowly, one by one, they left. i later stepped outside and strolled towards the backyard. it was a walk i remember taking more time in younger days. there was no mass in the sky. i didn’t have to look up at all anymore—it had been packed level with the rest of the yard surrounding it. walking towards dirt town, it was harder to discern where grass gave way to our old escape. the lush grass and thick weeds hugged each other so tightly it was a struggle to see if any dirt was even left. i remembered the eternal summer days spent with each other. sweat beads would roll off our smudged faces, taking any worries racing away with them. my siblings and i would create worlds from literal dirt, the same dirt that is packed away now. it sometimes felt like i saw my siblings about as easily as i could still see our old dirt, not very much. yet even though we didn’t get to see each other much, conversation would always find its way to dirt town. mud baths, battles, tunnels—whatever it was, it was joyful. time with my siblings is more limited than ever. the pestering weeds of life have overgrown for each of us in different ways. but dirt town was a place where none of that mattered. underneath all the weeds, that dirt is still there. truitt anweiler nobleman from sculptor portfolio casey eskridge, 1996 high clay, 21" high 102 one room laura tuzzio here’s how to fit 60 years of life into one room. have a kid at 17, then have another at 19. throw in a third at 21. three kids, one bunk bed, two bedrooms, three holes punched into two walls, one marriage over. two grandparents raising three grandkids. take a job, quit that job, take another, no, another. keep looking, dreams are out there. it’s been a few years, new guy, don’t get married, have another kid. one woman, two men, four kids. four is good, even numbers work. kids are hard. one aunt one uncle raising one fourth child. get a new guy, take a new job. quit that guy, keep the job. not that job. hit the road but come back, climb down from that 18-wheeler to tell your kids you’re married again, that’s two, two husbands, one wife. one driver, one passenger, one mom m.i.a., 18 wheels take you far, far away. write your kids, don’t forget to write the kids, greetings from five states away, three postcards, four letters, three kids, no, four. take that punch, that’s one to the head, one to the stomach. that’s two hands that grab, two hands that slap, two hands that shake, one mouth that screams, one foot that kicks. kick number two husband out. that’s it, you’re done, no more husbands, zero. remember your kids, they’re out there. four kids, three to talk to, three to see. one holds out, the second one, she remembers. one joint, one pill. no, one thousand joints, one hundred pills. no job, none. no parents, gone. no second child, who’s still remembering, done. one mattress, no frame, one closet half full, four boxes hold dozens of pictures. one letter, one laminated memory of the second child who won’t see you, won’t speak to you. one purse, three pill bottles, 12 dollars. one patch. one arm with one fentanyl patch. one room holds all the mementos of one life’s mistakes. one patch for one overdose, it only takes one. one room, one life. no, just one room. 22 red room: the transformation megan vogeler oil paint on masonite, 24"x36" 32 37 |water| oliver spangler lithography 97 digital photography lexia holmes the silent beast 8 evening hunger alex t. spurling in traffic, thrown into the thralls of hunger. in my purview, a livestock trailer ocular slits for ventilation, a dozen waving snouts, sun rays on bead-like eyes the stench of the farm it permeates grass fed, free-roam makes no difference billboards, pictorial images, of perspiring patties and salivating mouths unshakable adverts hindus venerate the cow, the jains as well a divine symbol dung, urine, and milk, ghee and curd, an all-purpose remedy panchagavya the heifer is generous discomfort, and the eyes of privilege break contact, for their own sake meditation is disbanded by impatient horns and coarse expletives and, sympathetic hands, raise a perspiring patty to my salivating mouth, and nothing is sacred 153 12” x 16” lithograph kira taylor fortune of a hypochondriac 44 sweaty hands and red balls kyle jennings before i was seventeen, i never considered myself a winner. the word loser always followed me like a shadow. in the sports i participated in, like baseball, all i ever received were “thanks for trying” trophies. i never had one that said champion. for one night, i was a champion on a carpet court in front of screaming teenagers. i remember sitting in my friend’s red oldsmobile. we were parked on a country road in delaware county, northeast of indy. i held a flyer calling out the best dodgeball players the county’s high schools had to offer. delaware county is home to seven high schools. while i only attended one, yearly county tournaments for school events were a big deal, always bringing the biggest crowd and selling out the gymnasium. muncie south, muncie central, burris, wes-del, wapahani, delta, yorktown, daleville. the school i belonged to was wapahani. i asked my friend, selvey, if he wanted to do it. i’m not sure what compelled me to want to do this. selvey and i were seventeen and not the most in shape or most limber of people. also, we are at the bottom of the clique chain; would we even know enough people to join us? our first stop was at a kid named evan’s house. i only knew evan through the grapevine of others, like selvey. i attempted to persuade him to join our team and our cause. what i didn’t realize was he was a hippie. or what i imagined a hippie to be. he replied, “i don’t do sporting events for men to watch,” or whatever the hell that meant. selvey and i accepted our loss and proceeded to leave when his sister stopped us. i don’t remember how old she was. she gave us a long speech on how she was listening and wanted to join, a speech that i missed because my teenage self just couldn’t stop thinking about how attractive she was. sarah was her name. i’ve never considered myself a lucky kid. but on this day, my luck changed. as we were leaving, evan’s cousin was pulling up. another kid from my school was just a grade below me. his name was austin, and this kid couldn’t stop smiling at the excitement of joining our team. we arrived at the venue, a church surrounded by cornfields with a gymnasium attached to the side of it. the gym court was carpeted, with a running oval overlooking the court. there were bleachers set up on the backside of the court. we checked in with the lady wearing a lanyard. we told her of our lack of two players, for which she found volunteers—matt and julie. eight teams represented four schools. we were the second team formed from wapahani, and the other group was the jocks of our school, the baseball and basketball players joining forces for one purpose, to win. the rules were simple, hit another player or catch a ball to eliminate the opposing team. for added intensity, there was a backboard rule; any time a team hit the backboard, the eliminated players could come back in. the bracket was best of nonfiction 45 set on a giant dry-erase board, the national anthem was sung, and game time. we were up first. matt and julie assured us they had our backs and wanted to win. the silver bleachers filled as our teams stood across from each other. the balls being used were small red foam with a plastic covering. they flew accurately for about ten feet but were unreliable after that. the ref blew the whistle, and we rushed forward to the balls sitting on the centerline. within seconds, balls were flying, and team members were dropping but at a slower rate than the other team. behind all that grinning, austin was a talented player, followed by the blonde stranger, matt, who joined our team. with their prowess, we won the first game. our teamwork in the first game wasn’t bad. callouts on what other players should do were floating around us. sometimes it got hard to hear with crowd noise. our sister team won easily, followed by an all-senior team and another team full of guys with cut-off sleeves. the sleeveless team was going to be our next opponent after a small intermission. the intermission consisted of a pastor; it was a church event, sharing some stories about jesus, then a snack break of juice and cookies. not sure why us being teenagers, there were juice boxes. the next game was on—us versus the sleeveless kids. these kids were more vocal than the previous team. there was no strategy amongst themselves, and they were all shit talk. on wild throws, they retorted with, “you suck, you sissy.” a whistle blew, and it was go time. this team was better than the previous team, as their accuracy was on point. selvey and evan’s sister, the less agile of our squad, were eliminated first. i managed to get an accurate throw to take out one of their players but was taken out by a two-on-one. again it was down to austin and matt. the two of them against the remaining four. even if the backboard got hit, my team was looking tired. selvey breathed deeply, and sarah had sweat rolling down her exhausted red face. and julie, who volunteered to join, looked at her as if she was somewhere else. matt was hit in the shoulder, leaving just austin, still grinning. i don’t know how he did it. four guys were throwing what seemed like twenty balls at him. he hurled that red dot into the backboard on the other side, allowing us to come back in. the sleeveless team drilled the backboard behind us out of fear or just plain dumb. it was back to six on six. matt wiped out three with a second wind, with sarah getting one and myself clearing out the remaining two. our sister team was up. this all-senior team was larger than them. their teamwork was centered on great callouts and who should have a ball. our sister team’s game plan was to just throw the ball. there was no teamwork in throwing together. it was whoever got a ball that threw it. with this strategy, they were quickly defeated before they could hit the backboard. watching the match, the adrenaline crept in. i remember just thinking about playing in a dodgeball championship match, which made my hands shake, and i was sweating. this was the first time i would be in a sporting championship battle. i felt like, at this point, i was tired of participation. the senior team trotted 46 to the bench we were sitting at and wished us good luck. i could see on their faces how defeated they were. either the gym became hot, or the adrenaline pulsed, and sweat soaked my clothes. i was becoming worried if i could throw a ball. the two teams lined up; the full senior team, i gathered, was from a school just north of our school. to this day, i wonder if those seniors were as nervous as i was. were my other teammates’ hands sweating? the whistle blew, and we charged. they charged. i imagined this is what a medieval fight would have looked like, with two lines opposing catapults hurling rocks. it was even at first, if we lost one, obviously selvey, we got one of theirs to counter. this jab-for-jab went on until there were two left on both teams, with the grinning austin and julie on ours. i was hit trying to catch a ball, something that’s hard to do when they are that small. the seniors hit the backboard first, austin drilling the backboard seconds later. i can remember the crowd roaring as both sides were filled to full. the seniors must have learned of our secret weapon; they aimed for the grin and got it—their pitch-perfect callouts pointing who needed balls to get the job done. luckily the blonde took out two before he was gone, followed by selvey. the sister traded with one, followed by the brunette. that left a two-versus-one situation for me. i by no means was a flexible kid, with a six-foot build and two left feet. it felt like a puppeteer was pulling my limbs by strings when i dodged two shots and threw an accurate shot to eliminate one. i remember freaking out. time was almost like it was still. the last remaining player was wearing a multi-shade green shirt with the word tigers across the chest. was it respect or luck? he didn’t throw it when i was reaching for a ball. we stared at each other, and i didn’t want to make the first move; i was as good as gone if i missed. he made the first move and threw. i remember that ball being accurate and fast, but somehow i dodged it. i sucked my gut in and curved my back, the ball whizzing by. he had no choice but to step forward to grab another ball. i threw mine. taking no time to aim, i threw it. the ball flew, descending quickly until it hit him on his exposed shin and bounced off. the gym erupted in cheers, and the court was filled with bodies. i was high-fiving kids i didn’t even know. the moderator of the tournament gathered my team in the middle of the crowd. we were awarded a hundred-dollar check for winning, which didn’t split six ways evenly, so i don’t know why it was a hundred. also, there was no trophy or plaque. why have a tournament if you are not going to hand out a trophy? what i used to love kim kile were you there, theo, when i got the call from your mama? the one telling me so quietly the technician couldn’t find your heartbeat and they were on the way to the hospital “to confirm your viability?” the one i answered driving on 465 to my dentist’s office? did you see me in my navy blue and orange paisley blouse? the one i bought to wear to your uncle ethan’s swim meets? i used to love that blouse. were you there, theo, when i told the dentist i had to leave? that i couldn’t be in his chair reclining like i had no worries while i waited for your mama to call me again—to confirm what i had already denied—we had “lost” you like you were an insignificant piece of paper? i heard earth, wind, and fire singing “september” on my way out the door. it was august 9 and you were due september 20. i used to love that song. were you there, theo, when we flew to d.c.? did you watch me find the pennies you left for me under my seat and on the floor of the terminal? the ones i still have in the ceramic turtle on my bookshelf ? were you impressed by the washington monument and the capitol building we saw from the airplane window as we landed on an airstrip in the potomac? i used to love that city. were you there, theo, when i helped your mama push you into our living world? the most perfect baby in every way but one. did you hear me plead with you to “just breathe” to be the miracle i had prayed for, to be a joyous mistake of science and medicine, to turn from oxygen-deprived blue to the healthy pink of newborn life? did you hear me whisper, “i love you,” as i held you in my arms? i will always love you, theo. for baby theo, forever our first 36 letter from the editors our magazine has represented the lives and perspectives of our students since it originated in 1972. this issue especially delves into the wide range of identities that are present here at iupui. alongside pieces of personal reflection are other works that center on feelings of nostalgia for what once was, and hope for what is possible in the future. art decorates the magazine and amplifies these present messages to incorporate existence itself. all the contributions in this issue help define what it means to be human and in doing so an impression finds its way into each reader’s heart. we are honored to present the 2024 issue of genesis. thank you to all of our wonderful staff members who spent countless hours reviewing submissions and sharing their thoughts in order to create this magazine. thank you to sarah layden, our faculty advisor, for all of her guidance and support as we learned how to step into the role of managing editors. thank you to all of our talented and brave contributors who willingly shared their art and writing with us. we would be nothing without your creativity. finally, thank you to the friends of genesis and to our readers. we hope you enjoy this year’s issue! bailey evans & eli witham managing editors a dream of frog and toad lauren pickering fabric, polyester fill, embroidery thread, buttons, plastic greenery, copper wire, cardboard, and led lights, 25"x51" 300 dpi 75 an appalachian morning jacob stewart a fragrant fog, a mountain mist closely clings to springtime air upon the scene, great evergreens densely hug the landscape there down the path, a bubbling brook is hidden, save to those who seek it sings a psalm with current calm praising, without words, so sweet and in the drear, a distant sound grazing steer call, long and plain while deer scurry, without hurry past the patter of the rain peace protrudes the place not touched long by the infirm hand of man where one can see god’s majesty smoky peak to creek bed sand 66 20 slipping away: frank and mattie jane bowman mattie sits in a rocker knitting while frank leans back in his old lazyboy recliner and stares through glazed eyes at a 60-inch hdtv standing about five feet in front of them. now overpowering the small living room in their small bungalow, the tv was a gift from the kids. frank sits up to get a closer look at the tv. he looks confused, but then a light seems to come on in his eyes. “i know how this show ends. that guy there, he gets killed—shot, i think. have we seen this before?’ says frank. “yes, frank,” says mattie. “you know these are summer reruns.” mattie doesn’t lift her head from her knitting. “well, when the he…um heck did that happen?” frank frowns and slides a sly look at his wife of 55 years. “frank, you’re doing better, but that swear jar is going to fill up fast if you keep slipping. it’s may, frank. the tv season is over sometime in march or early april.” mattie lifts the tiny jacket and counts rows of knitting. sure enough, on tv, “that guy” gets shot and apparently “bites the dust.” he lies there and doesn’t seem to be breathing. “well, i’m going to bed. are you coming?’ frank gets up and walks to the front door and opens it. “frank, that’s the front door,” says mattie and points to the stairs. “oh yeah,” chuckles frank and climbs to the landing. he pauses, looks at mattie, and says, “i’m going to bed. are you coming?’ “i’d like to finish this sleeve,” says mattie as she holds up the small garment. “it’s for elyse’s baby.” “who’s elyse?” “she’s naomi’s daughter, she’s having a baby.” “who’s naomi?” “she’s your sister, frank?” “naomi’s having a baby?” “no, frank, naomi’s daughter, elyse. it’s her first, and she’s not that young. i think she may be 42.” frank looks up the stairs. “i’m going to bed. you coming?” “well, i need to water snuffy.” she leans down to scratch the head of snuffy, a little yorkshire terrier sitting beside her rocker. 21 “damned worthless dog,” grumbles frank. “frank johnson, that’s a dollar in the swear jar. and add 50 cents for the almost-swear earlier.” frank climbs back down and digs in his pocket for money. “what’s this jar for?” “we’re supposed to go to hawaii for our 60th wedding anniversary.” “gonna need more than this jar of money.” “well, i have faith in you, frank. and at least, i’ll get to go.” “you’d go without me?” mattie gives him a rueful look over the top of her glasses. frank strolls to the stairs and looks up them. he seems to be thinking very hard, and then says, “i’m going to bed. are you coming?” he pauses. “your name’s mattie? what’s that stand for?” “it stands for matilda.” “and we’re married? how’d that start?” “well, i’d say in the back seat of bill fuller’s ’49 mercury.” “old bill, wonder where he is now?” “believe he’s been gone about 30 years now.” “where’d he go?” “now that’s a good question.” “he was a he…heck of a guy.” “frank, the swear jar! no, that can wait.” mattie sighs and looks back at her knitting. frank stands on the landing looking at his feet. “i’m going to bed. are you coming?” mattie puts down her knitting; turns off the lamp and the tv. the room turns inky dark. “turn on the stairs’ light. it’s right behind you.” “where are you?” frank’s voice is querulous. “right behind you, frank. turn on the light.” she hugs frank and gently pushes him up the stairs. snuffy jumps onto the rocker and settles down in mattie’s warm spot. when the train crashes ava russell you are not a writer; you only pretend you are. you pretend you believe the people who tell you you’re one-of-a-kind, but deep down you know that every person on this planet has a mother, brother, teacher, friend, dog—someone who thinks they’re one-of-a-kind in their own oh-so-special way, and that even if all that uniqueness did exist, it would just cancel out. you pretend you’re a writer, but you struggled through this simple sentence word by word, letter by letter, struggled to combine your abstract, nonsensical thoughts into something that’s barely legible. who are you kidding? you are not a writer. put the pen down, close the document—it’s blank, anyway—and delete all those useless notes defiled with useless ideas that will never take you anywhere. put the pen down and walk away because you are not a writer. walk back to the tv and distract yourself by feeling sorry for the family whose house burned down, or pick up the phone and scroll-and-scroll-and-scroll and feel relieved that you aren’t the person who’s humiliating themself by—god forbid—having a good time posting silly videos on the internet. anything to derail the train of thought speeding endlessly through the darkest tunnel, to make you forget that you. are. not. a. writer. you’re nothing but a liar who talks a lot of big talk, and now you’ve dug yourself down deep into a grave with all that big talk. the only way to climb out of that grave is by building a ladder from the words your foggy brain can’t produce even though it runs-and-runs-and-runs like a hamster on a wheel, going fast but going nowhere. and now the train has hit the wall at the dead end of that tunnel, and now the engine is on fire, and now the smoke is everywhere, everywhere, smothering any seedling that might have blossomed into a page, a paragraph, or even a single word. think about all those people you’re letting down; think about how humiliated you’ll be when you’re old and gray and frail and you haven’t managed to sell a single copy of a single book, haven’t managed to publish a single word; think about your lost legacy—your lost immortality. think-and-think-and-think until the clouds roll over and the sun shines through and the flowers bloom and the train is chugging along and the words are coming quickly—and you are a writer. you are a writer who understands that there’s no such thing as one-of-a-kind, and that maybe that’s a good thing. after all, if everyone was one-of-a-kind, if you were one-of-a-kind, no one else in the world would be interested in what you have to say; and you have so many things to say, so many important things about the world, and other people, and even yourself. and now you have a story, and now there are people who find strength and community in your story—in you. and now you are a writer, and so much more. 53 the halloween tree tim w. kuzniar digital tryptich left 17" x 36" center 9" x 24" right 36" x 17" 76 77 the abandoned, the alone, and the left behind david casey 53 rolling past the gates of my apartment complex, i trip the left turn signal and pull up to the main road. not a second after big-toeing the brake pedal, the anti-lock brake system crunches and groans, as if melodramatically warning me to turn right the hell around. a winter weather warning has been issued, i know. but i don’t, at this point, know why. i don’t know that in just the last hour, a light rain had briefly fallen, then temperatures plunged below freezing, spreading a lacquer of ice, laced with oil, atop the pavement. but i have promised my parents that we’ll make it over for dinner. so the four of us pull out in a small chevy sedan— my girlfriend, our two little dachshunds, and i. in slips and skids, we make it to the road just uphill of my parents’ neighborhood. there, the four-lane road sprouts a fifth off to the right, so that cars can slow down before turning into the entrance. veering over, i crank us into low gear and feather the brake, just so. we slide. slipping quickly now, my field of view narrows to a pinpoint and my thoughts whiz. images of the potential outcomes fan out before me like so many rivulets—until the front right wheel slams against the curb and collapses these forking paths into one. the bumper leaps at once onto the grass. so i stomp on the brake, and we skid to a stop. wide-eyed, we turn toward each other and remember that, yes, it is permissible to breathe. then, there’s that… smell. the stench of road burn and battery acid sizzles out of the mangled fender. we grab what we can and run away from the street, fearing a gas leak or another car skidding off. or, heaven forbid, both. no tow trucks will be able to take my car until the next day, so we leave it alone on the side of the road, hazards blinking, like a beacon in the night. _____ there is an apocryphal tale of the former israeli politician moshe dayan, who (and this is the un-apocryphal bit) had lost his left eye during the second world war while peering through his binoculars… straight down the barrel of a vichy-french sniper. some years later, dayan was stopped for speeding by a military police officer. “i have only one eye,” he pleaded in his defense. “what do you want me to watch—the speedometer or the road?” i am fortunate enough to have both of my eyes, so, while one watches the road, the other often looks to the shoulder, where interesting things tend to occur. i might try to glimpse the faces of people pulled over, curious whether they’re ashamed or anxious or upset. maybe two burly gentlemen are tilting at each other over some perceived offense, on the brink of duking it out right there and then. more often, though, and ever since i can remember, i’ve been most intrigued by cars left abandoned on the side of the road. each one begets a question, and in its answer, a story. how far has your owner gone? did he run out of gas on the way home? was this just his luck—the last goddamned straw? how long did she wait, wondering whether, and whom, to ask for help? what did they carry with them? what clues, what secrets, do you harbor? you’ll find them everywhere if you look, not just on the roadside. like a compass needle, my eyes are drawn to a darkened lot with a lonely gray pickup sat dead, inexplicably, in the center; to a sunburnt sedan lurking on the fourth floor of a parking garage, with flat front tires and a manifold of parking tickets stuffed under the wiper. does the parking official believe these will someday be paid? does he merely fulfill his role, believing, like the rest of us, that whoever oversees things will eventually take action? i’m not sure whether i find it more or less ominous when those same solitary cars are occupied. i sometimes drive by an elementary school near my apartment, and have more than once seen a single car parked far, far back—back by the playground—late at night. just idling. of course, we can’t linger too long on these questions, these feelings, as we usually have places to get to if we’re driving, and our thoughts are soon pulled in unplanned directions. but if we do allow ourselves to linger a little longer, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find cars in such solitary and haphazard situations, in places we think people have no business being. for our cars are much more than mere means. they, like us, contain multitudes and contradictions. the car is a liberation, a method of swift escape. at the same time, it is a deathtrap, a two-ton mass of charging steel. it is a refuge for the night or a temporary home. a place to sleep off the alcohol. or, perhaps, to take a nap between the longer legs of a road trip. the car is a viewfinder. you can perch it on a cliff and look out to a distant skyline, or lay under the moonroof and draw shapes among the stars. it is a privacy for young lovers and adulterous trysts. but a privacy, mind you, that can be invaded—forced to go where cries cannot be heard. a car can roll up slowly like a creep in the darkness. the buzz of a rolling-down window can perk up your ears. it is a mobile store, an update on the medieval street vendor hiding under coat so many baubles and trinkets. a place of buying and selling. of being bought and sold. of rearview-mirror-looking and unspeakable acts. 54 the first car is a thankless teacher, a pensioner giving his final, bone-tired days to teenage whimsy; bruised, dented, trashed, run roughshod ‘til the transmission develops a bronchial wheeze and sputters black bile from its innards. while the luxury car is a midlife dream nigh achieved, worn down and faded but still held close, handwashed weekly by undocumented immigrants—its owner standing over them, watchful and imposing. the final car is a harbinger of finitude, missing exits more and more and getting lost on the way home. it portends the loss of independence and the walls closing in: first, they’ll take your license, then your car, then your home. then they’ll tow you away and strip you, like a carcass, for parts. such is the whole of human life entwined with the car. people even seem to look like their cars: sleek, knife-edge jawlines sporting black and chrome-plated suits; heat-damaged hoods like linèd foreheads, pockmarked by drug abuse and hard labor in the sun; minivans sagging low and heavy, hunched by the burdens of childbirth and the weight of multiplying responsibilities. this phenomenon must, i think, originate in that man, like god, fashioned the car in his own image. two lights like bright eyes shine from either side of the face, a touch above the grill, which smiles or scowls or bares its metal teeth. the side mirrors peek out like tiny ears astride the windshield, behind which sits the brain, the driver. that homuncular ghost inside the great machine. even the guts of the car, that twisting convolution of compartments and tubes, resemble the organs and intestines and the vessels running through them. and i say “man” deliberately. for the quintessentially feminine car is built, if not overly dainty (see: the miniature coupe) or voluptuous (see: the beetle), then frumpy and sexless (see: the aforementioned minivan), while no car may be more quintessentially masculine than the modern-day pickup—the length and breadth of its protruding bed seeming to correlate exactly with how infrequently it is put to practical use. who but men could contrive such a scheme? _____ i recently read a story in the san diego union-tribune about the city’s worsening problem with abandoned vehicles, about which officials receive over four thousand complaints per month. over four thousand. that’s the numerical equivalent of princeton university’s entire student body driving somewhere in san diego, parking on the street, and simply never returning. every month. and this is the contribution of only one mid-sized, not-particularly-remarkable city. i’m tempted to believe that people must rather be falling through manholes or subway grates than so regularly, so… frivolously, abandoning their cars. my car is gone now. not fixed, no, but gone from the roadside. still, i remember that it was once one of these, an untold story with a clue left behind. and i know that my decision to leave it there, slumped pitiful in the cold with a broken axle, was anything but frivolous. my experience, in that way, shines the 55 56 brighter light of personality over these artifacts. these un-peopled objects. nuisances, as some might call them. you know, we’re not so different from snails: gobs of flesh encased in protective shells. only, rather than taking our shells with us, we travel from shell to shell. from house to car, car to office, office to car to favorite restaurant to home. still, like snails, we, too, outgrow our shells. we crave some change, or our shells wear down or break, and we must move quickly on. often, there is a palpable sense of loneliness, a despair, that attaches to abandoned artifacts like cars and houses and children’s dolls. but we don’t feel this when we look at empty shells. we see an object that has served a noble purpose, that was molded from common elements into a form that, miraculously, will never quite be replicated. that was made with a unique and complex intention. we might, then, interpret those things we leave behind not as merely abandoned, never to be returned to, but as physical traces of our nonphysical consciousness—as testaments that we, too, were here—spelled by the bumps, dents, holes, and bruises, by the swirls and the ridges and the shadows and the colors that we’ve left—that we’ve printed—there, upon them. genesis 6 history of when we became editors, we entered the den of genesis – a small, windowless room on the 3rd floor of cavanaugh hall, with boxes of old issues stacked precariously along the walls. the room was a bit stuffy, very much cramped, but undoubtedly filled with history. atop the bookshelf was the whiteboard calendar, unwiped since 2017. underneath, the half-empty drawer with a masking tape label reading “party supplies.” and most importantly of all, the archives: a filing cabinet full to the brim with every issue published since the magazine printed its first issue in 1973. genesis was started in 1972 by the english club sigma tau delta, and the philosophy club phi sigma tau. its first editors were m. anne wilcox and dinah rockwell. for decades, the magazine has been publishing what students were interested in, starting with writing and then branching out into art. early issues held book reviews and philosophical essays alongside memoirs and several of the genres we still publish today. before i (abby) started as a managing editor, i was particularly interested in the history and began scouring the archives. as we prepared for the 50th anniversary, it became something i was excited to share with others. there was no documentation in the office of how genesis began and how it changed through the years, but a history was compiled through the written records of the magazine itself, left behind by the editors before us. on the yellowed pages, there were dedications to impactful professors, solicitations for paper submissions of artwork and writing, changes in logo from time to time, and information hidden in the different letters from the editors. each issue, new editors reconstructed the magazine. in the fall 1976 issue, faculty, as well as students, were invited to submit. the first open call for art was in the spring of 1977 – the previous issue had included a single illustrator, with their drawings spread throughout the magazine. starting in the 1980s, the magazine was published simply by the “genesis editorial team” instead of by editors from the two clubs. at some point, genesis switched from being capitalized to being all lowercase, a change that the current staff are very fond of. in 2004, there was an entirely new staff, who recruited a former contributor to help redesign the look of the magazine. they altered the shape of the books, the layout and fonts, and new submission guide7 lines. through all the issues, the most consistent element of genesis is change. even in our time as editors, aspects of genesis shifted. in 2020, we learned to host editorial meetings online, trying to keep the lively discussions going while using the raise-hand function. our staff produced an issue without fail every semester, seeking to publish the art reflecting times of great change, but also just wanting to make the next issue of genesis our own, as editors had done in the past. we argued over zoom about margin widths, the pros and cons of baskerville and marion, and built friendships over late night debates on art and author purpose and the place of literature in our lives. we look into the archives and see the years of labour that go into making this a magazine. we see the ink on paper as a translation of the story occurring around it, the change in the larger culture and the personal taste that shapes each issue. in a few years, this issue of genesis will be a moment in time history in someone else’s eyes. cheers, managing editors 39 angel child chanya ruby oil on canvas, 40" x 50" 10 autumn adventures 2021 alexandra napers natural paint on canvas; 38" x 18" rooster rachael cunningham oil paint and sand, 20"x16" 69 lavender boy sage justice i met a trapeze artist named eve when the full moon rose deep in the navy sky, orange clouds kissing lake michigan. circles of tamed fire twirled in the air and we danced, feet traipsing one in front of the other until we tumbled to the dark dewy grass. she offered me a pacific rose. “it tastes like flowers,” she said. i bit into it, juices flowing down my throat. eve’s face, full of folds, spread into a wrinkly grin. her seventies had opened the door, holding marigolds and baby’s breath. we breathed them in deeply as she asked me what my “real” name was. my name was a wildflower plucked from the ditch running along my childhood farm’s edge, living on rainwater, the chill of the lake effect. i couldn’t expect her to understand. i told her anyway, my mouth contorting downward as i spoke. she didn’t tell me how “beautiful” a name it was, just nodded and chewed on the floral notes it left behind. she told me i was less like lilies, more like lavender as the menace who came before me, fought for us he-she’s and she-he’s. as the lake crashed against the rocks and the moon hung high, i swallowed whole the blossoms i had tried so hard to renounce. 74 31 bar in mexico caroline kridle oil painting; 24”x30” marshal walz from sculptor portfolio casey eskridge, 1996 high clay, 12" high 103 24 erin alberda gulping deeply, wriggling out of my sweater of pride, the one that i have woven each morning, i opened my lips and called each little beauty around me by its name. thank you, lord, for city sidewalks, with gum spots and steaming grates. nowhere else do i feel so at home in the shuffle. thank you for stillness, and floors for pins to drop on and ears to hear them. in these moments, breath is monumental, like thunder in my lungs. thank you for the faith of a mustard sapling, and the pinstripe gold umbrella you hold over me as monsoons of doubt rush around my roots. thank you for pain in my body and mind, so that in its absence, i feel the sweetness of honey or peonies, of being whole. today i prayed a prayer of gratitude monster sale jordan orwig artemis nettle stood amongst the wisps and willows of the night, turning a small piece of bone-white cardstock over in his fingers. “artemis nettle’s traveling store, open year-round, by chance or appointment only,” the business card read in painstakingly crafted script. he looked up and examined the approaching couple: they looked young, no older than thirty-five, and they probably had a seven-year-old at home. he glanced over his shoulder and mentally checked his inventory. he fixed his hat and popped a mint into his mouth. the sugary disc lasted less than three seconds before he crushed it between his teeth. the couple drew closer to him and the enormous canvas tent rising behind him, and nettle noted a single drop of sweat trace its way down his back. he shifted his weight, and the sound of his dusty boots crunching gravel highlighted just how silent the night had become. the couple exchanged spurts of conversation, while the woman gripped the man in the crook of his elbow. nettle charted the best course through his merchandise, knowing that some goods would only generate the desired effect when viewed in proper sequence. nettle bounced lightly on his toes and then stopped. he didn’t want them to think him too eager. he held his right wrist in his left hand behind his back and tried to relax his knees. “good evening,” nettle said as they came into the full view of the light emanating through the tent flap. “welcome to artemis nettle’s traveling store! i’m the owner, proprietor, and sole clerk, artemis nettle.” “we weren’t sure if anyone would even be here.” nettle attempted to make eye contact with the woman, but her attention was elsewhere. she stared behind him, and he soon realized what she was looking at: a wooden sign hammered into the ground with red, spray-painted letters. the wording had dripped some, but the words remained legible. monster sale “is this for real?” she said. nettle smiled and nodded. her face was impenetrable, but nettle could sense what little faith she held in his store beginning to dwindle as the grip on her husband’s arm tightened. “so, you saw my ad?” nettle said, hoping to change the subject. “what? oh, yes,” the man said. “we thought it was a joke.” he wiped sweat from his forehead. “my name is david yearling. and this is my wife, ellen.” 59 “i assure you, mr. and mrs. yearling, this is no joke.” nettle felt his tongue and jaw loosen. “tell me, how old are your children at home?” his heart leapt at the sight of ellen’s mouth dropping open. “how did you-” she began. “ma’am, i’ve been in this business for a long time.” he touched his index finger and thumb to the edge of his bowler hat. “please, right this way.” nettle led the couple to the front of his tent. it had taken him an entire day to set up. last week had been easier. he’d had help, but the dreadlocked girl hadn’t lasted long. none of them ever did. the couple followed nettle past the sign and up to his wooden podium. he went behind it and began rifling through papers. david moved his hand to his pocket. “how much is it?” he said. nettle looked up at him. his hat had fallen askew. “how much is what?” “the show?” he motioned toward the tent flap. nettle put the papers down and looked at the two of them. “please understand something, mr. and mrs. yearling.” despite his annoyance, he kept his expression neutral—neither malicious nor kind. “this is not a side show. this is not the back lot of a carnival where i take you into a shadowy mirrored tent to unveil a dog-faced turtle boy floating in a vat of formaldehyde just so that you gasp and cringe. don’t let the façade fool you: this is a business, and i am a businessman. though i will be guiding you through my inventory, i would no more charge you to peruse my wares than a car salesman would charge you to look at last year’s models. so, for my sake and for yours, have no lingering doubts about the nature or the legitimacy of my store and its contents.” nettle returned to his paperwork. the sounds of papers shuffling floated oddly in the night air. david just stared at him, his mouth cracked open. even ellen had quit pondering the dirt. finally, nettle lifted his head and held out two yellowed sheets of paper along with two ballpoint pens. “what are these?” david said as he plucked the papers from nettle’s grasp. “damage waivers.” the yearlings waited for nettle’s face to crack, to produce a smile that would let them in on the joke. it never came. monster sale 60 61 jordan orwig david looked from the paper, to nettle, back to the paper. he glanced over at his wife, who barely registered the fact that she had been given anything at all. “you can’t be serious,” he said. “i take my job very seriously, mr. yearling,” nettle intercepted. he could feel the hairline fracture of resentment enter his voice, and he did his best to smother it. he had gotten them this far after all. “i am more than happy to allow you to peruse my wares at your discretion, but only after the proper paperwork has been filled out. they are as much for tax purposes as anything. i can understand your skepticism, but i assure you that this is all according to procedure.” ellen’s pen hovered over the paper. nettle did his best to keep his features light, while still maintaining the seriousness of the waivers. his hands, out of sight underneath the booth, unclenched as she lowered her head to read the form. david and ellen finished filling out the forms and returned them to nettle, who placed them in a manila envelope. he stepped over to the flap in the tent and motioned for them to follow. gripping one part of the opening, he smiled at them. “mr. and mrs. yearling, again, i welcome you to artemis nettle’s traveling store!” out of the corner of his eye, nettle caught them clasp hands as they took a step forward. he checked over his shoulder before following them in. the night shrouded the surrounding trees in a murky cloak, and, despite the breeze, the atmosphere was taut and unflinching. nettle knew there would be no more visitors tonight. he let the tent flap drape closed as he caught up with the yearlings. shadows danced along the interior plywood walls of the tent. oil lamps hung sporadically from the rib-like beams of the ceiling, flooding some areas with light while neglecting others entirely. “well,” nettle said as he approached the couple. “shall we begin?” “it smells in here,” she said. nettle pressed on, indicating to his left, “if you’ll just follow me this way.” “maybe we could come back tomorrow,” david said. “will you be here tomorrow?” nettle’s back stiffened: he wouldn’t be here tomorrow. he had reserved a spot of land in ravensport. unlike the trickling traffic in this town, ravensport had always been an ideal market whose sales would hopefully turn his year around. “mr. yearling, and mrs. yearling, please,” he said. “all i ask of you is twenty or thirty minutes of your time. as i said earlier, you’ve already driven out here, and i would hate to make you waste a trip. i know that, if given the chance, i can meet all of your needs and expectations!” he adjusted his hat and swept forward, willing them away from the entrance. before he reached the first cage, he turned back to them. his mood dipped when he saw that they hadn’t moved, though he made sure his smile remained. “how old are your children? i don’t think i caught it earlier.” “ruby is nine, and caleb is seven, but he’ll be eight this october.” nettle’s smile broadened. “perfect! come right up to the first stall.” the couple advanced slowly to where nettle stood, mindful of the bars nearby, inside of which hung heavy, faded curtains. nettle’s hand went up to a rope that dangled near the cage. “again, i promise you both that you are completely safe, but i would advise that you steel yourselves so as not to excite her.” “her?” ellen said as nettle pulled down the rope. the drapes inside the cage swooped away, and the couple gave a premature jump just from the curtains being drawn. their faces turned to puzzlement at the sight inside. a door. it stretched across the width of the cage, the frame touching either end. a simple brass knob stuck out amidst the flakey white paint. nettle motioned for them to keep looking at the door, his smile never wavering from his face. david made a soft squeak as the doorknob started to turn. two sets of purple fingers tipped with black, pointed nails wrapped around the crack that had appeared as the door swung out slightly. the knuckles resembled warped wood, and a soft hiss escaped from the opening, followed by two glowing eyes peering out from the blackness. the yearlings stood frozen. nettle cut through their stupor. “this is the standard boogeyman that i have on offer. well, boogeywoman, but the difference is completely negligible. i think that she’d be perfect for your children. she’s low maintenance, requires no food or care, and the only thing that she needs is a nice closet to live in. just wait for the right moment, and out she comes. nothing too scary, just enough to set them on edge!” another hiss slipped from behind the door. the boogeywoman drummed her fingernails along the wood but never showed more than those twisted fingers and gleaming eyes. monster sale 62 63 jordan orwig without taking her eyes from the door, ellen said, as if speaking to herself, “our children don’t have closets in their rooms.” the corners of nettle’s smile sagged slightly. “oh, well then.” he dropped the rope, and the curtains fell back into place. the yearlings came out of their spell, blinking rapidly. “come along then, i’ve much more stock that might interest you.” he started to turn away, but then stopped. “do they have attics in their rooms? because she works just as well in attics. not only that, but she comes with a thirty-day warranty that i could throw in at no charge.” they shook their heads. “no, they just use dressers for their clothes.” nettle’s eyes lit up. “oh, excellent! please, follow me.” he led them past several more cages—one smelled like rotten eggs while another emitted a green haze—before stopping at a compact cage with bars no bigger than drinking straws. once they finally caught up with him, he leaned back and stepped aside, allowing them to peer into the cage. “this next sample is a crowd favorite.” inside the cage sat a miniature dresser the size of a large dictionary. in most places, the wood was worn and dusty, but around the center of the drawers, there were long streaks of darkened wood. a withered length of string was attached to one of the knobs, and nettle promptly reached over and gave it a pull. a low sigh escaped from inside as the drawer slipped open. “mr. and mrs. yearling, i would like to introduce you to kilroy.” nettle watched as the two parents edged closer to the cage and peered into the space. they jumped backward as a brief, wet sneeze chirped from the drawer. they continued staring as a shock of black and white hair popped up from inside, followed by two jawbreaker-sized eyes. nettle’s smile grew even more as kilroy rolled his pupils around to stare back at the two figures gazing in at him. finally, with another soggy sneeze, the creature rose far enough so that its nose rested on the lip of the drawer. nettle suppressed a cheer as he heard ellen allow the smallest of laughs escape her lips as kilroy emitted another sneeze. kilroy’s eyes rolled and stared while its cucumber nose flexed and wiggled. her laugh became a soft groan as a stream of snot melted out of kilroy’s nose like candle wax, following the trail of darkened wood perfectly. “yes, well, as i said before, kilroy is a favorite,” nettle said as he hurried to draw the yearlings’ attention away from the creature’s nasal discharge. “i’ve heard back from several satisfied customers saying that he’s just the thing their kids needed to keep them in bed. some folks with younger children have let me know that their kids would rather try to adopt little kilroy than show any signs of fear. but those are rare occurrences, and your children are well within the effective age range.” 63 he caught the eyes of both parents. ellen’s mood had lifted somewhat at the sight of the pocket-sized figure in the drawer. “though he doesn’t come with a warranty, i will provide you with a reasonable price.” nettle fought to keep his arms from crossing across his chest. “well, he is cute,” ellen said contemplatively. david suddenly found familiar footing in this strange place and began speaking with the tone of a man who was used to haggling over price. “mr. nettle,” he began. “please, call me artemis.” “alright. artemis. as you said, this little fellow might be just a little too cute to do much good, and without a warranty…” “i agree with you; it is unfortunate that i cannot offer the thirty-day warranty on little kilroy here.” nettle was no stranger to negotiating himself and knew that this line of conversation meant that the couple had made the gradual shift, as most eventually did, to accepting his store as a legitimate business. at the sound of his name, the snuffling figure let loose another sneeze, adding more mucus to the front of the dresser. a noise that sounded like a strangled cat’s purr came from within his flaring nostrils. “david, are you sure?” ellen said from behind her husband, her eyes still transfixed on the bulbous-nosed creature. “nobody knows your children better than you do,” nettle said to them. “if you don’t think that kilroy is up to snuff, then he’s not.” the purring continued, interrupted briefly with an indignant snort. nettle’s mind raced. something less cute than kilroy, not as off-putting as the boogeywoman, but wait, their children have no closets. “please, mr. nettle. artemis. is there anything else?” david said. “we’re just looking for a little peace in the evenings.” at that, the salesman tugged on the string again, and the drawer snapped shut. kilroy hadn’t quite got his nose clear, and he let out a sharp squeak as his nose caught in the dresser. once the drawer was shut, nettle raised his arms to indicate the tent. “mr. and mrs. yearling, my entire stock is for you to peruse. i will make it my mission to ensure you leave here with precisely what you need.” nettle led the couple through row after row of cages. he demonstrated his standard monster under the bed, as well as providing instruction on how to banish it for the night with a few simple phrases and a pattern of flickering light. he gave them the hard sell on his deeply discounted shadow in the corner. monster sale 64 65 jordan orwig nettle told the yearlings that this last one simply had to go, and he was willing to sell it to them at, or possibly even below, cost. as they rounded a final corner of the tent, the mood lightened but determined, they passed a large cage covered with heavy black satin curtains with a large letter b stitched in gold thread on each drape. “mr. nettle,” ellen said, “what’s this?” nettle drew up short. his spine was an ice pick. without needing to look, he realized his error. he turned and caught her eye. “oh, nothing, merely a piece of inventory that i doubt you or your children would be much interested in,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “why?” david said. “what does the b stand for?” “it’s actually two bs, mr. yearling,” nettle said, his fingers rubbing the edges of his hat. the yearlings waited for him to continue. nettle took a deep breath, wishing he had taken a different route through his store rather than excitedly leading them through like a hurricane. he said the words in an exhaled breath. “bed bug.” his customers exchanged looks, and then turned back to him in unison. “show us.” he tried to buy his way out. “i’m sorry, but i’m afraid that this specimen here is already spoken for.” “but you could get others?” david asked. “surely you could get another if this is what we want. there can’t be just one, right?” he took a deep breath and met their eyes. he weighed what would be worse: the truth or a lie. he drew himself up slightly, bracing, but he would never deny a customer’s request. nettle returned to the cage with the black curtains and placed his hand on the fraying rope. the yearlings waited in anticipation. “you were quite fond of kilroy, yes?” nettle said, his hand motionless. “i did mention that he was thirty percent off, didn’t i? quite a steal…” “yes, yes, he was cute. now, if you don’t mind.” david gestured lifting with his upturned palms. “i have a feeling that this might be just right for our children.” ellen never took her eyes from the cage. she leaned in to examine the bars, and nettle’s blood turned to battery acid as he saw her eyeing the serrated marks that ran up and down the length of the metal. 65 why didn’t you get those fixed? he screamed to himself. in one frantic motion, he readjusted his grip and jerked the rope downward. the drapes drew back with a whoosh, and light tumbled outward from within the cage. it was the size of a child’s room. stains lay splattered across the moldy carpet, and a simple bed sat in the center of the cage. a few moments went by. ellen looked first to her husband and then to nettle. “did you mean actual bedbugs?” she began. “those tiny brown-” without drawing his eyes away from the interior of the cage, nettle raised one finger, silencing her. he then used the same finger to point inside. ellen returned her gaze to the small bed. a low whirring noise escaped from beneath the bed. at first, it was a mix between the buzzing of a cicada and the chirping of a cricket, but then it was neither. maybe a baritone version of a mosquito with the flapping of immense dragonfly wings. from beneath the bed came three pairs of grotesque, segmented legs. the light reflected dully off the chitinous exoskeleton, and each monstrous appendage flexed and heaved, churning ever upward in a wild dance. ellen’s face blanched as the buzzing intensified. the barbed ends began to pluck and scour the bed, and nettle could almost see for himself what must be going through the yearlings’ minds as they imagined their children on the receiving ends of those razored prongs. finally, nettle saw his deal slam shut as thick, coagulating ooze seeped from the tips of the legs. it dripped with an agonizing slowness, coating the bed and carpet in a clear, sticky gunk. with a sunken head, nettle pulled the rope again to let the curtains fall back into place. as they shut, the chatter from within ceased, and he could practically feel the silence rush to fill the space. he cursed himself and his carelessness. he should have paid more attention to what he displayed when he was setting up. he should have done everything in his power to move them along and assure them that the bed bug was completely wrong for their children. but he hadn’t. the yearlings stood before him, slack-jawed and ashen-faced. nettle almost preferred the clamoring of the bed bug over their shocked silence. almost. “you show this to parents?” david sputtered. “you show this to parents in hopes that they’ll pay you money so that they can take it home and use it on their children?” monster sale 66 67 jordan orwig “mr. and mrs. yearling, not all my wares are intended for children. some, like kilroy, are merely there to give them a little fright.” “is that or is that not a child’s bed you have in that cage?” “well, when traveling from town to town, space does become an issue…” “let’s go, ellen.” david grabbed his wife’s arm. she hardly seemed to register his pull. her face was chalk white. as he watched them hurry away, artemis nettle’s hands found his pockets. his fingers brushed against a thin edge of cardstock. “wait! mr. and mrs. yearling! my business card!” 67 21 munkhi mario stone sometimes i feed him daily though i try to not at all, and despite the bite, his empty eyes, i heed his monkey call. i (clutch the stick) crawl on my fists in search of flesh to beat— (blind it) (claw it) (maul it raw) the pulp i eat i eat i eat. there’s a monkey lives inside my brain, twisting grabbing me he bites— what bliss to lick his tongue (your lips desire) what a fright. he’s crawling through my mouth (again) he’s fingering my eyes, i’ve let him come alive (again his howl no surprise ‘fore twilight throes, the victim moans unto my jungle groans her wet oasis, her featherdove hair, her skin the moon so fair so rare so soft her lips we’re crawling through the bliss her mourning seeks red tongues her eyes so wet to lies— we come for sin death welcoming the pleasure your demise 15 the confessional danielle harrell my heart beat pulses through my twitching fingers, the folded paper gaining more creases in my sweaty hands. a shaky inhale and a breath, my voice mumbles out, “forgive me, father, for i have sinned. it has been four months since my last confession.” wood whines beneath the priest’s shifting shoes. the walls let out a symphony of bending and cracking, closing in on all sides of the closet-like room. paper crinkles hastily as i open my scrawled list. my shaking thumb leads the way, leaving a trail of indents as evidence of my faults and failures. my quavering voice follows until my thumb finishes its descent, and all that is left is my heart’s incessant pounding, and the splintering of the walls. i give myself one breath. two. i finally lift my gaze to meet his gray eyes, creased by a gentle smile. 16 the priest lifts a steady hand toward the crown of my head, and absolves me from all of my sin, through the father, the son, and the holy spirit, and lets me go in peace. the walls are silenced as i slowly begin to stand, and they do not utter a word as my hands grip that paper and tear it into shreds. walking down an evening beach david casey 26 [1] the tide draws in now, leaving lonely bolls of seafoam skating along the sand, so packed and smooth in the day’s late hours. i think about the sand. about how each step breaks new grains. how, no matter how many ancient, creeping things have slithered out of these waters, no matter how many ships have straddled this shore, i am the first, and the last, to walk these particular sands. i think about how we used to build castles with it. about how different things are now, and how complicated. how we lay roads, build homes and office buildings with it. add water for cement. for glass, apply heat. demolish it. drop bombs on it. send it up in a cloud of smoke. dust to dust. i think about a phrase from a source i cannot place: “we are agents of entropy.” i think about the future. about finding what we’re looking for— she, out there in the water, and i. and i think about an old family story: 27 how the very first husband of my mother’s mother’s mother left a note by her bedside, and walked into the sea. [2] then i think about the sands of a different time. about that spring break, way back, hatching sea turtles in mexico. about laughter and tequila at night, bloodshot eyes and metallic breath, instant coffee from a tin pot. about how sea turtles lay eggs in the sands of their birth, so we couldn’t carry the hatchlings to the water, couldn’t save them from the crabs lurking, buried, or the birds circling darkly there, above. how nature doesn’t care about irony. i think about the rock beaches of rhode island, where we moved when i was in high school. how we sat at goddard park, looking out over the bay, sipping from crumpled water bottles half-full of cheap vodka. about how nick would recite kerouac there, and we started calling it god’s park, like sal paradise would do. how we laughed as he played up the pipe-smoking beatnik, wagging his finger, strumming it on each syllable as he read. how, when he got to the last line, he leaned his elbows on lifted knee and lavishly drew out that final phrase: “i think of dean mo-ri-ar-tee!” how the hairs on my neck stood at rapt attention. i think about how i wore long sleeves in those summers, because my arms felt too skinny. how i wish i was that skinny, now that things are different. 28 [3] we walk up from the water’s edge and see children combing the sand for shells, while their parents watch the orange sun droop over the horizon. and i look over, and she’s smiling. and i smile because she’s smiling. and i think about how simple my world has been. how it once consisted of frogs and dinosaurs and the snare drum i got when i was nine. how i could sit in a box on the floor of my bedroom, pretending that the ceiling fan could sweep me up into the clouds. how i long for my own children, that i might glimpse that so-small world anew. [4] sitting far above the shoreline now, i grab a fistful of sand and let it trickle upon my feet. there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on every beach in the world. this thought astounds, almost angers me in its incomprehensibility. then i bury my foot, then my hand, then my forearm. i imagine pulling my limbs back out, only to see that they have dissolved away— that they have become sand. i imagine what it would be like were the rest of my body so atomically absorbed: the carbon and oxygen and phosphorus in my cells vibrating into the substrate around me, bit by bit, until it reaches my skull and the neurons within it, still sparkling with thought and image and memory; until the border between myself and the world disintegrates, and the tide sweeps us back into the sea. does the sand wonder where the time has gone? do the mollusks? perhaps that’s why old people come here, they say: to die. that they may be washed away, folded back, seamlessly, into the universe. 29 28 9” x 12” acrylic painting jordan winslow the mystery lollipop, lollipop, oh lolli-lolli-lolli emma schwartz oil on canvas, 22"x32" 79 romance with ray christopher james bollinger she stands there glowing under the southern california sun. a quick breeze lifts her sunhat to reveal her face in half-shadow. the red brick of royce hall looms behind her. i take a photograph that will bring me joy and sorrow in equal measure. “live forever!” ray cried. we were enraptured, watching my hero sit in his wheelchair raising up his gnarled hand in the air, providing both blessing and benediction to the crowd. the energy in the room was intoxicating, we all hung on his every word, this frail looking old man with his hidden, tenacious power. he pulled us by hidden marionette strings—one way to laughter, one way to tears. i looked at her with tears in my eyes, tears of love for the man, tears of love for the life i was so fortunate to live. the night before we came to see him speak, i read to her “the last night of the world.” the husband and wife finishing one last, quiet night before the literal ending of the world. we both cried. i remember lying next to her in our big california king-size bed, her warmth and her scent so powerful in that space lingering after sadness. we spoke a bit of our fears about the end, about death. i didn’t have any sense of it. i felt too young, too assured of a long life that death was only a concept, one that sometimes kept me awake if i thought about it before falling into sleep. but she had opinions. “death is not the end,” she said, “but the beginning of the soul’s journey.” she seemed very sure. i know her fiancé had passed only a few months before i had met her. she alluded to messages from beyond. i was a callous atheist with very little tolerance for nonsense then. “well, i’m not too sure of a soul. i think that when we go, we go. what we leave behind us is what’s important. things that people will remember.” she looked at me with bemusement—maybe pity. “you know christopher, i know exactly how i am going to die.” my eyes opened wide. “tell me,” i implored her. but she shook her head no. she looked into the distance and i could see in her eyes that she believed she knew how, if not when. “let’s play scrabble.” the distraction tactic. i gave in and pulled out the board, a nice game (i would let her win), we would make love, and go to sleep. drive out that morning to ucla and see ray bradbury speak. it would turn out to be a lovely day. walking through the campus talking. telling her about how ray wrote fahrenheit 451 in the basement of the library, stuffing dimes into rent-a-typewriters. of course, he would tell the story himself on stage later. but she loved to see me passionate. she leaned in and gave me a big kiss that made me blush, like every kiss she gave made me blush. i was a shutterbug. i took pictures of everything, of fascinating faces, or architectural details. of ray on stage. it was serendipity that i was able to 89 capture her in that fantastic light. i showed her the photo on the computer later that night, and she told me she looked fat. of course she looked radiant. i kept it as the wallpaper on my cellphone for years. when we moved from southern california to the pacific northwest to endure seemingly endless rain, just seeing her smiling face would make me smile no matter the weather. but eventually new photos took its place. new memories crowded out that one specific moment. then she wasn’t feeling so good. she put off going to the doctor. i told her it could be appendicitis. when we finally went to see her pcp, the urgent ct scan showed she had cancer. i remember sitting in the little room as he showed us the images, i remember how my heart sank into the center of the earth. how i knew from working in healthcare for years that there was no way out of this. i could see her face through my tears, taking it in. she was optimistic to the end, and i pretended so well that she thought i was too. she wanted to be cremated so i could keep her close to me. her sister had been buried in colorado and no one took care of her grave. “promise me you’ll keep me close.” she passed on a couple of days after my birthday. she left me as i told her it was ok to go, that i would be ok. her favorite song played at that moment and i knew, knew without doubt, that her soul would go on. she sent me messages only i would know. i had bought a carved, rosewood urn with a spot for a photograph on its face. i was so distracted with all of the aftermath that i forgot about it. when the funeral home called me to let me know she was ready…i wasn’t. i looked for a photograph that would capture her, capture her love, her beauty, her heart, the other half of my soul. and then i saw it there, stored as computer data, that moment in time after we had seen ray bradbury: that smile shining in the light i missed so much. her holding on to her hat so that it wouldn’t blow away. a moment of romance with ray. 90 fanwa road emma yuan fecteau 40 january 4, 2002 the birthing was the easy part. zhou li’s mother had cleared a table in the kitchen. the wood-paneled windows were bolted to keep out prying eyes, though their nearest neighbor lived five miles away. the pale light of a single lamp flooded over crates of potatoes, eggplants, and leafy bok choy. the spuds stared at li in an accusing fashion. their brown spots and wrinkled skins resembled the face of li’s disapproving mother, who had left the house after the birthing and hadn’t returned. the reason for her mother’s disapproval was asleep at the moment, swaddled in blankets with pink lips slightly parted. zhou zeng ya had been alive for all of two hours. li had refused to budge from the birthing table. though her throat burned with thirst, li satisfied herself by drinking every detail of her newborn daughter, from the shape of chubby her face to the dip in the bridge of her nose. like mine? li felt mingled warmth and unimaginable sadness, two opposite feelings that tugged at her heart, poised to tear it apart. the pain of birthing was nothing. li would never teach zeng ya how to speak chinese or tie her shoes or make dumplings. li’s mother had given her two days to abandon her daughter, and two days was not enough time for such things. “law is law,” mama zhou would say, a pinch in her nose and a glint in her eye. “you are unmarried and young. no husband will want to marry a woman with another man’s daughter, and you won’t be able to pay the fees to keep her!” li lifted her daughter’s tiny hand, which had slipped from the folds of the blanket. how can i give you up? january 6, 2002 red-tiled roofs sagged on either side of the road like hunched shoulders, with rain pouring down their stony necks. zhou li ambled through the stone streets of hefei city, her shoes slipping on cracks and loose stones. the hike from the train station had left a chill in her bones. li’s worn coat weighed on her, drenched in mingled tears and rainwater. the wind cried and tugged at the frayed ends of her clothes, catching at wisps of her hair. li wished she were a dandelion seed, so she could let the wind carry her away. zeng ya wailed louder than the storm, pounding little fists into li’s coat. li did not look at her daughter as she slipped from shadow to shadow. the new mother limped past homes with blinking windows and grimacing balconies and rusted doors that groaned in their frames. fanwa road was witness to her transgression, and made its objection known. hefei social welfare institute gleamed like the gates to heaven. li shook the bars of the front gate until her fingers were numb. locked. she bent down and positioned her daughter in a small crevice of the wall, so that her face was shielded from the storm. zeng ya’s eyes fluttered, tears frozen on a face that was too pale and pink. voices rose in the distance, and li pulled her hood over her head, brushing her snow-riddled hair from her face. her puffing breath formed clouds in the frigid air. zeng ya yawned and stretched in her blanket bundle, which li had wrapped tighter than a silkworm’s cocoon. li couldn’t think of what to say that wasn’t a lie or an empty promise and an apology that only the wind would witness. numbness spread to li’s toes and fingers and cheeks, but the worst of the cold was inside, a winter that froze her heart. “good luck,” choked li. she touched her daughter’s cheek with one mitten-clad hand. “zhou zeng ya.” li turned around. each step was like plunging into heavy snow. every instinct pulled li back to the little bundle, but she pressed on. her breath came out in gasps and her hands curled into fists, nails sinking into the skin of her palms. yes, birth was easier than this. ... fanwa road slept on as officer wang made his rounds. the day shifts were long, and the night shifts were longer still. officer wang swept his flashlight around the darkened alley, a blaze of orange in the deepening blues of the village. he shrugged against the pouring rain, anticipating the cup of tea that would warm his hand when morning came. his skin grew paler and his hair turned grayer with each late night shift. he reminded himself to have a word with his boss about next week’s schedule; he had a few decades to go before he was ready to look like an old man. a soft cry broke the monotony of street traffic. the beam of officer wang’s flashlight lurched down to illuminate a bundle of mud-splattered blankets near the gate. it was a sleeping baby, no doubt his careless footsteps and incessant muttering had woken her up. officer wang studied the baby girl, for he knew in an instant that it was a girl. abandoned daughters were as common in these streets as empty bottles and alley cats. the only thing unusual about this baby was the letter tucked within the folds of the blanket. 41 officer wang lifted her. he headed back to the station, grateful for an excuse to satisfy his boss and perhaps leave a few hours early. at the shushan police station down the road, officer ming was brewing a cup of coffee. “another baby?” he grumbled. “it seems you’re always the one finding them.” “it would seem so.” officer wang held up the note. “but i found her with this.” “it’s probably forged by the institution, all those notes are.” officer ming shook his head. “you ought to take her back where you found her. the welfare institute will take her.” “yes, sir.” officer wang plodded back the way he’d come, he unfolded the letter in the baby’s blankets. he struggled to read the messy scrawl within, and paused to stand beneath a lamplight. i’m extremely grateful for you taking in my baby. due to the harsh reality of the circumstances, my baby can’t grow up with me, by my side. i am sure you all will love her dearly and educate her well. my daughter’s name is zhou zeng ya. she was born on january 4, 2002. please, i request that you remember her birthday. this is my greatest wish. please, please treat this little orphan well. as a result of mistakes caused by my ignorance, i will never ever forgive myself. my daughter is a healthy baby. i believe that with the support of you good-hearted people, she will become a successful child. january 6, 2002 officer wang folded the note. streaks of dawn painted the rain-thick clouds. he searched the lightening shadows of fanwa road, from the blinking windows to the grimacing balconies to the grumbling doors. there was no mother in sight. 42 note from the advisor creating a literary journal is a labor of love. unpaid volunteers run the show, and while you can set your own hours, there are many, many hours of work involved to produce each issue. worth it, say the student editors of genesis, who have kept this award-winning magazine in print for fifty uninterrupted years. we share our lives through the art we create, and the work in genesis tells a story about iupui. the magazine has taken a variety of shapes (rectangle, oblong, square, back to rectangle) and materials (stapled cardstock, spiralbound pages, perfect bound with spine). in 2018, the magazine preserved its complete archive of issues online, thanks to university library’s open access journals (https://journals.iupui.edu/index. php/genesis/issue/archive). amid all those changes, the constant is the labor and love of putting student words and art into the world. editors passionately argue for their picks, spend late nights navigating new technologies, and handle the ups and downs of leadership, management, and collaboration. they distribute free issues that represent our creative student body. they learn from each other and share a common goal: making the best possible magazine each semester. a point of pride for iupui, the school of liberal arts, and the english department: genesis is frequently honored by the indiana collegiate press association, most recently sharing 2021 literary magazine of the year with notre dame. in addition to reading and selecting work submitted by current students, the genesis staff scoured the archives and voted to select pieces from each decade. this tour of our publishing history gives a taste of the diverse, compelling, and unique writers and artists who have made up our campus for a half century. we hope that you enjoy reading this 50th anniversary issue as much as we enjoyed making it. sarah layden faculty advisor 5 green eggs and spam davinia yalimaiwai, 2009 88 keola beamer, one of hawaii’s best known slack-key guitarists, eats spam and loves poetry. let’s just call him the dr. seuss of the hawaiian island chain. although he isn’t a published author like the late ted geisel, beamer collects spam haiku poetry that he posts on his website. once a fun pastime, spamku is now keola’s religion. but can a local island girl like me blame him? after all, keola is a descendent of the great king kamehameha i, unifier of the hawaiian islands. if kamehameha’s descendent is wrong about his spam religion, then i don’t want to be right! in fact, our love of spam in the islands brings us so close to keola that, when spotted, it is not uncommon to hear shouts of, “eh, howzit braddah keola? how yo maddah? you hungry? you like come grind wit us?” to the tourist who decides to grace our islands: never say “no” when we ask you to come eat with us. your noncompliance will be taken as snobbery, and your inability to adapt to our local standards will be held against you for generations to come. yes, we will tell our grandchildren of the rude haole who said, “no.” trust me, you don’t want to be labeled a foreigner for your entire visit. and there is always enough spam to feed everybody thrice over. so, hang loose, brah, and no worries! i have taken the liberty of picking out my favorite spamku from keola beamer’s website to show just how much we treasure this fine meat: and who dares mock spam? you? you? you are not worthy . of one rich pink fleck1 after eating with us, some uncle or aunty will always bring up braddah keola’s first song, “honolulu city lights.” it might not even be a blood uncle or aunt considering that we call everyone older than us “uncle so-and-so” or ‘’aunty this-and-that.” nevertheless, keola’s first hit is a classic. and, if you are a local who doesn’t like 1970s western-style hawaiian music, you keep that information to yourself. god forbid that blasphemy ever leaks out because what ensues is a good two hours of drunk relatives singing and saying, “braddah keola, why you nevah wen bring yo slack-key?” there might also be some talk about his mother, winona beamer, during this musical jam session. winona is one of the key activists of the hawaiian revival movement in our high schools. this is obviously where keola received his calling to pay homage to the voiceless spam. but usually the mood is too light to get into any political stuff—especially on a sunny surfing day like the day a friendly tourist decides to eat with a local family. 89 born in world war two hogs marching off to battle dressed in tin armor if this were animal farm, it might be easier for a non-hawaiian to imagine the haiku above: pigs going off to war, marching in blue armor, ready to defend their country. or perhaps the “hogs” suggest the raw power of actual human soldiers who went off to fight during the war. either way, history shows our lovely spam did not migrate to our islands until the mid-1900s. hawaii became a strategic location to send american troops during world war ii. being in the pacific ocean, and midway between continental usa and japan, troops often stopped off at hawaii, particularly pearl harbor, to refuel and strategize for the next attack. unfortunately for the food and farming economies, this meant thousands of troops entered our small hawaiian chain. trying to feed the locals and the soldiers proved to be a bigger task than anticipated. it was also a waste of money to ship fresh meat all the way out to the pacific ocean just for it to spoil by the time it reached land. and then there was spam: pink tender morsel glistening with salty gel what the hell is it? shoulder of pork and ham or so hormel inc. has us believe. no one really knows for sure the exact ratio of pork or ham or feet or fat or unknown substance that is in spam. all we know is that it is salty, and meaty, and that it tastes good with just about anything: spam musubi (japanese sushi made with spam), spam saimin (hot soup with noodles and a slab of spam), spam fried rice (self-explanatory), spam and eggs for breakfast (now on our mcdonald’s dollar menu), spam and cheese sandwich for lunch, and spam and shoyu rice (white rice covered in soy sauce) for dinner. my friend pork shoulder i return to you. this time i’ve brought mayonnaise soldiers during the war found it to be a convenient source of protein that they could depend on when food was sparse. since spam doesn’t have to be refrigerated, we locals buy it in bulk. during the rare instances when the islands are placed on hurricane or tsunami watch, we stock up on three necessities: water, toilet paper, and king-sized cans of spam. 90 jelly for mortar seven hundred tins and more i build a spam house surprisingly, hawaii is not among the fattest states in america. however, you might disagree with me when you see my three-hundred-pound aunty leilani. according to calorie lab’s “united states of obesity map for 2007,” mississippi weighs in as the fattest state in america, with a few states like alabama and indiana coming close behind. in fact, this map makes hawaii one of the leaner states. i’d now like to insert my expert opinion on the matter, completely unbiased, of course. apart from the various hawaiians, and samoans, and other polynesians of slightly smaller numbers: we have blacks, whites, hispanics, and many asians populating our islands. most of our asians are japanese: the ancestors of farmers who came to hawaii to work on our rice plantations. i’m not saying local japanese don’t eat spam. au contraire! remember the spam musubi? it was invented by the nagasaki family, or the hayashis, the nakamuras, maybe the tanakas. the point is this: local japanese families in hawaii eat just as much spam as any other group in the islands. but ask yourself one question: have you ever seen an obese japanese man or woman? exactly. (sumo wrestlers were not taken into consideration during my extensive research on overweight asians in hawaii). where, then, do all of the side effects of consuming millions of cans of spam end up? and why is hawaii still not ranked among the fattest of fatties? because “fat” in american standards means overweight. whereas all the other medical problems that come along with constantly eating crap, such as diabetes and heart disease, can affect even the skinniest of us. old man seeks doctor “i eat spam daily,” he says. angioplasty we still have our share of big-boned people. hawaii is a polynesian island, and, like all polynesians, we love us some food. fish is an essential food if you want to live on an island. pork is also an essential, especially if you don’t want to be excluded from family get-togethers. a lu’au—a local celebration where we eat a big pig that’s been cooked underground for a day—stems from victory parties hosted by the great king kamehameha. girls (big, small, and in-between size) dance the hula, and aunty this gets into an argument with aunty that over whose husband provides the best for his family. my bet is on uncle so-and-so. so imagine how my dad’s side of the family reacted on the fateful day of my freshman year in high school when i announced i wanted to become a vege91 tarian. they reacted the same way any polynesian family would. they laughed. "you realize you can't eat meat anymore, right?" that was my uncle peter. he's about seven years younger than dad, but his daily ritual of consuming yaqona (a slightly intoxicating root drink) and beer, has left him with wrinkles and ashy skin which make him look a million years older. “yes,” i replied. “you know spam is meat, right? you can’t eat spam.” uncle lguanodon, i mean uncle peter, has great deductive reasoning skills. “my teacher says spam is for poor people and that spam is trash.” strike two. “trash? what are these schools filling your head with? you tell your teacher that god made three things in this world: spam, sex-i-mean-marriage, and more spam.” pink beefy temptress i can no longer remain vegetarian 1. keola beamer's official website, "humor," "spam haiku," http://www.kbeamer.com/spam_haiku.html 17 demeter’s nectarine christopher cassetty o’, budding nectarine, who kiss’d so high upon the sprig for thee, demeter, ere she wept the winter dearth o’ wisps o’ pollen borne by honey-bee to thee: the portent o’ the blessèd spring. o’, blooming nectarine, who hast fleurie a darling orchid rose, beget thou such a rich and merry mirth for past, and too, too long has spring reposed in fetters o’ eleusis’ mysteries— o’, flower’d nectarine, who hath so much allur’d the minds o’ wise, becom’st thou love-betrothed to nether-worlds, the path o’ lies that led to her demise, and comes to thee the queen: persephone. o’, fallen nectarine, whose fleurs and lure hath fallen on the earth, reposèd on the verdant mead all furl’d, and pure, so she could not resist thy worth, and ope’d the earth exhuming misery. o’, dreary nectarine, who will not bare her fruit this solemn year, and weeps beneath the barren skies forlorn— as will’d away the sun demeter’s tears from thee, for loss o’ bless’d persephone. demeter’s nectarine, who whilom bloom’d upon the kiss of she, demeter, ere the goddess’ heart she tore, and why must die her louely nectarine: deceitful fleurs who lur’d persephone. the master in pieces kyrsten carlson the breeze drowned in the drizzling sky leaving people uncomfortably warm in their coats. take it off, get wet, leave it on, suffocate. so everyone choked. lights winked in the windows like glitter thrown across the skyline. the soft moon hid behind whispers of clouds, providing a stream of light here and there, like looking through a funeral veil. the night was young, but the day, tired and tried. inside, mr. oliver hamilton stood to the side. his brown tweed jacket and orange sweater vest beneath nearly yelled out his age, a robin among cardinals and bluejays. removing his matching flat cap, he wiped his brow with a yellowed handkerchief. returning his small, chubby hands into his beige pleated pants, he shifted about in his slightly-too-large brown shoes he’d forgotten to shine. around him, people molted, their falling coats revealing bare shoulders, smooth against the deep blues, shining reds, vibrant greens of their gowns, turning each into a colorful gem strung up on a necklace. the men unwrapped themselves like cigars of various neutrals and unbuttoned suit jackets with sighs of relief. it was a sight, the colorful birds of paradise against the concrete interior of the museum, but not one cawed with delight, shook hands without calculating judgments, no, not one meant a thing. though the night spoke otherwise, this was a happy occasion. a celebration of art reborn, reincarnated into something still to be discovered. on this night, the modern art museum of san francisco was having its soft reopening to those in high society that could afford donations and couldn’t afford suffering reputations. somewhere in front of an ever-murmuring crowd, the museum director gave her thanks for all the support from the art community and motioned to the now-open bar. the group flocked to it, their voices rising to cheer the night along. the champagne fizzed out into bubbly laughter from bright red lips while the men gave hardy whiskey shoulder slaps to a chorus of ole sports and champs. mr. oliver hamilton, not one for drinking and less for socializing, wandered ahead into the reconstructed gallery that was, at that moment, for his eyes only. they’d chosen to open with color field large canvases of color blocks on top of color blocks on top of color blocks daring to mingle at the edge. it didn’t thrill him. but, nonetheless, it had something to it, right? he turned a corner and came upon a few pieces of contemporary art. smears of color abstractedly thrown onto a blank canvas. the next round of framed pieces was abstract expressionism, a canvas that cried in color and screamed in chaos. 69 he continued on, puffing up at this piece, strutting away from another, until he came to it. a painting. a scene. a woman’s eyes, wide, broken, staring out in an empty room. from her eye traveled a drop of brown paint, down the canvas, and onto a chair that protruded from the wall. “strange, isn’t it?” chirped a smooth voice. it startled poor oliver who, looking wildly about him, realized he wasn’t alone. “strange, right?” she repeated. “what’s so strange about it?” mr. oliver hamilton asked, his feathers all ruffled. “well,” the woman traded her drink from hand to hand, “why does the tear become a solid object? it’s clearly supposed to represent emotion, but as it solidifies, does it mean she is stuck that way? left to forever feel sad?” intrigued, oliver turned to the woman who continued watching the painted lady’s gaze. “perhaps, or perhaps it shows that feelings can be rooted in the concrete, in the real and the touchable.” she straightened up and crossed her arms, “hm. i suppose, but really, why a chair then? it seems rather arbitrary to me, depressing even.” “but if anything, art should make us feel and to feel saddened by it is to be touched by it, is it not?” yet when he looked for his audience, he saw her sauntering away to another piece. “well, i certainly think so.” “you think what?” a tall, slender man asked. “to me,” he finished his wine, “to me this piece says, well, frankly nothing!” he clapped mr. oliver hamilton on the back with a chuckle. “nothing at all?” oliver said. the man straightened his bow tie before clapping oliver on the back again. “ha, ha, old chap, this is that new stuff that no one gets. maybe in a few decades we’ll come to see something of it. ah, carrie, carrie, dear, it’s been too long!” he gave oliver’s shoulder a goodbye squeeze and followed a silver bird as she disappeared into the crowd. mr. oliver hamilton looked around, his eyes landing on a thin vase of a woman all dressed in ivory sequins, staring at a large stone statue of a child kneeling and clutching its arms around the neck of a dog. the child’s arms and hands seemed to melt into the hard fur of its companion. “ah, and what does this piece say to you?” oliver asked while removing his cap to dab at his forehead. “it’s not really fair,” the woman said. “and why is that?” the master in pieces 70 71 kyrsten carlson “it’s always about being younger and younger. i’m quite tired of it,” she said. “perhaps the child merely represents innocence instead of a particular age?” he offered. “listen, if he wants to go, then he can go,” she snapped. “which? the dog? the child? perhaps one clings to the other for stability of the mind or of time which passes too quickly.” “alright, roger, you tell him i’ll sign the damn papers. he can travel the world with that college dropout if he wants to. they can be two idiot dodo love birds together.” she angrily returned a phone to her bag and turned, nearly running into oliver, huffing as she made her way past him. it was a waste. all of it. the night, the people, the minds, the art oh, god, of course, the art. wasted. he searched for any consolation, any sign that he was wrong, that it had meaning. the answer, perhaps, lies with a child tugging on his suit sleeves, a futile attempt to stretch them so they might hide his wrists. mr. oliver hamilton approached with caution. sitting in a large metal frame that jutted out well past the canvas was a cityscape on fire. only the silhouette of the buildings gave light to what they were, all the windows one would expect to see were closed, no movement within. most peculiar water seeped down the painting from some hidden mechanism. each drop would catch onto the yellows, oranges, and reds of the painted flames and bring them to a muddled conclusion along the bottom lip of the frame. “well, what do you think?” oliver asked. giving up on his jacket, the boy shoved his hands deep into the recesses of his pockets. “who’re you talkin’ to?” “you, boy, i want to know what you think of this painting!” “uh,” he glanced at the elderly man with his large caterpillar eyebrows asking the questions. “it’s kinda cool how only the fire melts. or whatever.” “what does it make you think about?” oliver asked. “i dunno, i guess, like, the water is putting out the fire,” the boy kicked at the ground. “anything else you notice?” it wasn’t the most splendid conversation on art he’d had in his long life, but it was more worthy than those he’d held, or thought he’d held, throughout the night. “um, there’s no people?” it was clear the boy was searching for the right answer rather than giving his own opinions. “that’s not untrue, but what does that tell you?” oliver encouraged. 71 “hm,” he stared into the painting. a smartly dressed man in a suit that matched the boys made them a trio. “who’s your friend, jojo?” the man said. the boy looked at oliver and then the new man, unsure who to answer. “i hate it when you call me that,” he said. “it’s what your mother calls you,” the man returned. “that’s because she regrets naming me after my dad. i like joseph.” he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “i think that it’s interesting there’re no people, but the city’s on fire. like, you know people have to live there because why else build a city? but no one cares. did they leave? before the fire or after? where’d they go?” he said to oliver. the man laughed with a smugness that only comes with a fat wallet and a good-looking face. “oh god, wait until i tell your mother you think you know about art.” “the boy’s got an interesting perspective, art isn’t the same to everyone. the important thing is he’s asking questions.” mr. oliver hamilton said. putting his emptied tumbler in his left hand and putting his right on the child’s shoulder, he glanced from boy to oliver. “should you really be talking to young boys? come on, jojo, your mother has absolutely got to hear this.” though he tossed his head back to laugh, his hair remained perfectly sculpted to his head. before he could respond, the two were too far away approaching a cardinal wearing a necklace of pearls. the adults exchanged words and the mother, he presumed, threw back her head, curls bouncing with each laugh. having had enough, the boy jerked his body out from under his stepfather’s repressive hand and found a bench against an empty wall where he could consider his hate. mr. oliver hamilton sighed. his heart sighed. his mind sighed. his whole body shivered with one big releasing sigh—of anger. and he left. and he returned. “hello, mister, i’m sorry, but the museum’s closed. been closed for about three hours now.” the security guard waved him back toward the door he should have locked. the intruder produced an id. “i am oliver hamilton. i explained to ms. cathay bates that i needed to fix my exhibit before the second night.” “i don’t know anything about that sir, i’m afraid you’ll have to leave until ms. bates…” the master in pieces 72 73 kyrsten carlson “i’m here, henry, it’s alright,” cathay bates said as she entered the front door, struggling to get a thin strap of her shoe around her heel. “mr. hamilton, i’ve really got somewhere i need to be so i’ll give you the key to your exhibit and then you leave it here with henry when you’re all done.” she handed him the key and moved on to tame her hair. “please do whatever you want to, stay all night, i don’t care. my car is here, i must go.” whatever he wanted. “well there you go, mister, i’ll be down here waiting.” henry resumed his usual pacing. whatever he wanted. what did he want? the short man hurried to his exhibit space. it was haunting so late at night. the ghosts of gentlemen and ladies with their light laughter and empty words shivered in the dark. the security lights only shone in the far corners where a corridor led to a bathroom or an elevator or stairs. it was like walking through a neighborhood at night, the lights blinking out as he passed them. he found the bench where the young boy joseph had sat. oliver’s feet dangled as the child’s had. it only deepened his sense of foolishness. he didn’t mind if someone didn’t understand a piece so long as they thought about it! so long as they questioned it, questioned it with wonder, not irritation. that’s what he loved about art—about creating it and viewing it. all these moments of life, his birth, his mother’s warm smiles, and warmer hugs, his father’s cigarette ashes burning late into the night as he read the newspaper, his teasing classmates who said things about his height, his knowledge of artists, the first kiss from his first girlfriend, the first time he tasted a real new york slice of pizza, losing his childhood dog, his grandmother still and quiet in her casket. all of this made up him, oliver hamilton. all the little day-to-day moments were his and his only, his perspective, his life. and all sorts of little moments made up another person. both had equally complex lives with heartbreak, with laughter, sorrow and joy, fear and courage, family and friends—each the main character in their own novel. all this made for different minds, different thoughts, different reactions. so he created a piece with one vision, but someone else saw it through their own vision. new interpretations, new questions with new answers. it wasn’t so much the art that was special as it was the interactions between people, the conversations, the discoveries, the connection from person a to person b living parallel, now perpendicular because of a piece of art. but these people didn’t care! he stood. they saw themselves as pieces of art. he stomped. decorated with lavish pieces of gold and silver, gowns like liquid poured over their thin bodies. he circled. one woman’s red dress with a high slit to make her irresistible to another woman’s husband. he paced. one man’s gift of three-tiered pearls to his wife, not out of adoration, but so his ex-wife might 73 the master in pieces see how well he was doing after their divorce. he cried. oh maybe they glanced at the art, but they studied the human anatomy, let their jaws hang loose and their morals looser as they jabbered and slobbered at her backless dress or her plunging neckline. he sobbed. a bunch of wild peacocks spreading their feathers of wealth to dance at their own reflections. he lost it. “ladies and gentlemen, i see many familiar faces among the crowd, i’m so glad many of you have returned. this is a first in the art world, a living, reacting, breathing museum. as i know many of you are new, we’ve established a mini gallery, if you will, of photos of how the hamilton exhibit began. be sure to really take a moment to absorb those into your mind before entering the actual exhibit and have your mind wonderfully expanded. remember, we again have the open bar and encourage all to have a memorable night. thank you!” ms. cathay bates opened the door leading to the exhibits. the champagne and wine again flowed, the flirting and glances shook egos and stirred emotions, the night was intoxicating. when they reached the hamilton exhibit, their eyes widened, their chatter crescendoed. the chair was in pieces. the canvas of the woman, the city, all ripped and hanging. the child and dog, now separated, lying wounded on the ground. frames hung askew, some resting on the floor. everything ripped, broken, shattered, destroyed. and they laughed. someone commented on how fragile life was. another on how short it was. another still on how unpredictable. one woman bumped another causing her to drop her glass of wine, staining the shreds of canvas, splintering glass on glass. they all clapped at the additional chaos. a perfect addition! a symbol of togetherness! no, a sign of outside force! no! an indication of how sorrow begets sorrow! and there sat mr. oliver hamilton, a man more broken than the broken mess he’d made. now they found meaning, now they discussed, they argued, they thought. bird-brained idiots picking at trash to find a crumb. he lunged. short as he was, he grabbed a fistful of necklace and tore it from a slender neck, the stones flying. he took a man’s whiskey and catapulted it against a shredded painting. none dared to stop him. his eyes lit with fire. he shoved a woman, her drink cascading down the rhinestones of her dress. he punched a man who doubled over onto the floor bringing with him a woman he’d tried to grasp for stability. he shouted. he screamed. he jumped through the window. 74 9 damn junkies nicholas gross there was a different feeling to the air in seattle in the autumn of 1985. the feeling in the air wasn’t coming in from the ports, or the forests, or the waves on the puget sound. it was coming in on cramped middle seats in smoky coach sections of passenger planes. it was coming in on worn bench seats in beat up hand-me-down pickups. the air was the cool breeze of life that rolled off of sherpa wool collars on denim jackets of young people from the north, south, east, and west corners of the united states and every square mile in between. they had come for the mountains and the evergreen trees, but they stayed for the taste of a cold dollar beer, the sound of a distorted guitar, and the warm embrace of a stranger who was just as happy to be found and validated as you were. it was the best feeling, with the best people, in the best place that i’ve ever been in my life. at least, that’s how it was then. now it was 1995 and the record needle was no longer the only needle that spun the people of seattle around. i stepped out of the rotted wooden lobby door of my apartment and stepped on a flier. “there is no win in heroin! get help now! king county health services.” i chuckled at the corny boy scout rhetoric on the flier. i lifted the hood of my rain jacket over my head, and i lit the first cigarette of the day. rain in seattle was like wind in chicago or traffic in new york city. it wasn’t anything abnormal. it just was. there was a young man and a young woman on the wet sidewalk to my left. the window ledge of a chinese dumpling spot that was attached to my apartment building supported their visibly soaking heads. i began to approach them to check for a pulse. please don’t be dead. the phone booth here smells like dog piss, and i need the rest of my quarters for smokes anyway. i noticed two used needle syringes that ended a stream of dried blood. the stream began at the inside of their swollen elbow joints and led down toward a crevice in the sidewalk. the arms had been constricted with what i assumed were the leashes of the bony labrador retriever that laid upon the wet cement at their feet. the dog shivered and looked up at me with hungry dark eyes. i crouched and stepped slowly toward the dog. the dog loaded its weight onto its hind legs and snarled and growled as i approached. i sighed and exhaled slowly. well, my bad for trying to help then, boy. i backed away and looked over toward the man and woman that huddled under the window and on the cold wet cement. the woman was short and thin. she had a blonde pixie cut. her face was sunken and gaunt and her complexion was pale. her right cheek filled with rain water as she rested her head on the shoulder of the man. his chin rested firmly upon his sternum and a rain jacket hood obscured all but his stubbled chin. i didn’t know who they were, but i knew what they were. they were addicts. junkies. dopeheads. burnouts. maybe they were those kids like me, in those passenger planes and pickup trucks. maybe they 10 damn junkies went left when i went right. maybe they zigged where i zagged. but here they were, cold and wet, on a dirty seattle sidewalk. and here i was staring at them like animals at a zoo. i looked through the window of the restaurant and stared at an elderly east asian man who i knew only as “mister li.” he nodded at the couple and threw up his hands like pontius pilot had before christ. i couldn’t hear him through the glass. i pointed to my ear, prompting him to repeat what he had said. he nodded to the two people in front of his restaurant. he shook his head and mouthed the words “damn junkies.” he shrugged his shoulders as if to say “not my problem.” next customer. i turned away from the soaking addicts and from mister li. they’re probably just knocked out from the smack. i’m sure the old man will wake them up once he closes shop for the night. or at least some cops or someone will come by. i slouched under the hood of my rain jacket and hid myself from the rain and the sullen eyes of the thin woman. i watched the rain flow into the drains, and i pretended that i hadn’t seen anything. i walked to meet the other members of my band at our makeshift recording studio. it was above the coffee shop that our lead guitarist, mark worked at during the day. the pacific bean coffee shop was only two blocks away from my apartment and so it was a short walk. i pressed the foam earpieces of my walkman cassette recorder firmly against my ears. i thought that perhaps the music would calm my nerves, but my cigarette had come to its butt and i still saw the shivering dog and the bloody needle syringe on each square of sidewalk. i saw the man and woman in the heads and faces of shoppers, blue-collar tradesmen, and white-collar professionals. i should have done something. but i couldn’t. there was the dog. the dog. who was i anyway? i was a record store clerk and not a paramedic. after all, i’m sure that the old man was right with what he said. right? damn junkies. i approached the coffee shop. the sign on the door read closed, but i knocked on the door and nodded through the murky glass to carlo, the closer. he put down his mop and opened the door. “drummer danny! what’s up, man? thank god, we are closed. i need a damn joint, like yesterday.” he lifted a chair that he had set down between the door and its frame. he pulled a tightly-wrapped joint out from his crumpled pack of cigarettes. “want to smoke this with me, man?” i patted his shoulder as i stepped over the chair and into the coffee shop. “no thanks, man. someone other than mark has to be on time in this band.” the pacific bean was a small and intimate corner shop. it was not unlike the other several small coffee shops that had opened up in seattle in the last ten years. there was a dirty coffee bar and dozens of framed photographs of thirdworld coffee exporters. they were the kind of photographs you’d see in national geographic magazines. the tables and chairs were all second-hand pieces of furniture that had been acquired from restaurants and bars that had gone out of business for one reason or another. there was a door next to the coffee bar that 11 nicholas gross was painted black with the exception of a small rectangle that had once been covered with a restroom sign. there was now a paper sign just below it. the words “employees only. period!” were scribbled in blue ink on a tattered scroll of receipt paper. the restroom had once been open to the people of seattle until a third person was found dead in the restroom from an apparent drug overdose. damn junkies. mark was upstairs in the studio tuning his guitar. he sighed and looked around the studio and then back to me. “johnny is…wherever in the hell johnny is these days. you know how it is, man. to hell with it, carlo knows most of our shit. i’ll ask if he can cover for johnny. it wouldn’t be the first time anyway.” he was right, and where “johnny was” was probably on someone’s floor, asleep next to some woman that he had met the night before surrounded by empty bottles and a spilled ashtray. that was johnny. johnny used to be my best friend. he had been like me. he had been one of those young kids in those passenger planes and in those pickup trucks looking for a place to find himself. i don’t know if johnny found himself. but he found barrooms, liquor stores, and people who might feel sorry for him. there were no words more romantic to johnny than “this one’s on me john boy.” i used to feel sorry for johnny too. i used to say those words too. i used to say it before johnny murdered our friendship. he had murdered it with the lies, the pity party, and all of the other bullshit. his choice, not mine. the band was what real musicians would refer to as a “quintet.” mark, johnny, johnny’s brother matt, tommy, and me. “willie pete” was the name of the band. i came up with the name after my old man’s stories about the old white chemical bombs from ‘nam. we toured the country and opened up for big-label bands every week. then in 1988, tommy got paralyzed in a drunken car accident. four years later matt hung himself in the kitchen that he and johnny shared in their apartment. johnny cut him down and held him in his arms on the linoleum floor until the paramedics arrived. the johnny that i knew died that day. he lost his smile somewhere in the liquor stores and in the dive bars and sadly, he never found it. johnny was always coming in late to rehearsals, late to gigs, late to anything with an agreed-upon time. we had started telling johnny that we were meeting an hour before the actual time so that he would arrive on time. he still arrived at the shop one, two, or even three hours late. mark referred to the beginning of rehearsal as “johnny time,” because it was whatever time that johnny decided that he would come to rehearsal. “i’ll see you tomorrow for rehearsal at johnny o’ clock. pacific standard time. same as always.” that was the joke than mark and i made to somehow get a chuckle or a smile out of the reality that our friend was slowly flowing down a drain like rainy sludge. the band was a three-piece band now, and we sure as hell were not traveling the country and we sure as hell were not playing big shows anymore. 12 damn junkies now, in 1995, a headlining show in spokane or olympia was a big deal. hell, we jumped at the opportunity to play shows in local ballrooms and barrooms, places that we would have laughed at as recently as five years ago. i lit another cigarette and began tuning my drums and rearranging my cymbal stands. anything to pass the time and kill the silence. i didn’t think that i would still be rehearsing in a converted apartment above a coffee shop at twenty-eight years old. the other bands that we had played with in the early days had all gone on to sign record deals and play shows in countries that i couldn’t even point out on a map. but those bands didn’t have johnny, at least that’s what i told myself each time that i heard one of those bands on the radio or on t.v. i didn’t know if that was the reason, but it helped. our best shows and our best days as a band were behind us. it wouldn’t be long before we were playing dive bars and musty basements, playing covers and accepting cases of shit lager beer for payment. mark sat down on an old velvet ottoman and thumbed the chorus to a post-punk song with his amp turned down low. mark was now to me who johnny used to be. he was my best friend. he was with me when my old man died of an accidental overdose from all the pills that the veteran’s hospital loaded him up with. johnny had sat there with me in that funeral home with my old man’s casket. the funeral home was not crowded. the room in the funeral home had been vacant other than for a few distant relatives and some of the veterans that had been with my old man in vietnam. man. i hated pills, powders, and booze. i hated that shit and what it did to people. i watched mark shift anxiously on the ottoman and tap his fingers on the back of his guitar. “screw it,” he said. “i’m getting carlo. i don’t care. i’m not johnny’s damn babysitter.” he laid down his guitar against the nearby coiled furnace and stood up. he descended down the creaky stairs. the creaks provided a melody on top of the rhythmic thud of the floor tom that provided the only sound amongst the loud silence in the dirty apartment. i struggled to find the tune of the large floor tom. the drum was like johnny. it struggled to find its sound. it struggled to find its identity amongst the other drums. it was either way too high or way too low, and like johnny, it was always on the floor. mark and i had agreed to take a few weeks to ourselves and get away from the music and away from the bullshit, johnny’s bullshit, that is. mark and i had thought that maybe time away from the music would help johnny find himself, find his smile, and find the old johnny, our johnny. oh, johnny. what the hell happened to you pal? where did my best friend go? where is he? sirens wailed in the distance. there were three distinct sets of horns that wailed louder and louder. i stood up from my drum seat and looked through the set of broken blinds. i looked through the window and down onto the street below. police cars, fire engines, and ambulances sped past the window and down the street. i waited a few moments for the wail of the sirens to wane as the vehicles drove further away down the street and on to whatever shithole they were headed 13 nicholas gross to. the sirens didn’t wane though. they rang in place like an unanswered telephone or like a knock from an expecting landlord or bill collector. i looked out the window again and saw the faint red pulsing flash of the siren lights around the corner. the vehicles had stopped. shit! did mister li set that damn kitchen on fire again? in all the years that mister li had been making dumplings, he had not mastered the unappreciated art of not turning your kitchen into a pyrotechnic show. i saw no smoke billow into the sky. i heard no sound of hydrant water cascade against the brick exterior of a burning building. it wasn’t a fire. “matt?! carlos?! what the hell is going on down there?” i yelled down the stairs, but there was no response. we all had somewhat impaired hearing from all the years of roaring amplifiers, crashing cymbals, and from the once screaming crowds of people. i sighed. “jesus christ. i swear you two need hearing aids. hey! assholes!” i shouted down the stairs. again. no response. i walked down the stairs and leaned into the right-side railing. the coffee shop was empty. the chair that had kept the door open was now inside the shop. i opened the door and the sirens were now almost deafening. i walked back toward my apartment building that had now become the feature attraction of seattle. a crowd of people circled the perimeter of the emergency vehicles that parked in the street. people stood on their toes with crossed arms and phony frowns of concern. they leaned from left to right, jockeying for position for the best view. man, people are so full of shit. they don’t give a damn about what happened or who it happened to. they just want something to gossip about tomorrow in the breakroom at the office with “jen in accounting.” i stepped through the crowd of people. i shifted through the crowd of denim and flannel shoulders and past the dirty looks and the mumbled scoffs. hey asshole. i live here. i reached the inside perimeter of the crowd. it had been secured with yellow caution tape and a series of orange traffic cones. seattle’s finest stood with their arms extended as they motioned to the crowd of mostly assholes to step back. i bumped the shoulder of someone on my right. “hey asshole. learn to walk.” i turned to my right. i looked into mark’s red eyes that flooded with tears. “mark. what happened man?” “johnny,” mark cried. “it’s fucking johnny. he’s dead,” he sniffled. i shook my head. “no. no. no. no way! what happened?” i shouted. how could johnny have died? he had started seeing a shrink during his time away from the band and he had told me that he had cut back on his drinking when i had talked to him on the phone two weeks ago. i didn’t understand for the life of me how johnny could have died at twenty-seven. mark closed his eyes and winced as he took a deep breath. “i still can’t really believe it. they found a used heroin needle next to him and a dog leash 14 around his arm. he od’ed man. he overdosed. he’s dead! heroin. it was heroin. who even knew johnny was doing that shit?” my breath began to shake and my eyes grew even wider. i stared back into mark’s glossy eyes. i knew that johnny used to hang around some shady characters, but he had told me that he had told them all to get lost when they started using needles and smack. i opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. mark grabbed my shoulder as if to comfort me or maybe to comfort himself. “the worst part is,” mark paused, “the old man from the dumpling place watched him all day. he said that dozens of people walked past him and that girl for hours. he did nothing! they did nothing! how much of a piece of shit does someone have to be to let someone die before their eyes and do nothing? what is wrong with people? johnny had problems. sure man. we know that. he had issues. but he was a person! a human being! he was our friend! he wasn’t just some, some damn junkie!” damn junkies untitled ed norman, 1980 photography 107 blue dragon teresa copenhaver silkscreen monotype print, 11"x9" 71 sometimes i feed him daily though i try to not at all, and despite the bite, his empty eyes, i heed his monkey call. i (clutch the stick) crawl on my fists in search of flesh to beat— (blind it) (claw it) (maul it raw) the pulp i eat i eat i eat. there’s a monkey lives inside my brain, twisting grabbing me he bites— what bliss to lick his tongue (your lips desire) what a fright. he’s crawling through my mouth (again) he’s fingering my eyes, i’ve let him come alive (again his howl no surprise ‘fore twilight throes, the victim moans unto my jungle groans her wet oasis, her featherdove hair, her skin the moon so fair so rare so soft her lips we’re crawling through the bliss her mourning seeks red tongues her eyes so wet to lies— we come for sin death welcoming the pleasure your demise 20 coruscations christopher cassetty dreamt i one july of—coruscations who, when asked, would dance upon the walls and glimmer in the blood that dripped from the ceilings. dreamt i one december of–july, who, without having been asked, would play over and over until my ears rang and bled into my pillow. dreamt i one april of–showers, who, by chance, would wash my face and wake me from the floor after i had taken my pills. dreamt i one late june of the rancid entrails of the driver of a car—spilt—across stained asphalt and wondered, “what is this to do with me?” dreamt i last night of my dreams, a coruscation, a nightmare, an overdose and an accident, and wondered if there was anything at all to be learnt from a dream. 26 help paul williams 3d drawing progressions daniel lucy, 1974 106 i stand on the riverbridge in the soft-hazel post-frost morning; ducks lie on still water, plumewhite pillows. i heard the morning moon without looking, saw trees seeming flat against the hillsides, veins in loam, august arteries, under this puckered sun, patches of capillaries, leaves; far away childs are making laughter, spun slowly as though from a laughter gin; i feel the toothless path of morning without putting out my hand to find its wind; i stand, pan the river with a look as hungry as the eyes of taxidermied owls; i make home wherever evening settles; i make my way home hopefully. and i would turn old oaks into pianos; and whittle parts of etudes into wishes: they are waiting now, these cluttered cantos, inside a practiceroom somewhere, each vicious smile acoustically alone, each note awaits audition, counting time so like the old ones held in porchswing pendulums swinging through the precious summer nights, striking the hours with sighs. 8 spelunking ashton hall when my phone rang at four am, i knew who it was before i opened my eyes. no one else would have the nerve to call before seven. while i fumbled to answer, my beagle howled in harmony with the ringtone. “nomi?” i asked. i reached down to rub jinx’s ears. she licked my fingers. “hey,” she replied. “let’s go hiking.” “where have you been? i haven’t heard from you in-” “there’s a new park i want to check out. it’s only three hours away,” nomi said, breathless. she sounded like she’d just taken the stairs to the top of a skyscraper. “it’s got a lot of cool trails-” “honey,” i said, rubbing a hand over my face. “you know i love you, but i have class. and work. i’d love to go hiking and catch up, but can we do it saturday?” nomi breathed into the phone. “saturday. yeah, okay. i can wait until then.” she paused. “sorry. this was weird.” “no. you know you can call me anytime. it’s a bestie perk.” i yawned. “thanks for inviting me, just don’t wait so long to call next time. i missed you.” “i missed you too,” nomi replied. “thanks for answering.” she took a breath, like she was about to say something, and the line went dead. i watched the phone for an entire minute, waiting for it to ring again. but it never did. if there was one thing nomi hated, it was saying goodbye. if there was one thing i hated, it was a lack of closure. as a compromise, i sent her a text: love you! see you soon, bitch! “c’mere, jinx,” i said, patting the covers beside me. jinx leapt onto the bed in one bound. she turned in a loose, luxurious circle and nestled down against my side. “this is just for tonight,” i said to her. “don’t get comfortable.” she huffed and went to sleep. it took me much longer. 9 nomi pulled up in chanelle, the dented jeep she bought in high school. it was one of the boxy pieces of junk familiar to anyone who’d ever bought a used car. but nomi made it special. she hung crystals from the rearview mirror and reupholstered the back seat with cheetah-print fabric she found at a flea market. “i brought snaaaa-acks,” i sing-songed as i buckled into the passenger seat. “licorice for me, trail mix for you. and, of course, some blue gatorade for the road.” “light blue or dark blue?” nomi asked. her mouth was pulled into a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “dark blue, of course. wouldn’t want to ruin your life.” i smiled back, but it was like nomi was a mannequin in the store window. she looked real enough, but there was something artificial about her expression. normally, our injoke made her crack up, and she’d launch into “remember when?” instead, she pulled away from the curb and headed for the highway. we drove in silence. the air felt charged with static electricity, making the hair on my arms stand up. nomi was known for her ability to outtalk a radio televangelist. i’d heard her go on for half an hour about gossip she’d overheard at whole foods. “nomes,” i said as we wove in and out of a line of semitrucks. “it seems like you’re feeling something. what’s up?” nomi smiled her mannequin smile and pushed her kinky hair away from her face. “nothing,” she said. “i’m just excited to go hiking with my best friend.” “okay, but-” “do you mind if i turn on the radio?” nomi asked. i swallowed what i really wanted to say and sat back in my seat. “uh, sure. that’s fine.” nomi and i, we’d played this game before. in high school, chanelle had been one of our safe places. how many times had nomi and i sat in these seats, smiling at each other, until one of us broke down in tears? chanelle has seen the aftermath of my first visit to a therapist, the famous fourth of july blowout, when i’d come out as renee, nomi’s first few 10 spelunking weeks on antidepressants, and when she’d kissed me because there was no one else around for her to kiss. the car was so jammed with emotion that i could feel it blow out of the vents when we turned on the air conditioner. the countryside blew past the window in a green blur. corn fields turned into tangled woods while staticky pop music spilled from the car speakers. nomi and i didn’t speak a word until she pulled onto a dirt road and parked the car with two wheels in a ditch. “we’re here,” she said. i glanced around. on one side of the road, gnarled oak trees stood shoulder to shoulder. on the other, a bare field was strewn with the remains of last year’s harvest. as i followed nomi, an ominous feeling blossomed in my gut like a poisonous flower. “are you sure we’re in the right place?” i asked, turning in a slow circle. “i don’t see any signs.” “it’s not an official park,” nomi said. “it’s more a word of mouth thing. there’s a huge cave with some passages that haven’t even been explored.” a cave. “nomi, you told me we were hiking.” “we are hiking. it’s at least a mile to the cave from here.” “you know what i mean.” nomi crossed her arms over her chest. a floral sleeve crawled down her left shoulder, covering up her scars; it had as many thorns as it did roses. “we used to go caving all the time. i don’t see why this is such a big deal.” “you know it’s–” i stopped and took a deep breath. “i just wish you’d been honest with me. you know i’d still have come.” i didn’t mention that she’d dropped off the face of the earth. i’d be willing to go snorkeling in a landfill to make sure she was okay. “i know you don’t like caves anymore.” “they’re not as fun as they used to be,” i said. “but i know you still like them. and i’ve forced you to watch the entire monty python collection. best friends do things for each other.” nomi looked down at her boots and kicked a pebble across 11 ashton hall the road. “you’re scared.” “i don’t like the dark. but you brought flashlights, right?” “two flashlights and two headlamps. with extra batteries.” i smiled and swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “see? it’ll be fine. caving queens for life, right?” “i’m sorry, renee,” nomi said, still staring at her shoes. “it’s okay,” i said. “i’m still happy you brought me. now, let’s get a move on before i lose my nerve.” nomi led the way into the forest. although there was no marked path, she walked over the carpet of decaying leaves with long, sure strides. “how do you know where we’re going?” i asked. “i’ve been here before,” nomi replied. “by yourself?” “yeah,” nomi said. we hiked without stopping. the pace made my chest tight. when we used to hike together, nomi and i would meander around, tucking flowers behind our ears and stopping to snoop in rotten tree trunks. she’d always been mindful that she was taller, leaner, stronger than me. but now it was like she was working hard to leave me behind. i was winded when we stopped. a blanket of clouds obscured the sun. there was a bite in the breeze but sweat still dampened the collar of my crewneck. the entrance to the cave was hardly more than a hole in the ground. it looked a bit like the mouth of a buried giant; its yawn contained a piece of the void. my skin prickled. nomi pulled the lights out of her backpack. we geared up in silence, routine taking over. when i pulled the headlamp over my pixie cut, i felt like we were sixteen again. two girls willing to do anything to get away from our small town— including descending into the underworld itself. it was not a period of my life that i’d missed. without a word, nomi flicked on her headlamp and dangled her legs over the lip of the cave. for a moment, she seemed to hang in empty space. then she jumped, hitting the ground with a solid thunk that made my ankles ache in 12 spelunking sympathy. her headlamp illuminated the clammy brown and white walls of the cave. i could smell the chalky perfume of the underground already. it was like i was standing in the doorway of a childhood home – everything ancient but familiar. then light began to fade, and i realized nomi was walking away from me. again. “nomi! wait!” i called. the light bobbed in place. my pulse pounded in my ears, but it was either jump in or let nomi go alone. and the latter had never been an option. i closed my eyes and jumped into the hole. my boots struck slick stone. my foot skidded. my ankle turned. i dropped, skinning my knees against the gritty limestone. blood welled up and mixed with the mud on the floor. “ow,” i huffed. i rose to my feet. my ankle panged. “ow!” “are you okay?” nomi asked. she put a hand on my shoulder. “great,” i huffed. “just a couple scrapes. and i think i might have twisted my ankle.” “sit over here,” nomi said. she led me to a stone shelf, and i sat. moisture seeped through the seat of my pants. it was like sitting in a cooler. nomi knelt to examine my ankle. in the white light of my headlamp, her skin looked taut and ashen, her dark eyes sunken into her skull. she was a consumption victim, straight out of a period drama. “do you mind if i put a little pressure on it?” she asked. i blinked at her, and she transformed back into the nomi i knew. “be my guest,” i said. nomi supported my heel with one hand and pushed the toe of my shoe back with the other. my ankle screamed. “okay! okay! stop!” nomi stood, crossed her arms over her chest. “don’t have to be a doctor to know you twisted that pretty good,” she said. i closed my eyes. i could feel blood dripping down my shins. 13 ashton hall “sorry. i really wanted to explore with you.” “no. it’s not your fault.” nomi glanced at the hole. “i should’ve brought a rope.” “well, it’s not your fault either. you know how clumsy i am. remember when i tripped down the stairs in the commons and broke my arm?” i forced a laugh. nomi didn’t laugh with me. “you would not believe how much i’ve been fucking up lately,” she said. “this isn’t the least of it.” “fucking up? what are you talking about?” “i mean, you’re hurt, and… never mind.” she shook her head. “i didn’t mean anything. i’m just being dramatic.” “nomi, you did mean something,” i said. i tried to soften my voice. “i’m worried about you. i haven’t heard from you in weeks, and you’ve been cryptic all day. plus, you’re caving again. i wanted to give you space if you needed it, but i’m scared. the last time we went caving…” i swallowed. “please tell me what’s happening, nomes.” nomi turned so that i could only see a sliver of her face. her figure cast a severe shadow on the wall, all sharp angles. her shoulders were so tight it seemed like they could pop out of their sockets at any moment. “nothing’s happening,” she said. her voice echoed through the cavern, bouncing back to us over and over. “i’ve just been a little stressed. it’s fine.” i gritted my teeth. “stop being so stubborn. you’re acting like i don’t know you.” nomi shook her head. “we’ll talk about it on the way home, okay?” she wrapped her arms around herself. “we came all this way… i’d really like to check out some of the passages first. clear my head. is that okay?” when we were kids, nomi had made me muffle frustrated screams in the crook of my elbow on a weekly basis. i was tempted to do that instead of answer. but we weren’t kids anymore. “as long as you promise we can talk about it in the car, i’m happy,” i said. “go explore. just try not to get lost, okay? i’ll be waiting for you.” 14 spelunking a few muscle fibers in nomi’s shoulders relaxed. “thank you,” she said. “if i see a single spider, though, i’m going to scream, and you’d better haul ass to get here.” “i’ll do my best,” nomi said. she readjusted her headlamp. “be back soon.” “have fun. don’t die!” that usually made nomi laugh, but she didn’t even smile before turning around and heading for a passage so small that she had to bend double. before she squeezed through its stone jaws, she glanced back at me. i wiped my bloody hands on my pants and flashed her a thumbs up. with that, she disappeared into the darkness, and i was alone. i tried to think about the chores i had to do around the apartment, projects at work, my upcoming finals, but nothing stuck in my mind for more than a heartbeat. distractions were like moths flying into a zapper—dead on contact. all i could think about was nomi wandering the cave alone, descending further and further from the surface. with secrets she didn’t feel like she could share with me. dread soaked me like a downpour. every time i closed my eyes, i could see a slumped figure, a limp hand, a slicked floor. gritting my teeth, i limped toward the passage into which nomi had disappeared and ducked inside. the part of caving that i’d always hated the most was the narrow passages. there was something chilling about not knowing what was going to be around the next bend. my breaths were fast and tight, but i pushed forward. i found nomi beside a tumble of broken stone. she had her back to the wall and her face pressed into her knees. she trembled like she’d been caught in a blizzard. i dropped to my knees beside her. my shins oozed fresh blood. “nomi,” i said, “honey, are you okay?” nomi didn’t reply. she didn’t even raise her head to acknowledge me. i put a hand on her back, and her muscles jumped under my touch. 15 ashton hall “nomi, i’m here. it’s okay. are you hurt?” nothing. if it wasn’t for the shaking, i’d worry she was dead. i scanned for new cuts, another blade, a fresh puddle of blood, but there was nothing. just nomi, curled in on herself, as small as she’d looked freshman year. i plopped beside her, close enough that our thighs brushed together. “now that we’re gathered here together, the twenty-second official meeting of the caving queens can commence.” i felt a knot forming in my throat. “today’s agenda includes our dating lives, mean things people have said to us in the last two weeks, and why we’re sitting in this cave, miles from civilization, instead of going to brunch. does the co-president have anything to add to the agenda?” nomi raised her head. her eyes were bloodshot. tears and snot slicked her face from cheeks to chin. “i think–” she said, voice thick, “that it’s the twenty-third official meeting.” i could feel tears well in my eyes. “let it be known that the co-president states that it’s the twenty-third official meeting and that the other co-president does not give a shit.” nomi made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. or both. i wrapped both my arms around her, pulling her as close to my chest as possible. “it’s time to talk,” i said. “no more bullshit. no more lies. no more dodging my questions.” “okay,” nomi said into her knees. “i’m sorry.” “don’t be sorry, just be honest. what’s going on?” “i haven’t been feeling great, lately.” “yeah?” i pressed. “yeah. the last few weeks have been… bad.” “how bad?” “i, uh, lost my job. so i don’t have insurance anymore. and you know how expensive my pills are. i just feel like–” nomi choked back a sob. “this just felt… inevitable, you know?” “what felt inevitable?” “i just wanted to get it over with,” nomi said. she shook her head and tears dripped from her chin. “thursday morning, 16 i came here to kill myself.” my breath jammed in my throat, and i coughed. “oh,” i said. what else was there to say? that’s horrible? why would you want to do that? i’m so glad you didn’t you unbelievably stupid asshole? “i was in the car, about to get out, when i remembered the dumbest thing. do you remember the pact we made sophomore year?” “of course i remember it.” it was right before i started hormone therapy and nomi started to question the oppressive fog in her mind. when we couldn’t pick apart hormones from loneliness from mental illness. our pact, where we promised never to kill ourselves while the other person was alive. it was the only reason i survived high school. “yeah?” nomi said. “well, i was thinking how shitty it would feel to break a promise to you.” i felt tears slipping down my face, but i didn’t have the strength to wipe them away. “good. that’s the point of a promise, bitch.” “i just kept-” she shook her head, “i kept thinking about us as stupid kids. and how horrible it’d be if you broke our promise. if you were gone, i wouldn’t be here anymore. i know it.” i squeezed her so tight that i heard her bones grind together. “i’m so glad you called me, nomi. i’m so fucking glad.” she squeezed me back, just as hard. “me too.” “i swear to god, if you ever try to drag me into a cave again-” i shook my head and tears fell from my chin onto my bloody knees. “no,” she said. “i’m done.” “good. get up. you’re coming home with me.” i kissed her damp cheek. “jinx is just going to have to get used to sleeping on the floor again.” “i’m not sleeping in your twin bed with you. you’ll spoon me,” nomi said. “i will, and you’ll love it. it’s going to be so comfy i doubt you’ll ever leave. in fact, i’m feeling a cuddle coming on now. let’s go, before it overtakes me.” we shared a wrung-out, exhausted laugh. nomi stood and pulled me to my feet along with her. later, there would be a reckoning. and more tears. and renewed promises. but first, we had to leave the cave. together, nomi and i wove through the passage, leaving the darkness behind us. 54 the tilth of me kat scott have i wakened the grass these early mornings, before the dawn voices each bird’s place in their canopies? it seems to bend louder underfoot now, a groaning that i’ve pulled back its covers, exposed each blade to cooler air than it took to bed. or do you think it’s always awake? that it revels in its nudity regardless of light or air or fashion. no, in winter the grass sports its brown and tweed while ceasing to reach up, to climb steadily, to outgrow last year’s shoes. sometimes the grass will join me, between my toes then my sheets. i won’t be able to stay, to keep it warm and verdant. instead, i’ll slip away begin my day anew, as if it and i had never touched never slicked the dew upon our skin and while it was green sang together. but as the day grows tall and the grass goes cool, it shrugs on its winter coat, in the hopes that spring will come searching and find it there. 33 the orchard floor louisa coello gouache and white ink on paper; 3”x5” to ray corrine phillips you once wrote of a brother— mostly dead, whose ghostly visitors haunted your head, and i have known him just as well, but inside my mind you mostly dwell. we once walked the earth at the very same time when i was so young, and you past your prime, but each word you wrote enchanted me so, taught me of magic and helped me to grow. i’ve known you in high attics where meadows did green, where spiders weave pearly webs, and dust witches glean— cataloging her souls like books on a shelf, imbibing their spirits to poison herself. and what sweetness it is to swallow such things, to taste the bitter wisp of dandelion, or arid valley of the kings, to dream yourself smiling on a cold october night when the air smells of cinnamon as you fly on your kite. then one day in june you flew off into the breeze, while a circle of moths danced ‘round pumpkin-covered trees, and there will never be another, what more can i say? — about my favorite brother i never met, my best friend called ray. 91 philanthropy this is how you see the forms and know they are flat. do they seem to take the shape of man? pale and tall, dressed for the ritz. they dazzle you. this is how you see the shadows and know there is a fire. an amber glow from rising flames. there is no scent of cedar or smokey bonfire. when you get too close it smells of fumes. this fire is stoked from the bones of strangers, somewhere halfway around the world. all for your benefit. this is how you break the chains you called your own. for the first time you see the damage to your ankles, black and blue from tightly clasped shackles. this is how you walk away from the others you were once in agreement with. here the cave is cold, but it is better to freeze than to burn your flesh blindly. they call out to you. “generous donation! quality of life! humanitarian!” do you hear your own words leaving their mouths? they are shouting and shouting, but their chains stay locked. why celebrate them for giving back a mere fraction of what they stole? it’s a drop of blood as a tax for exploiting human life. this is clear to you now. these men shit in the place where they eat. the cave floor glimmers with scatterings of platinum, gold, rhodium, and silver. whose fingernails split and sweat poured to produce these? moving through the passages you find a gallery. this chamber preserves the arts. here they throw lavish fund-raising events as an act of private initiative. is the red carpet underneath your bare feet flowing? they herd and corral musicians while the ticket holders applaud. poets slip through the cracks, the fractures, and the breaks of the cave walls, only to return with eulogies for the last trees. how sorry they are. in their words, the pain is authentic, which is why it fetches such a high price. you bow your head as you pass under stalactites dripping with crude oil. you feel sick. you want to close your eyes, but you know there is more to life than shadows. this is how you refuse to turn away. they manufacture their comfort in green bottles. a familiar bitter-sweet black licorice tang. you keep your mind clear and weep. this is how you grow the human nature philanthropists only pretend to have. this is how you explore the depths of the cave but still feel the warmth from the surface above. stretching up you can almost reach the gemstones they used to build a ceiling. quit reaching. this is how you leave the flames and search for the sun. crawl through the mouth of this cave. this is how you leave the same way you started off in this life. on all fours, humbled and crying as true light floods your retinas and burns your eyes. this is what you do once you reach the sun. leave the cave, but don’t ask them to. this is how you won’t let them kill you. 6 kayla mcveigh 49 potato bug kayla mcveigh “i’d hit him again,” i say. the thought continues, but i swallow it. i can see doc searching for more words to write over my own. something to soften his report. “let’s do an exercise,” he says. he tells me to imagine myself fifty years from now. “i am still in the warehouse,” i tell him. the left side of his face pulls tight, and his top teeth lightly meet with his lower lip. “alright, tell me about it.” i work in one of the squared-off stations in the packing plant. the manager reassigned me to belt eleven. it is a low-priority position for a low-priority worker. i turn each box, so the right corner is pointed in a diagonal. this assures the label will be scanned and processed correctly. i do this for twelve hours. “the manager is a real prick,” i say. “what would the warehouse look like in fifty years?” “boxes and dirt, i don’t know?” i’d leave if i didn’t have to be here. i start scratching my chin, itching at the stubble. i try to picture belt eleven all overgrown with thickets and thorn-covered vines. “maybe there would be some plants and stuff.” “what else?” “i don’t know, maybe a potato bug or something,” i say. “ok. would your anger still be there?” i’m crouched down on my knees, watching the little guy trail about. the gradual movement of his antennae shows me his true nature, gentle and unbothered. i smile as he investigates the cracks in the deteriorating concrete. the potato bug at my feet is then flattened by an oxford-style shoe. my eyes climb up the pleated khaki covering the right leg of this man. it’s mike. his jaw is sliding up and down like a puppet’s trapdoor mouth. everything is muted, but i know he is saying, “off task again. i’m writing you up again!” best of fiction 50 i curl my hand into a fist. in my ears, there is a faint ringing as i look at a bit of dried blood on my knuckles. just a few spots that didn’t wash off from earlier. i look back up at the doc. “is the anger still there?” “yeah,” i say. doc then tells me to picture my body. at first, i can only see mike. he’s standing on my back, climbing his way to the top while i’m laboring away, box after box. doc says it again. he tells me to picture it. what will my body look like in fifty years? it’s disgusting. deep purple, except for white on my lips and a greyish film clouding over my eyes. it is slumped over, oozing on the boxes of belt eleven, making the cardboard mushy. the smell of rotting flesh is overpowering. “is the anger still there?” this time, mike is taking a weedwhacker to the blue-eyed grass and ragweed tangled over me. my decaying gut is sinking to the floor, but beneath it, there isn’t any visible concrete anymore. there are only clumps of moss and white mushrooms that rise to my swollen ankles. “ok, let’s try adding another fifty years.” this time i am all bone. my teeth are crumbling away. my femur is splintering apart into small slivers that are peeling down toward the earth. the walls of the facility are gone. a few of the steel support beams are poking up from the field of grasses and wildflowers. belt eleven is buried, and only my lower jaw and largest bones are exposed. i can’t see mike anymore, but i know he’s close. even when i am nothing, he is circling. to hell with anger management. my forehead is burning up, and my chest aches from using up all the air in this boxed-in office. “is the anger still there?” “yes. to the bone.” black indeed sidnea hearn some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice i say the darker the flesh, then the deeper the roots. excerpt from tupac shakur, “keep ya head up” 1993 braids, locks, passion twists, weaves falling down the back of the black woman unashamed her flesh is darker than most. afros defying gravity – untamed. gold chains glitter around the necks of black kings and queens. gold jewelry strangling the fingers, wrists, and ankles. the mouth opens revealing a golden smile. braids, locks, waves, durags worn on the head of the strong, black man bloodied by brutality, the young black man awaiting an athletic scholarship to escape his hood. black kings and queens. melanated kings and queens. bullets love to kiss our skin. hateful words love to caress our ears. words of retaliation claw at the flesh of our throats. we are not violent, we are passionate. we are not ghetto, we are ourselves. we are not unprofessional, we are educated. we are our culture. 25 zapatos nuevos nya a. gaines monday i twirled on my toes, watching the folklórico dress flutter upward like the colorful wings of a scarlet macaw. the vibrant dress stuck out among the neutral tones of the bedroom i shared with my older sister. in fact, it was the one of the only things that had more than two colors and wasn’t colored either brown or beige, the other being the mexican flag i had hung above the bed. “how does it fit?” irene asked. “is it supposed to be this long?” i responded. i hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet, so at twelve i only stood at four foot two inches. the fabric trailed as long as a jaguar’s tail, covering my feet. i was sure i would stumble while dancing. irene merely laughed. “it used to be mine, so of course it’s a little big, but we can have abuelita hem it for you.” after she unzipped the back, i shrugged the dress off. it pooled at my ankles in a heap of rainbow cloth. i put it back on the hanger and set it on the bed. “how do your shoes fit?” my sister asked. “fine,” i answered a bit too quickly. “they’re old, but they work.” irene frowned, but before she could comment on it, our two youngest siblings, claudia and fernando, burst into the room. while irene tried to stop the argument between the two on whose turn it was to play with the train set, i made my escape by slipping out the door. with the traditional folk dance celebration coming up, my poor pies ached more and more each day after twirling on them round and round like a carnival carousel. our dance academy, ensambles ballet folklorico de san francisco, hosted the upcoming event. my older sister and i spent several hours each day learning the ballet-style dance with the other kids in our class. our choreography was coming along smoothly for the most part. the little ones stumbled through the moves, but their cuteness would make the abuelitas and tías fawn and overlook their mistakes. my abuelita had always said that fernando’s round cheeks were so adorable that she could take a bite out of them. the viewers would be too focused on how cute the little children looked in their traditional dresses to worry about critiquing them too harshly. the most pressure fell on my big sister, irene, and me. the dance itself was quite difficult, with overly exaggerated movements that required perfection. not only did the dance have crazy footwork, i had to fan my dress around in sync with the other girls. one mistake and i would look like a clumsy llama instead of a graceful ballerina. through the dance, i was supposed to show how beautiful mexican culture was. my biggest nightmare was making a fool 29 out of myself in front of others by making mistakes. it would make me look like a phony latina who didn’t know what she was doing. i collapsed on the living room couch, glad to finally have my weight off my feet. “ay dios mio! me duelen los pies!” i complained. my feet were still swollen from practicing. the constant spinning and practice had worn a hole into my thin heels which were already a size too small. the sole had begun to split from the base, and it was only a matter of time before they fell apart completely. but, money was tight right now, so there was no hope to get a new pair. it would be greedy of me to ask. “oh, araceli, mija,” mamá’s voice came from the kitchen. i threw the couch blanket over my lap, hiding my feet, right as she entered the room. she still had on her work uniform: dirty baby blue scrubs with a permanent stain of what i could only assume is either vomit or coffee. her name badge was still clipped on her breast pocket. “hi mamá,” i said. “how was work today?” mamá collapsed on the couch beside me, letting out a tired sigh. her grays were starting to become more vivid along her hairline. hints of wrinkles began to crease along her once ageless skin. she had been working a lot of extra overtime lately to pay for papá’s medical bills. “well, señor martinez wouldn’t take his meds, because he thought i was la llorona and señor castillo went on another tangent about how his wife left him for a spanish matador. let’s also not forget that i had to translate for a new patient who didn’t understand why her son’s medical expenses were so high, since all the white people at my job are incompetent and didn’t pass second year high school spanish.” it was difficult to tell if she was trying to be sarcastic or funny. i bit back my laugh so that i wouldn’t aggravate her even more. “so another typical day?” i asked. “if by typical you mean loco, then yes,” mamá said. her body slumped, the exhaustion finally catching her. she had never looked so worn down before. between my parents, my mother was the energetic parent who always wore a bright smile. every weekend, mamá was the one at fernando’s soccer games, cheering him on despite the numerous times he scored on the wrong goal. early sunday mornings, she would style my sisters’ and my wild hair, making it look neat and presentable for jesus christ. her excellent cooking drew in people from each corner of the neighborhood. although she complained about tía teresa’s ill-mannered children most of the time, she loved having gatherings and was an excellent hostess. back before work started to take up most of her time, mamá hosted weekly cookouts, inviting most of the neighborhood, including people whom i never met. lately, her smile seemed more and more forced instead of genuine. she sometimes fell asleep on the couch still in her work clothes, forgetting to prepare dinner for her four hungry children and useless husband. the laundry would pile 30 zapatos nuevos 31 and pile until i couldn’t see the floor. bacteria would make themselves at home in the unclean bathroom and the overflowing trash in the kitchen would burn my nostrils each time i passed by. irene took it upon herself, as the oldest, to do the household chores. i tried to convince her otherwise. being the mother was not the job of a fifteen-year-old, but my sister dismissed me, always claiming that as the hermana, it was her responsibility to look out for her siblings. she knew enough recipes from abuelita to make us arroz and frijoles for every meal. when mamá did have a chance to make it to the grocery store, irene would change up the menu and make tamales for special occasions, such as my birthday. it did get tiring eating the same meal, but i couldn’t be picky. after all, what she cooked tended to be healthier and more filling than the small meals i ate at school. arroz and frijoles tasted better than the greasy chicken nuggets and strange mashed potatoes with gravy my middle school usually served. it was almost a relief to come home to an authentic meal after long hours at school and an even longer dance practice. unfortunately, if irene didn’t run the house, no one would. papá had suffered a stroke the year prior, so he had lost feeling in his left side, which happened to be his dominant. he went to physical therapy until insurance stopped paying for it. the little strength he regained wasn’t enough to perform the laborious tasks of entry-level jobs for someone with no college degree required. he bounced from work to work, bringing in barely anything in each paycheck. what little change he made was spent on cigarettes and painkillers. i didn’t hate him for having a stroke, but i did hate how he’d given up on trying to have a normal life. he was content letting his fifteen-year-old daughter play mom and letting his burnt-out wife pay the bills. by now, mamá’d fallen asleep on the couch. she was rigid when she slept, shoulders tense, body on edge. i took my blanket and carefully sprawled it across her. mamá finally relaxed. i went to the kitchen where i saw irene making dinner. again, rice was in one of the pots, but a new scent filled my nose. “is that chicken?” i asked. “no.” a smile spread across irene’s face. i get a closer look at the skillet. “it’s beef.” “since when can we afford it?” “tío miguel brought some by,” irene explained. i just nodded. tío miguel was mamá’s older brother. she was the youngest out of her three siblings, tía teresa being the middle child. despite mamá being the youngest, she was the most mature. tío miguel drank too much and tía teresa was the queen of gossip. tío miguel was my favorite, because he was a funny drunk who liked to bring up old drama that made his sister so mad that her veins began to pop. it was how tía teresa earned the nickname yautía for the way her veins looked like roots. nya a. gaines “he and tía rosa plan to come to the baile on friday,” irene said. my eyebrow poked up at the sudden information. tío miguel hated performances, always complaining about how they’re too long. at the same time, when fútbol season started, he and his buddies watched every three hour long game. “will papá come too, or is he too busy bouncing from job to job that day?” i asked, not bothering to hide my dislike for my father. irene frowned, disapprovingly. she knew how i felt about our father. my relationship with him was already estranged before his stroke, but we only continued to drift further apart during his recovery. we had little in common, and there was no point in forcing awkward conversations. the last time i recalled having a full conversation with him was when i was ten and he asked me to get him a beer from the cooler. when i told him we were out, in a fit of rage, he threw coins at me and told me to run down to the market. he hadn’t realized that not only did he throw pesos at me, but i wasn’t legally allowed to buy alcohol. since then, i avoided contact with him whenever possible, unless it was to get his pain killers from the bathroom or a new lighter. i don’t know why mamá married a bum like him. even before his stroke, mamá was the breadwinner. papá stayed at home for most days, lounging around while watching sappy telenovelas. he was forced to get a job when mamá could no longer cover his medical expenses herself. “he plans to come, so please behave and drop the attitude,” irene said, scolding me. i managed a silent nod, not sure how to respond to my sister. it didn’t affect me one way or another by who showed up to watch me dance. all of mexico could come and i would still need to dance perfectly so that i was not an embarrassment to my heritage. i had memorized the choreography, so that i could dance in my sleep. my dress was big, but still captured the beauty of my culture. once it was hemmed, i would be unstoppable. the only thing that could potentially ruin this performance were my shoes. they just needed to last for a few more days, and i could only pray to god that they did. saturday friday came sooner than i’d liked it to. the last few days of practice were brutal on my feet. the largest blister on the sole of my right foot finally tore, leaving an open sore that ached with excruciating pain each time i put pressure on it. it brought tears to my eyes when i tried to clumsily wrap it by myself in the bathroom. “nieta, are you dressed yet?” abuelita called from the other side of the closed bathroom door. “i already did irene’s hair. you’re next.” 32 zapatos nuevos 33 nya a. gaines “un momento porfa!” i threw the bandages in the trash and washed my hands. hopping on one foot, i managed to shimmy into my folklórico only to get tangled in the fabric and fall. i hissed as my elbow collided with the edge of the bathtub. the friction between the dress and my foot made it sear with pain. “araceli?” abuelita entered the room. color drained from her face seeing her granddaughter sprawled on the floor with a blistered foot that had begun to bleed. “aye! qué pasó?” abuelita moved nimbly for her age, bending down like she didn’t have arthritis in her knees. she examined my foot, before shaking her head. “clumsy mono. how did this happen?” i couldn’t bring myself to answer, only managing to whimper out, “it hurts, abuelita.” abuelita instructed me to sit on top of the closed toilet seat. she thoroughly washed her hands and gathered a new roll of gauze from the cabinet. mamá always took supplies from work, so we always had a surplus of medical equipment. abuelita first used a bit of soap and water to clean away the blood and dirt that got into the sore. she disinfected the blister with rubbing alcohol. it took every bit of energy in me to bite back a scream as the antiseptic stings worse than a hornet. however, her delicate hands that wrapped the bandage around my foot almost eased my pain. “you can’t dance with feet like these,” abuelita said. “i have to.” “you will only make it worse. you are lucky it wasn’t infected, but aggravating it more may do just that.” i wanted to cry, because i knew she was right, but irene and i put in too much hard work each day for me to drop out on the day of. my culture was the most important thing to me. being born in san diego instead of la paz like irene, i already felt artificial in a way. there was a bit of disconnect since i wasn’t officially “mexican,” so i did whatever i could to engage in cultural activities to restore that connection. cooking authentic meals, such as chilaquiles and mole. speaking spanish. creating colorful talavera pottery to represent the artistic history of mexico. paying respect to my ancestors on día de los muertos by leaving ofrendas of food, candles, and marigolds. it never felt enough though. it couldn’t change the fact that i wasn’t born in mexico. i was american. i wasn’t a true latina. “i must dance, abuelita,” i said. i wobbly stood to my feet, ignoring the pain. “it’s the only way for me to truly feel like i belong. if i can’t then i’ve let my family and my people down.” abuelita said nothing. she stared at me with a poker face. i never knew what she was thinking. her age far surpassed mine, as did her wisdom. it was truly difficult sometimes to understand her, but that didn’t change the fact that i respected her highly. after all, she gave up everything after her husband died to start fresh zapatos nuevos and bring her children, son-in-law, and two-year-old granddaughter to the united states. “you get your ambition from your madre,” abuelita finally said. she then laughed. “you get that bull-headedness from your lazy padre, but your abuelo was the same way.” abuelita stood. she grunted quietly as her brittle joints crack and pop. “stay here for a moment.” she then left the bathroom. fear filled my chest as i worried she was going to get irene or mamá. mamá wasn’t explosive when angry but tended to make a big fuss. she would wail about the smallest mosquito bite and would be sure to flip if she saw my foot. irene didn’t scare me as much as she would make me feel like crap for hiding my pain. she usually gave a look that said, “i’m not mad, just disappointed.” and being burdensome to my family hurt worse than the open blister on my foot. abuelita came back in a few minutes. she held an old brown rectangular box. she gave it to me, which i took with hesitation. inside were a pair of white leather heels. they appeared as they had never been worn despite being in such a tattered box. i checked the sole for the size; it was a five, what i wore. “where did you get the money for these?” i asked in awe. i desperately wanted to try them on, to twirl around them in my folklorico, and to dance for hours. but knowing the price deterred the thought from my mind. “they used to be mine when i was a little girl,” abuelita explained. “i wore them the first time i danced the baile folklórico at my school. irene couldn’t fit them, and she told me that you didn’t need shoes, so i planned to save them for claudia.” i ran my fingers along the smooth leather, collecting a bit of dust. there were no indentations, creases or smudges on the shoe. abuelita gestured for me to try them on which i did, putting one on my good foot. it was perfect. i didn’t have to cram my foot in just to get the shoe on. my toes weren’t cramped up against the top and my heels didn’t rub against the back. they were actually a tad big, but not so big that they would fall off. “abuelita…” my eyes brimmed with tears. they stung as i tried to fight them back and lost. abuelita smiled, her eyes crinkling sweetly. her thumb wiped a stray droplet from my cheek. “save the tears for after you finish dancing,” she said. “now, let abuelita finish getting you ready. you still aren’t dressed, and your hair needs taming. time waits for no one.” i had her zip up my folklórico while i put on the other shoe. the bandages made the shoe more snug but not to the point of pain. abuelita sat me down, broke out a comb, and racked it through my brown locs. her touch was gentle. as she worked, she hummed a soft spanish tune. one that reminded me of the mexican seaside where a young girl danced. 34 bread and butter lynae golder it’s ten o’clock at night when nia wakes, again as she does every night, to the loud pops! and bangs! surrounding the house. when she was a child, the sounds would scare her—are they fireworks? now, a young woman in her late twenties, she doesn’t bother to distinguish the sounds. for her, they’re all fireworks. they must be, she thinks as she looks out of the window. why else do they make the night come alive? why else do they wake everyone to hear their song? it’s eleven o’clock at night when she stops watching the window and finally gets out of bed. she drags her feet because she knows she’ll be up a while; she can’t go back to sleep until zion walks in the door and she knows he’s safe. he’s a big, strong man, more than able to care for himself, but she still doesn’t trust the world with him. he’s a tall, dark-skinned man, real good-looking and smart. she hates watching him leave every day to clean in those suburban white neighborhoods, even though she’s grateful because it’s their bread and butter. because even though they’re free of the colorful fireworks, they’re full of silence, which is worse. it’s twelve o’clock in the morning when the pops! and bangs! are at an alltime high. it’s almost melodic with its constant rhythm. pop! bang! bang! pop! bang! bang! she dances along to the beat as she sweeps the living room floor to keep her mind moving, to keep her from thinking about all the what ifs. what if he didn’t use the right smile? what if he gets lost in all the silence? what if he doesn’t come home? what if it’s like that time a few years back, when he barely outran the white folks harassing him? it’s one o’clock in the morning when she stills her feet and sits in the old rocking chair. it was her father’s, before he passed away two and a half years ago from anger and alcoholism and cardiac arrest. as she relaxes in the comfort of the worn leather, she thinks about how he hated zion. he wanted her to marry a white man, so that her future kids would have white names and the privilege of a white future. she thinks about how wrong that was. he didn’t respect that zion grew up in a poor neighborhood just like her and was raised by a single mother, nor did he respect that zion was a genuine, good man. she smiles. zion’s everything she wants and more. he may not work a white-collar job, but he’s incredibly kind and makes sure she’s taken care of. it’s two o’clock in the morning when zion walks in. the fireworks have died down to a hum. having napped beforehand, nia’s wide awake to greet him. he’s tired and sweaty, his clothes dirtied from hours of scrubbing the floors and baseboards on his hands and knees. she rushes toward the door and pulls him in for a hug. “welcome home, zi, how’re you?” she asks, and with a smile, he says, “i’m happy to see you.” 39 40 “the fireworks have been keeping me company.” “they’re not fireworks, nia. you know that.” “i know,” she says, “but a woman can pretend.” he puts his arm around her and leads her toward the bedroom. “come on, let’s go to bed.” 8 desecrating the giants’ corpse ben grimes indiana is a state molded by glaciers. even in the south, where the great ice giants could not reach, their melted waters carved the landscape. before the loggers and industry barreled through, the glaciers had created a territory with millions of acres of swamp. a fourth of the land that would be dubbed “indiana” was bogs, fens, marshes, wet prairies—swamp. and the swamp would resist that human domination as much as a landscape can, using malaria, sinkholes, impossible farming conditions, and providing no usable waterways for boats. but the land fell. it was drained, paved, and made to fit the new human mold. in the midst of this defiant act of avarice emerged the preeminent america writer of her time: gene stratton-porter. the early 1900s were the end of westward expansion. apparently, everything had been claimed. yet 13,000 acres of swamp had remained unsullied in indiana. this was called the limberlost and it was stratton-porter’s home, the basis for her scientific writing, and the setting for her most successful bestselling novels. nindiana had somehow kept the will of its glacial creators alive this long, and stratton-porter thrived in its murky wilderness. from 1895 to 1913 she lived in the swamp. until it was gone. gene had married a man named charles porter, a druggist by trade, and an enterprising mogul by deed. it was not long before he found oil in his wife’s beloved limberlost. gene was an environmentalist, preaching against oil drilling, while her husband owned and operated oil rigs in what was essentially her backyard. the final days of the limberlost were depressing for the author. she eventually left, when it was clear there was nothing left. how did she reconcile this? was it greed? stratton-porter was already a wealthy woman—her books sold millions. was it love for the man who exploited the land that had brought her so much joy and success? hypocrite though she was, her hand in the destruction of the massive swamp speaks to some aspect of “human nature.” whether love or greed or something even less noble, it seems we have an endless capacity for destruction. with it comes little foresight. we should fear the future much more. fort wayne, indiana was wracked by devastating flooding twice, once in 1913, and again in 1982. martial law was declared in 1913, and both times it cost thousands of people their homes and did millions in damage. 1913 was the same year the last of the limberlost was drained, thus losing a massive part of the local watershed and a vital part of flood management for the city of fort wayne, since the swamp was in the county just south of fort wayne. the dead swamp’s reverberations were felt again in 1982 and continue to haunt the entire state. does this story mean anything to us 21st century layfolk who have never sold a bestseller and never lived in a swamp? we could be living in a swamp. maybe we should be living in a swamp. maybe if one turn-of-the-century celebrity held those around her to the same standards she espoused, we would be best of nonfiction 9 living in a swamp. we can try to make it a swamp again, if for no other reason than to avoid the devastating impacts of our own hubris. it seems we are the great formative giants of our own era, and what we’ve wrought is not life. perhaps that can change, or perhaps the movement of the arctic palms of our glacial predecessors can never be replicated. maybe we just have to cling to what’s left and try not to drown. an unexpected guest julia dryer acrylic and colored pencil, 11"x20" 72 48 gardeners lio patrick he sits with the storm–his only company. around him, the humid air warms his bare arms and legs, although a gust of cold bursts through and ruffles his grimy t-shirt every few minutes. his long-gone ma’s clock strums inside the house, nailed just above the front door. the sun is invisible. wind blows as if the whole world is sighing into his face. his fingernails scrape the wooden arms of his chair as he holds them tight, and he leans back as it rocks beneath him, nice and slow. under the shifting weight, the floorboards cry. rain comes down hard, unabashed, and endless. the old man closes his eyes to hear the storm better. it’s not too far now. he knows it by the aches in his limbs and the thrumming of thunder in time with his heartbeat. storms like this come through every june. they always have, at least for the seventy-six years he’s been around to witness them. but they’ve been getting worse for a couple years. everyone that once was here is gone now. bucky and alma, jodie, muriel, his ma and pa, and christopher—they all gave up on the creaky, broken house, and found better places to die. the house, and everything with it, is his sole responsibility. and it might just blow away someday in a storm like this. maybe he’ll be inside when it happens. with the raging thunder getting closer, faster than his heart now, he wonders if today will be the day. he opens his eyes to see lightning tear the sky down the middle. the wind rushes toward him, spewing cold droplets and ruffling his t-shirt again. this time it’s longer and more violent, as if it wants more than the shirt to move. he can picture the flood rolling right up to where he’s waiting, planted on his porch like one of the dead leafy things in the clay pots in the corner. over the roof and gutters, torrents pour in thick curtains. he can’t see more than a few feet of his front yard even when the curtains are parted, but he knows that the grass is drowning. he would get up and do something, if there were something to do. all that planting and caring he did, wasted. he even bought a fertilizer in hopes that the green could be made greener. instead the sky wants to make everything blue. his earliest memory of thunder and rain like this is from when he was nine years old, in this same house. it is the farthest back he can go in his mind, and the image is like an old, water-warped photograph. he remembers the noise the clearest–thunder like god’s very own drums, lightning like the splitting of the universe into halves. the holy instruments of unforgiving hail and rain–weather like bullets, bearing judgment. he’d been convinced the world was ending. his ma and pa had taught him about armageddon, so that even as a boy, he should have been able to recognize it. he thought it was bad then. now he just feels foolish. foolish that he believed he could keep up a garden, foolish that he thought the house was really his, foolish that he imagined anything in the world was there to stay. there is nothing else to do; he sits in jodie’s old chair, waiting for the storm to come take everything. waiting for god to pull out the weeds. best of fiction 52 the hound of the baskervilles danielle harrell cardboard and acrylic paint; 12" x 16" x 1.75" ode to healer, indianapolis sage justice we toss back hard ciders, lap up sweet toxins with greedy tongues. our bodies collide, molecules, our chemical bond the poetry of bass guitars and trumpets, doc martens and beer. we wander room to room, tv static ringing in our ears. monstrous statues wearing bones and pearls, deities dressed in spray paint, keepers of garage bands stand in every corner. the guardians are watching, welcoming us to the stage. they wave scepters in welcome; they speak in snare hits, blue and pink light shining from their mouths and painting the battle jackets of punks. we are performance artists, in our element with dana skully and moon goons. we piss in bathrooms with “whatever” door signs, kiss under crocheted blankets, smudge our eyelids with black grease. in the pit we reach nuclear fission, boiling bodies of absolute heat. throw yourself to the crowd and we’ll swallow you whole like a mushroom cloud of legs in fishnets and arms embracing one another. 48 50 croissants mario stone i close my eyes and lick your sweetness from my lips, thinking of your powdered skin beneath my fingertips. i wet my lips to taste you once more—and once again the yearning grasps my aching heart— once more would be a sin. and so instead i write these words for you to always know… i savored every second twice to never let you go. 34 technology cara david alcohol marker drawing; 11”x17” 22 sandstone kayla mcveigh an index finger meeting the earth, rolling, and swirling. our wrists draw lines in the sand. dreaming of the pressure, the pain that shapes it into something crystalline and desired. we teach the star-struck to manifest their love through the rose quartz of this pressed sand. the forceful birth of crystal. i’m supposed to hate the lines forming at the peeked corners of my eyes and the ones drawing down from the edges of my lips, left from a life of dynamic expression. i’m supposed to hate the cushioned layer my body has wrapped around itself to hug my frame. keeping my bones safe and everything in between. the runoff of blood traveling through veins, dendritic or braided, rushing to press rose coloration into the skin and soft flesh. i’m supposed to hate this softening, it opposes the tightness and resistance i’m told to crave. i see grace in the strands of silver hair. secrets in the folds of my skin. my body carries fragments of history and my lifetime of loving awareness. i do not find the rigid stiffness of resistance beautiful. i find beauty in the softened hearts of those moved by migrating wings. in the longing for the shoreline. i see it in my oval shape complexion, spun in the likeness of my mother. i have seen her bloodied by the sickly thin hands of those starved, seeking beauty in reshaping her form. i find beauty in the padding that cradles bone and frames the palms of my hands, a lingering reminder of soft baby pink. plush and rose-kissed, cushioned from cruel pressures placed on matured bodies. they forget how no one thinks to correct the perfection of an infant while they attack the loveliness of a woman, a being. a being tangled in english ivy, roots binding her together as they twist through her fractures. a being called to life through moving bodies of water. deep, blue to black, alive. i’m supposed to scrub away the earth from my skin, the very clay from which i was made. my shape, thrown from between the joining palms of my parents. tangled, in a moment, their bodies brought together as the hands of christ creating life through prayer. if it is my nature to be sandstone then i do not wish to harden so that i fight the weathering that is just as much a part of my being as any other point in my life, as any other part of my body. perhaps i will meet with wandering streams where i will dissolve down to soft silty earth. mixing with the stirring current, breathing, alive. i would be just as beautiful. best of poetry shepard's causeway tamara watkins sharpie, black and white gel pen, acrylic, and watercolor, 12"x16" 22 142 film photography corrin larson this is home 16 digital photography mykenzi wells dripping flowers "mom's wearing pants" caroline hawkins oil on canvas, 16" x 20" 23 waffle house wednesday frances dimaranan digital 21 roller coaster cassandra rodriguez i’m only partly lying when i say i love roller coasters because i love the thrill the breeze in my hair but mostly, i love you sitting next to me i’m feeling sick to my stomach again i’ll always hate knowing that we’re crashing down too fast but when we go back into the sky i forget and feel fine again sometimes what we have, reminds me of a coaster light, thrilling, free, agonizing you make my tummy twist and turn and my words can never reach you you’ve even made me cry more than a hundred thousand times but still i smile and say “i’m fine” for even through the ups and downs i will love you all the same i’m only partly lying when i say i love roller coasters because i hate this one i hate the chaos and being flung around but mostly, i hate that you’ve taken over completely 38 interview with jason aukerman “the mission of the bradbury center is to fully document, preserve, and provide public access to its large and diverse collection of space-age visionary author ray bradbury’s literary works, art, artifacts, personal office, personal library, correspondence, typescripts, manuscripts, photographs, mementoes, audiovisual materials and juvenilia; to enable visiting scholars and students to conduct research; to continue its outreach programming in the indianapolis community, throughout indiana, nationally, and internationally, with an emphasis on reaching high school teachers, students, and librarians; and to continue publishing our annual scholarly journal the new ray bradbury review.” —ray bradbury center website (https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/centers/bradbury-center/) the ray bradbury center, located in iupui’s cavanaugh hall, memorializes the work of the influential midwestern-born author. to learn more about the ray bradbury center and ray bradbury’s writing influence, the managing editors of genesis (shannon kucaj and monica simmons) interviewed jason aukerman. recreation of bradbury’s office, featuring artifacts from his life, constructed in the bradbury center. 94 director of the ray bradbury center 95 when did you first hear about bradbury? what was the first work of his that you read? i don’t remember when i first heard about ray bradbury, but i was “aware of his work” by the time i graduated from college. fahrenheit 451 was one of the first works i read after graduating with an english degree. bradbury became prominent in my life a few years later when i taught my first college english course. most english professors get their start teaching freshmen composition, and i was no different. i taught in a computer lab, and my students spent a lot of time writing and workshopping. after a few weeks, i sensed a growing fog of skepticism emanating from my students. (i was dealing with an awful case of impostor syndrome.) so, i tried to find some affirmation for my approach, and i came across a video clip of ray bradbury. he was reflecting on his career and the importance of writing persistently. he talked about how he started writing daily at age 12, but it wasn’t until he wrote a short story called “the lake” at age 22 that he felt he’d found his voice as a writer. the next day, i played that video clip for my students, and i read “the lake” in class. bradbury has been a vital part of my teaching curriculum ever since. what’s your favorite bradbury fact—something we don’t know about him? bradbury insisted, throughout his life, that he could vividly remember his own birth. most people dismissed this for obvious reasons. as an adult, he learned that he was a “ten-month baby”—meaning that he was born almost an entire month after his due date. from that point on, he cited that as evidence for this memory—he claimed that because he was born later than anticipated, his brain was more fully developed than a typical newborn’s. 95 how would you describe bradbury’s writing style? bradbury’s writing style is highly imaginative, a bit eccentric, and thoroughly charming. he infuses his narratives with prose poems and rich metaphors. what are the major themes that bradbury wrote about? what was he concerned about? does this show in his work? bradbury, like many science fiction authors, imagines possible futures in his stories. sometimes the things in these stories come to fruition. (take space travel, wireless phones, and smart watches as obvious examples.) ray bradbury imagined wall-size television screens and 24-hour bank services, and later in life people often asked him “how’d you do it? how were you able to predict the future?” bradbury’s response was simple—”my goal was never to predict the future. my hope was to prevent certain unsavory futures from happening.” bradbury was a lifelong champion of public libraries and literacy, and his love for books is apparent in fahrenheit 451, his classic admonitory novel of authoritarian government overreach and cultural devaluing of literacy, culminating in censorship and book burning. he was also concerned about the environment and colonization. author ken crossen described bradbury as “the voice of the poet raised against the mechanization of mankind...to him there is only a difference of degree between the atom bomb and [people] tossing beer cans into martian canals. one destroys the whole [person]; the other indicates that [the person] is already destroyed.”1 ray bradbury’s thematic content is wide-ranging, but for me, his most poignant and important works deal with themes of othering and isolation— “homecoming,” “the foghorn,” “the dwarf,” “the scythe,” “the exiles,” 1 kendell foster crossen, “review: the golden apples of the sun,” future science fiction, november 1953. interview with jason aukerman 96 97 “usher ii” and many others. i think his motivation for writing about these things can be summed up when he was interviewed for a documentary on lon chaney—ray bradbury’s silent film idol: “[lon chaney] was someone who acted out our psyches. he somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen. the history of lon chaney is the history of unrequited loves. he brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that’s grotesque, that the world will turn away from.” lon chaney did this on the silver screen. bradbury accomplished it through the power of the written word. how did bradbury impact the world of writing/art and beyond? how much space do i have? ray bradbury’s career spanned seven decades and intersected an impressively broad spectrum of american cultural history. he was deeply connected with hollywood, where his stories and books were adapted for feature films, radio, television, and stage theater production. he defended public libraries and first amendment rights and became one of the most prominent public advocates for space exploration. while he is most well-known for his fiction, having published more than four hundred stories and twenty-seven book-length works, he also engaged real-world issues in his writing, including racial and political intolerance, freedom of the imagination, the threat of nuclear war, the need to fund the american space program, and the vital importance of literacy. nearly all of his books remain popular today; fahrenheit 451 remains a best seller after nearly seven decades in print. in 2006, fahrenheit 451 became a core reading selection of the national endowment for the arts’ big read program. other bradbury works, particularly his short stories, have been published in over one thousand literary anthologies featured in the curriculum of schools throughout the united states. bradbury used his literary craft to probe the human condition, often bypassing the technological terrain of more traditional “hard science fiction” narratives. his unconventional approach to genre fiction, shirking the formulas used by his contemporaries when writing for pulp fiction magazines, propelled ray bradbury to new heights as he became a catalyst for bringing the often-marginalized science fiction genre into the literary mainstream. bradbury also reached international acclaim for his ability to reimagine the american gothic tradition and the dark fantastic. horror writers from stephen king and peter straub to clive barker, neil gaiman, and dan chaon were particularly influenced by bradbury’s ability to refashion gothic tale settings in american small towns and suburbs. other notable authors such as margaret atwood, steven barnes, charles johnson, michael chabon, and the recent two-time pulitzer prize winner colson 97 98 whitehead were all inspired by bradbury’s imagination, style, and ability to cleverly depict human encounters with the unknown. bradbury’s influence, however, is not limited to the north american continent. he is one of the most widely translated authors in the world, ranging from various editions in french, german, italian, and spanish to many non-western languages including arabic, russian, japanese, chinese, and thai. bradbury’s french readers were particularly drawn to his surreal short fiction, and he was eventually awarded the french ordre des arts et des lettres (commandeur) medal in 2007. perhaps the most surprising and most indicative emblems of bradbury’s international influence are the many russian awards that he received throughout the twentieth century, particularly his 2007 olympus award from the russian academy of sciences. ray bradbury, writing at the height of mccarthyism, when cold war tensions haunted nearly every aspect of civilian life in the u. s., was read by russians and americans alike. his vision for space exploration transcended national boundaries, imagining a widespread, collaborative human endeavor to the point that it was appreciated by archrivals. perhaps this point is most profoundly illustrated in the details of soviet president mikhail gorbachev’s june 1990 visit to the united states. gorbachev invited his family’s two favorite authors, isaac asimov and ray bradbury, to a state luncheon given at the russian embassy in washington, d. c.2 bradbury’s contributions as a space-age visionary expanded his influence into the next frontier. during the 1960s, bradbury emerged on an international level as one of the most popular and dynamic advocates for space exploration. his award-winning articles for life magazine excited millions of readers about humanity’s potential to reach the stars, and he became a frequent speaker at caltech and the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena.3 as the space program began to focus on unmanned exploration after the apollo missions, bradbury continued his devoted support of the space program through continued interactions with jet propulsion laboratory teams as well as the caltech faculty who played vital roles in the mariner 9 orbital photographic surveys of mars; the viking mars landings; the voyager missions to jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune; the mars odyssey’s thermal imaging program; and the first mars rovers—spirit and opportunity. while dozens of artifacts and mementos commemorating bradbury’s prolonged engagement with these space exploration programs are housed in the ray bradbury center, his broad influence is also eflected in numerous global interplanetary achievements. for example, the phoenix mars lander brought a digitized copy of bradbury’s the martian chronicles to the red planet where it remains at the time of this writing. on august 2 bob remington, “ray bradbury,” edmonton journal; eller, bradbury beyond apollo, pp. 184–185. 3 coconutsciencelab, ray bradbury an inspiration, visits jpl | nasa mars rover program science fiction hd, accessed november 19, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh7eiga85ws. interview with jason aukerman 99 22, 2012, just ten weeks after bradbury’s passing, the rover curiosity’s touchdown point on mars was re-named “bradbury landing.”4 additionally, scientists and astronauts who came of age reading bradbury’s works have named a moon crater, an asteroid, and several martian terrain features in his honor. bradbury’s science fiction stories approached space travel with a sense of childlike wonder, and that sense of wonder was imparted to many of his readers. his dreams of space became their dreams, and this inspiring influence eventually led to friendships with astronauts michael collins and buzz aldrin (apollo 11), alan bean (apollo 12), david scott (apollo 9 and 15), and harrison schmidt (apollo 17), as well as such space age luminaries as writer arthur c. clarke, astronomer carl sagan, and jet propulsion laboratory director bruce murray. it is certainly possible (though difficult) to overstate bradbury’s importance as a twentieth century american writer, but it is impossible to deny his wide-ranging cultural significance. scholars of twentieth century american film, history, space exploration, television, and literature cannot broadly examine what was going on in the united states during the latter half of the twentieth century without acknowledging, on some level, bradbury’s pervasive influence. what got you started in the ray bradbury center (rbc)? that is a long story. let’s just say that it was a series of extremely fortunate events. i still can’t believe that i get to do what i do for a living. 4 alison flood, “ray bradbury’s influence on our culture was transformative, says barack obama,” the guardian, june 7, 2012, sec. books, https://www.theguardian.com/ books/2012/jun/07/ray-bradbury-influence-barack-obama; dwayne brown and steve cole, “nasa mars rover begins driving at bradbury landing,” press releases, nasa, august 22, 2012, https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/aug/hq_12-292_mars_bradbury_landing.html. 99 interview with jason aukerman what does the rbc do? how does rbc keep bradbury’s memory alive today? dr. jon eller, the world’s foremost scholar on ray bradbury, articulated four thematic principles and causes inextricably linked to bradbury’s legacy: 1) intellectual and creative freedom: this includes matters pertaining to free speech, freedom of the imagination, and the freedom of human beings to pursue the things they love. 2) looking to the stars for the future of humanity: bradbury was one of the primary visionaries of the space age. his stories about human beings reaching other planets and exploring new worlds are rooted in a childlike wonder at the combined beauties and terrors of the universe. his stories of space travel touched many astronauts, planetary scientists, astrophysicists, and astronomers as they determined their careers, and throughout the 1960s and beyond, his dreams of space and the excitement for the space program that he communicated in award winning articles caught the collective imagination of the american public. his dreams became our dreams. 3) advocacy for public libraries: knowledge should be free and accessible to everyone regardless of race, creed, social status, class, or gender. 4) celebration of the precious gift of literacy: the ability to read, to encounter magnificent stories, and to interact with the thoughts and ideas of some of the most interesting figures in history is a gift. it should be celebrated and put to good use. literacy is the primary harbinger of the past, present, and future of all culture in developed countries. while all four of these ideas remain relevant in the twenty-first century, bradbury’s passion for literacy and his firm belief that people should be able to engage in literacy regardless of class and social standing is especially pertinent, but the primary audience for these items exists outside of a university context. for humanities centers such as the bradbury center, it is imperative that we extend beyond the ivory tower of academia and provide rich programming for everyone, not just scholars. the ray bradbury center can use its resources to advance bradbury’s legacy in the indianapolis area and beyond. limited resources, however—both in terms of finances and time constraints on employees— currently prevent the center from excelling in any one of these four initiatives. for this reason, we have narrowed the focus to one of these four themes: literacy development in people of all ages and skill levels and public access to libraries so that everyone can explore and develop his/her personal literacy. what do you think is the coolest item in the rbc? ray bradbury’s original writer’s desk—the desk he used for the early part of his career. the stories from the october country, the illustrated man, the martian chronicles and many others were typed right there at this desk. 100 101 bradbury working at his desk bradbury’s original desk (now featured in the ray bradbury center) our thanks to the bradbury center for the photographs featured throughout this interview. 101 -101 parking garage dream emma schwartz oil on canvas, 30"x40" 14 49 screen door blues jessamine coovert it’s that time of year again, when i sleep with the door wide open. sheets tossed to the foot of the bed, hoping for release from the fist of humidity. clothing clings to me, a second skin. thick air fills my lungs to the brim and swamps all thoughts. no work to be done, i ought to rejoice. sneak down to the old pond, cut off my hair and change my name. dance under those stars as naked as i came into this world. it’s summertime and i sleep with the screen door wide open. left with nothing but time for hoping. 9 11” x 14” digital illustration cara david opossum lake bladed mirror kaiti shannon photography, 4"x6" 19 warm inside natalie starks oil on canvas; 35" x 35" 37 best of art a final argument over god, alternatively titled “menopause,” alternatively alternatively titled “for nathan” tara ventura 81 the new york times said that south korea said that north korea has fired two more missiles and i think for the second -but definitely not lasttime today about how it’ll all be over soon and the new york times won’t report on climate change or missiles anymore because no one will be left waiting to read it. i’m sad -as much as i hate to admit itat the thought of an earth without polar bears and bamboo and my junky car and especially me and you -but only togetherin it. but then i think back to when you told me that the world, this earth, will adapt. it will survive without us and without god and you or me -together or notbecause that is what it was made to do. it’s not over, it’s just changing -for the betterand trying to survive like the rest of us, “eradication” she screams, “let me.” untitled pamela sue keller, 1979 87 11 kumain gouache and acrylic, 18"x24" frances dimaranan 35 the way the money goes sarah wulf ian’s basement had smelled like weed and alcohol since we were about six, but ian had only ever drank or smoked at swim team parties. which means he had no excuse for spouting off philosophical hypotheses while i was trying to read the navy’s recruitment website. “sandy, would you sell your soul?” “nah.” “what if i offered you all the money in the world?” “that’s a big responsibility,” i replied. “is it, though?” “if i had all the money in the world, i’d have to redistribute it. i’d have to make sure everyone was on an equal playing field. of course that would mean giving more to some than others, and the others wouldn’t like that.” “you don’t have to redistribute it.” “i’m not evil.” “just because you’re a pacifist doesn’t mean you’re not evil.” ian threw his legs up over the couch with the pink, blue, and purple swirls. when we were eleven, he claimed his older brothers stole it from a dentist office that was abandoned in the eighties. it wasn’t an unbelievable story. i looked at the website but didn’t really read it. it was hard to focus with the commercial blaring in the background. “does your body look like this?” the commercial showed a woman with an inch or so of fat sticking out over her low jeans. she looked a little like me. “stop by new life cosmetic for a consultation! at new life, we’ll do our best to transform you into a completely new person! get rid of all that unsightly fat, and start your new life!” “you have to be able to swim to join the navy,” ian said from across the couch. his legs were kicked over the arm of the couch, and his curly dark hair was laid back against the cushion. “i’m not seeing that anywhere,” i told him, “and i thought i was the best swimmer you knew.” “what about eric?” “the best living swimmer, then.” “you want chinese?” he asked. my brain flashed a blue screen as i processed the change in topic. “we had chinese last week.” ian’s eyes rolled under his eyelids. when we were nine, he’d tried to show me how to roll my eyes as dramatically as he did. i never got the hang of it. “it’s the only thing around here that’s cheap and actually worth eating.” “what about holloway’s?” “last time i went there, there was blood on my pancakes.” 36 the way the money goes “i know,” i said, “you’ve mentioned that every time anyone mentions holloway’s.” “then why do you keep bringing it up?” he punctuated that with a scoff that sounded more like he was trying to force his vocal chords out of his mouth. i slammed my laptop shut, hit the power button for the tv, and followed him up the stairs. “turn the tv off, man, you’re burning money.” a set of keys flew at my face from across the kitchen. “you drive,” ian demanded. last time he drove at night, i had to help get him out of a ditch. an outdated jingle for a car commercial greeted us when the old truck roared to life. it played the same chorus six times and the drum line buzzed ian’s speakers. “girls don’t like boys who drive old jalopies. trade in your car. come on to poppy’s!” i lowered the volume. the drive to summer garden took us past our old school. a cheap banner hung over the outside gym wall. the late october wind was blowing it around slightly, and you could see the mural that it was covering. a girl in my sister’s class had commissioned the mural as a memorial for the people whose houses had been torn down to build up the school and the area around it. they had been forced out of their homes, and most of them had never been compensated. “litening boltz.” ian read the banner. “energy all day, every day.” “was that the stuff that gave you a panic attack?” “it didn’t give me a panic attack. it just made my mind move fast.” “it didn’t help.” “i’ll bet they make you drink that in the navy.” “i think cocaine would go easier on the body.” he snorted. he hadn’t seen himself in an energy drink-induced-spiral on the floor of the chemistry classroom. he barely remembered the whole thing. the company said that he’d drunk too much, and it was his fault he’d had a panic attack. i looked up a proper serving. it was a quarter of a can. ian glared at the glowing green and white sign for holloway’s. “don’t even think about it.” inside summer garden sat some bright red plastic booths and clay colored tiles. the yellowed drywall was decorated with some old pictures of the neighborhood alongside some generic shots of chinese landmarks and a signed photo of a chinese film star. ian always got the curry chicken, and he slid in front of me so he could order while i read the menu. it was faded and yellow like the wall. an ad for zoeng lawn service hung above it, covering the name of a dish that sounded like hunan beef. the description seemed good. 37 sarah wulf “what if we had a picnic?” ian asked. the cashier had told us it was about a fifteen minute wait, and we’d settled in one of the booths. this was after explaining to the cashier that ian wasn’t paying, and that it was okay that he wasn’t paying because we weren’t dating. “it’s dark out.” “it wouldn’t be so bad. the weather is so nice, and i know a great spot.” “whatever you say, man.” in the car, ian switched the station to my heavy metal preset. on saturday nights they apparently had an anarcho-punk segment. “shop at ader for 20% off your holiday essentials,” the radio shouted. “holiday dresses, ties, snow boots, and all the gifts you can imagine! 15% of all proceeds go to home for the holidays. help our soldiers see their families this christmas. visit ader today!” “it’s october,” i muttered. ian rummaged through the brown paper bags. “they got us some of those noodle chips.” “ooh.” “and an exorbitant amount of duck sauce. turn right up here.” “into the woods?” “yeah.” i turned. the car heaved and bumped along the dirt path. “there should be a clearing up just a little ways. there. there! there!” “i got it, jeez.” i swung into the white gravel parking area. three stone benches faced the creek. ian and i grabbed our bags and sat on the center bench. about a year ago, this clearing had been empty save for a couple of stray plastic bags and water bottles. after the neighborhood got rich and the property values went up, the older, poorer residents tried out less legal ways of making money so they could keep living here. they usually met in the clearing, easy to find but often abandoned. that night, it had rained heavily. the creek had been high and fast. the night had been cold. conrad—the news never gave his last name—had met up with someone to sell something that night. a product or a service, the news never said that either. whoever he’d been selling to had become irritated, and shoved him in the water before running off. the kid had grabbed a weak root and screamed like a mourning mother until eric had come running out of his nearby house. eric graza, who broke records on the swim team, had jumped into the creek without even taking off his shoes. he’d hauled him onto his back and swum with him to a bank that conrad could climb onto. conrad had managed to crawl his way to safety. swimming in cold water with a 180-pound high schooler on your back is exhausting however. eric had lost strength and was swept from the bank. he drowned. the county had set a memorial for his heroism and fenced in the area around the benches. a bunch of us from the swim team had been drafted to build it. we hadn’t even been invited to the memorial dedication. ian had ranted about 38 the way the money goes it for a literal week. various signs, like the sort you see in people’s yards, were nailed to the fence we’d built. “is that a goddamn holloway’s sign?” ian was squinting in the darkness to try and read a green and white sign. you’d think that they’d made the fence out of signs with the number that there were. they surrounded us. “this is your spot?” “yeah.” ian sighed. “the signs weren’t here last time, though. still, it’s got these nice benches, and you can see the creek real well. and hear it.” we stopped talking for a moment to listen to the creek babble. it was low now. “what’d you get?” ian asked me. “beef egg foo young. you?” “curry chicken, you know that.” the creek and the wind filled the silence again as we ate and read the ads. i saw one for glasses and another for a surgery that would make you not need glasses. one for an injection that would get rid of wrinkles. there were a ton of realtor signs. it was like they were trying to sell eric’s memorial. “there’s one for the navy,” i pointed out. ian didn’t look up from his little, white rice box. “are you really gonna join?” he asked. “maybe.” “why? you were a hardcore pacifist until, like, this year. you smoked skylar gadzinski in that war debate. do you really want to leave town?” “college money.” i held up a second finger. “and not really.” “sellout.” ian threw a fortune cookie in my lap. i opened it. the side facing me was an ugly, energy-drink green. “crypto mortgage: make your fortune!” i read aloud. “man, i have never wanted to scan a qr code less.” i flipped it over and read the message. “what’s it say?” ian demanded. “a life choice will soon bring you financial security. what does yours say?” “you will soon discover easy ways to make money,” he sighed. “i never put much faith in fortune cookies anyway.” “must be a tough year for the fortune cookie companies, if they need to sell ad space.” “they just want to make more money. everywhere you go, you’re just a product. nothing is sacred.” ian’s sigh came out high and forced. i wondered if eric knew how many campaigns he wound up in. or if my sister’s classmate knew her mural was used in every school ad, even though it painted the town in a bad light. i wonder if she knew they did that, then covered it up again. i wondered if sandy from two years ago could have been paid any amount of money to pick up a gun. 39 sarah wulf “you know that community college?” i asked ian. “arthur st. john’s?” “yeah, that one,” i nodded. “i’ll bet they have a good swimming scholarship.” ian’s shoulder shook next to mine. so light, i wasn’t even sure it was moving. “they have a great pool,” he said eventually. “yeah.” “please don’t leave.” “i’ll do my best.” a story about pensions corlan mccollum the nineteenth floor of the thirtieth building on tenth street was occupied by people in white hazmat suits, carefully decontaminating a spilled vial of uranium-235. they were prepared for this sort of thing; which is to say, it happened often. often enough that between the eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the building, enough radioactive and acidic spillage had eaten through and the floor was much thinner than it had been originally. there’d been a small uproar about the danger that presented some time ago, but the uproarers had since retired on good government pensions, and no longer cared. so the radioactive spillage on the nineteenth floor of the thirtieth building on tenth street might have, quite possibly, just maybe, leaked through a tiny bit. the eighteenth floor was occupied solely by accountants. a quarter million accountants worked there, jam-packed into cubicles that warped the fabric of reality in order to cut costs. that’s what the accountants did; cut costs, sometimes by also cutting conventional physics. they were very good at their jobs, despite their radiation poisoning. this was a significant mystery for some time—they did not know about the lab above them, and the geiger counter the accountants bought was silent everywhere but the water cooler, which nobody drank from anyways. eventually, there was an uproar about it, because the accountants’ insurance didn’t cover radiation poisoning, and there was a big switch to private providers, and finally, upper management began to take notice. upper management occupied the twenty-second floor of the sixteenth building on ninth street. all the other buildings in the city were full of accountants and atomic labs. their insurance provider gave them a kickback from having everybody sign up for their plans, and had very suddenly lost a significant profit. upper management responded by buying another geiger counter for the accountants and then firing them all when they said they already had one (to recoup their losses after buying the geiger counter). upper upper management noticed the firing of a quarter million accountants. upper upper management occupied the gazillionth floor of the only building on first street, three cities away. upper upper management wrote very neatly in a file about upper management that they had demonstrated very diligent fiscal responsibility and sufficiently handled the accountants, and recommended them for promotion. upper upper upper management had just retired, so upper upper man12 agement put the file on the unoccupied desk in the corner office on the gazillionth and first floor. by the time the elevator arrived with the new upper upper upper manager, he was old enough to retire and did so without even stepping out of the lift. then he died and drew pension in hell, and his pensioned healthcare didn’t cover radiation poisoning. 13 defending death by overdose savanna williams how do i get people to understand an overdose is still a flatline? is cause of death only notable when there’s no needles? when there’s no pill that reads “30”? “he was always so troubled,” someone sober said that bullshit in a world where you tell your doctor you have a shaky hand they hold it and they let go with a bottle of xanax at your disposal in a doctor’s office where you’re asked a two-question survey to determine what fda approved prescription you should get that’s the same organization that claimed oxycontin wasn’t injurious numbers of death by oxycontin in 2020, 76,000. in a world where the best advice they got about the opioid crisis is statistics numbers of death per year, 46,802 numbers of new users per year, up 27% “oh, but it was his choice,” someone else said yet with not enough confidence for me to believe it for they spoke with my back towards them spoken with not enough confidence in themselves, at that moments like this makes me wonder you know that’s not true, but do you hear the lie? 44 for ray lance hawvermale the seller of lightning rods dropped his bag at my feet. he said go west young man go west until the sun tires of running and by the way there is a market for solar flares if you can bring one back, a penny a word at least. he mopped his face and kicked the bag. i saw the damn thing move. cherry bombs and dandelions, a mason jar of venusian rain— eat metaphors he told me. let the dentist pick their crust from your shimmering teeth and between us the bag lay like a bundled-up shadow shed as skin in the illinois sun. i lifted the awful weight thinking he ain’t heavy he’s my— african lions strained the seams, foghorns and entire lakes, books with the isbns filed off and printed with asbestos ink. you better use two hands he said. 75 7 liminal kyle battin digital; 2700 x 3600 pixels 6666 or swear or spit. i guess i’m not a pretty lady because tears pour heavy in the darkness, where no one can see to say such stupid things to me; where i swear to the gods and the seas that i’m over their shit, but i still love everything they have blessed me with just to spite them. so, what does it really mean, not wanting pretty girls to cry? you think such delicate works of art shouldn’t depict the realities of humanity— that all things in this life don’t, in fact, suffer beautifully? go fucking figure. tell the men, i want my crystals and porcelain to be cracked and crumbling, like they’ve lived a life beyond dusted shelves and tea parties because that’s what proves resilience is a force to be reckoned with. let the children smash them against the cold floor, loving them anyway. piece by piece they can be reassembled, and come morning they’ll be twinkling in the midsummer sun. ashley noelle bertram pretty ladies shouldn’t cry 60 10.5” x 15” lithograph cara david cat in a tree 30 you are the blueprint sidnea hearn the way her blackened curls and coils lay against her head, framing the heightened cheekbones of her beautifully structured face. her hips dip shaping her hourglass, sculptured body, swaying left, right, left, right as she walks. the way her satin lips are soft to the touch, softer than brown skin that has been dipped in cocoa and shea butter, softer than the cotton ball clouds that form in blue skies. mesmerizing to the eye she is unbothered by unkindness that she may receive from others. strong black woman, your heart of gleaming gold, why dim your shimmer, why bleach your skin, or change the way you look? you are the blueprint! 13 the patience of grief lio patrick when i was fourteen, my uncle bear was killed by his friend, a man i never met, in a drug dispute. i am fortunate enough to say it was my first encounter with death. i didn’t know what to do, how to understand. i didn’t think it was real at all. he was not dead. for long after the funeral, i did not believe in death. i absolutely did not believe that anyone could die. my uncle was twenty-one. i have officially lived longer than him. a few years ago, before i turned twenty-one, i began to think a lot more about his funeral, as if it had finally dawned on me. while some lighter feelings float, grief settles at the bottom. details washed back up after so long in the deep: conversations, people laughing and crying at the same time, my suit-adorned father, who did not speak the entire day, and whom i had not lived with for at least six years. with deep embarrassment, i recalled the pair of funeral home workers staring at me as i had a panic attack on the bench next to the front door. i’d written a melodramatic poem that i wanted to put in his casket, but had lost my nerve and asked my mother to place it inside instead. i couldn’t look at him, and when i did i couldn’t see him. after they closed the casket, we were given permanent markers to write final farewells across the wood. now i can appreciate the sentiment. back then all i could think about was my proximity to a dead man. my mind blanked and i spelled “remember” wrong. somewhere in the ground, there is a wooden box with the word “rember” shakily crossed out. it was funny, and yes, i do mean that kind of funny. before we drove to the funeral home, bear’s father kept telling jokes and yelling obscenities. there was cake, which was called “better than sex,” but which my pious aunt rebranded “better than video games” for my brothers and me. in the funeral home, we sat next to one of our favorite cousins as he related sensational stories about his brother. we all saw so little of each other. we celebrated way before we cried. only a few months before, when one cousin told a different uncle that he was her favorite, he thanked her but said, “it’s not like i have much competition. i mean, bear?” at the funeral, he was a pallbearer, the first to grab the box, one of the few who understood just how much it weighed. what i mean to say is that we never know who it will be, and when. this is a reminder, however insufficient the words are at reaching over a wall of incommunicable feeling. i don’t know at what point i knew that bear was dead. it wasn’t when i felt the first step down into panic as i approached a full coffin, an open coffin, and was not able to see or breathe. it wasn’t as his brothers lowered him into the ground, as his sister said with visible breath, “of course it’s only when we’re out14 side freezing that i start crying.” it took years of not seeing him at holidays and of hearing about what it would be like if he were there. during some of those years i wanted to be like him, even though i still didn’t altogether comprehend what that meant. i never spoke a word to any of my family about it. i don’t know how many of them felt it too. we never know. my immediate family stopped going to see most of bear’s side of the family years ago, for various reasons. other people have been born, others have gotten hurt or sick, others too have gone away forever. there are so many things and so many people to think about. i can’t regret the fact that i don’t remember them all. 12 major depressive disorder jasmine bailey digital; 9" x 12" i'm an octo + i love my cats lauren pickering micron and ink pen, digital photoshop brushes, 13.69"x10.5" 400 dpi 49 159159 i think you long for the days when i was still a part of you. developmentally, there’s a period where the born baby still cannot distinguish itself from the mother. how long does it take for the mother to distinguish itself from the baby? what happened when you realized you couldn’t see your face in my reflection? i think you long for the days when i made you feel whole. after birth, the uterus is a gaping wound, “dinner plate sized.” to fill the void, did you start putting me on your platter? thin, spaghetti hair. candy apple cheeks. olives for eyes. did i taste good going down? elizabeth terhorst fatal development 160 marshmallowy fists. plucked chicken thighs. fleshy, full lips. did i curb your craving? i see your face in my reflection with my blood dripping down your throat. was it worth it? do you feel whole again? i don’t think i’ve ever felt whole, but i’m afraid of building something i cannot help but bite into. acceptance megan vogeler oil on canvas, 30"x50" 67 51 i fucked to love, but never made it mario stone her crying pulse heralds the chaotic bellows of deeper thrash. i tear into her heart and lick its length until my tongue blooms lush, bloodrose— our parting lips. lust the crave, the crutch i grab, i clutch and push. to carry on is vanity— such endeavors in the name of love are feats of self-deception, a felony of lips giving way to squandered breath, pleasure past— a thorn to pierce the supple mass and burn the skin i hold close. 43 point five anna corso ink on paper; 18”x24” 94 i am from the bend in the river, where the willow tree roots writhe with sin in the embankment, and the cottonwood snowflakes atop your sunday best. i am from the wooden pews in the catholic church where the scripture is shoveled down the raw throats of non-believers like the eucharist, and no amount of church wine could wash the taste out of my mouth. i am from the body and blood of my mother, a truer religion than any father could sermon. i am from the font of sickly sweet honey and rose petal thorns, for i am baptized in the generational rage of eve. i take communion from her breast, and pray at her feet. i am of woman, from woman, to woman. i am not religious but i’ll be damned if i miss a sunday. elise dobson the worship of woman taste a little waste with you ben grimes flies buzzed at the meat. it was autumn, and the meat was still full of maggots. the flies were sucking their last bit of nutrients from their flesh-cradle before flying off to lay more eggs on some other piece of rot. a stream of rancid bubbles sputtered out of various pores in the decaying mass; the gas released a sickly-sweet aroma. no bones protruded from the meat; it was all flesh and blood and pus. if not for the odor and the writhing of fly larvae, it would have appeared as a peculiar boulder in a clearing in the woods. it was the only structure in the clearing. tendrils of yellow slime oozed from its base, running into the ground around it. this rot was not fertilizing— no tree or grass or weed crept near the meat. it was monolithic and grotesque. the buzzing of flies was broken by the crunching of leaves underfoot. low humming accompanied the footsteps of thirteen cloaked people. a woman led the other twelve, distinguished by her ornate white and gold robes. her eyes were covered by a featureless mask of pure alabaster, which extended from the base of her nose to the back of her head. only her mouth was exposed, her lipstick a vibrant red on her slightly agape mouth. she breathed in the sweet smell of pestilence, knowing the way by memory and by taste. she was followed by two lines of six; those behind her wore robes of black or earthy red, humming with their heads hung low as their guide took them to the empty place where only the meat was. she stopped abruptly, and the others halted almost simultaneously. only one robed man in the back of the left line stumbled, before righting himself and mumbling. the lead woman turned slowly, her robes billowing, as she began to address the procession. “we have failed her, our immortal goddess. she has gone a summer without our love. she is unwell.” the woman in white’s voice was comforting; the devotees she was addressing raised their heads to meet her covered face. their faces were disfigured. many were missing eyes, ears, or parts of their cheeks. the flesh had scarred poorly, leaving massive dark stretches, clearly never treated. only the man who had stumbled was free of obvious blemish. his gaze often faltered. the woman resumed her speech, “look how she hungers! to not care for our mother would be to reject her gift of eternal rot. she wants to take one of us now, to remind us why we love her.” the twelve formed a circle around the meat. the leader stood in the center beside the object of worship. she cupped a chunk of the meat into her hands; limp sinews and slime traced its path back to the mound as she pulled it away. it dripped; errant maggots tumbled from the piece. the twelve began humming again. the woman opened her mouth and held the oozing mass at the entrance. it was warm and wet, leaving moisture in the air which she breathed in heavily, 46 47 savoring the stomach-churning taste. a pustule burst under her finger. she took a bite. the yellow bile in the viscous mass trickled down her chin, dripping onto her chest and coloring her robes in sopping filth. she chewed, the chunk sliding over her teeth, so decomposed that chewing did little but expose her tastebuds to more of the sour bolus. she swallowed loudly, dropping the uneaten portion of goop to the barren ground. she began stumbling around the circle and heaving. she could hardly walk as the need to eject the meat debilitated her. she leaned over in front of the man from the back of the left line and erupted the contents of her stomach down his chest. the stench was powerful, and he reeled backwards. the others gasped. the man looked embarrassed. his puke-soaked robes betrayed his lithe body. the woman in the circle let spittle slide from her mouth for a few moments as she regained her composure. she stood again. “come, boy. she has a taste for you now. she will take you.” the others surrounded the man, reaching at him with what remained of their limbs. he allowed them to lead him to the meat. no space was left where the woman had scooped out the chunk. the lead woman stood behind the procession now. “allow him to enter her. she would not take one who does not wish to join the others.” the group resumed their posts around the circle. the man stared at the meat, feeling his breathing become ragged. he could touch it now. he felt the humidity from it on his skin, his hair standing on end, gooseflesh spreading over him. it was exciting, tantalizing. the smell made his head spin. he wanted to touch it now. he pushed one hand into the meat. its thick, sticky texture drew the hand further into its moist warmth. there was a gentle suction inviting him further. the man groaned. he felt it take his hand completely, liquifying his flesh into itself; he could no longer escape. his hand felt like it had been absorbed by some blissful heat. he plunged his other fist into the festering gore eagerly. it was the same feeling. he shuddered. the woman leaned in his ear now, her hot breath on his neck exciting him even more. “let her take you completely.” the man groaned again as his arms were taken to the shoulders, his slim torso now pressed to the supple meat. “doesn’t it feel nice?” the man nodded. “good.” the woman grabbed the back of the man’s neck and shoved his face into the meat. he tried to pull back out, but he was stuck. his voice was muffled, screaming, and gagging through the sea of putrid viscera. a few moments passed, and the struggling and heaving ceased. the man shook and groaned again as his entire body was taken into the hot, mucous disease of the meat. he was gone in moments. the devotees turned to leave. the meat was satiated for another season. one of them looked at a fellow disciple with their only eye. “in winter, i hope it asks for a foot or something. these body melding things take so long. and it never chooses me anyway.” “i hear that. i mean, seemed just a few years ago the biggest ask was an ear or tongue.” 48 “wouldn’t be so bad if it picked one of us that’s been around a while.” “always the new guy.” “yeah, always the new guy.” stuff your eyes with wonder corrine phillips when i was a child, i read a book about a pumpkin-covered tree, and i hoped for a magic october night where they might really shine down on me— where i’d search for my pumpkin among all those smiles of flickering souls in the autumn leaves, and i’d live on forever if i could just take it and carry it close to me. but as i’ve grown, i realize a harsh reality: that there is no such thing as this winsome gift of immortality— unless we paint and write our souls on canvas and the page, or capture it with a camera lens and in films that never age. we must compose, forge, and sculpt our grins— strike every match ‘til the wick ignites, and we’ll surely become eternal spirits who glow every halloween night. so create all you can, my extraordinary friends, even when doubt clouds your mind, because you only fail when you choose to leave that gift of wonder behind. 78 78 i belong to an ever-growing community of west africans in diaspora, more specifically nigerians in america. immigrating to another country is never an easy task. to leave centuries of history and connection behind is an ask that can only be justified by the issue that merits such displacement, of which there are many. be it escaping from traditional customs that endanger the lives of your family or winning the visa lottery, a golden-ticket opportunity to rewrite the sins of the past and start life anew. or for the plain desire to create a better life for your children in an environment away from your birthplace which slowly seems to be collapsing in on itself. it was rough enough when they were children, but they never imagined that it would become much worse. regardless of any given reason, we make the journey to a new continent, a new world. we are everywhere. we go to the same grocery stores, get excited for the latest movie releases, and eat the same burgers found in the seemingly endless rows of restaurants. we vote in the same elections, actively advocate for change in american society and face the same universal struggles. despite these shared similarities, we couldn’t be more different from american culture if we tried. we shop at the only few african markets around, dress up in our traditional clothing every sunday for an inarguably african church service, pray for change in our dishonest nigerian government, and hope our families in the motherland stay safe from random acts of violence. we attend the same schools, have similar teachers and learn the same subjects. but wherever we go, our accents follow us as a reminder of what we left behind. middle school, as bad as it was already, only got worse if you spoke with a different accent. as if the hundreds of consciously and unconsciously anxious and self-negligent tweens did not have enough ammunition to fuel their bursts of mockery and displays of insecurity, now they had another tool, one that could be launched anytime you so much as opened your mouth to express why you did not deserve to be treated this horribly. even worse are your attempts to defend another classmate getting bullied only for the focus of ridicule to be shifted to you, them mouthing your words, stretching their faces to accentuate its hilariousness, and puckering their lips in that strange way they did when mimicking african accents. afraid of it happening again, from now on you would look the other way anytime you saw a peer suffering the same fate you try so hard to shield yourself from. perhaps you develop a second accent, one for home and another for everywhere else, in hopes of better successfully assimilating with the people who have caused you great torment. you pray that they do not recognize your african heritage and instead ignorantly embrace you as “one of their own.” you wonder if they smell the jollof rice you had for lunch or the amala you ate for dinner yesterday in your breath. you even begin to look down on your other african daniel awosika accentity (accent identity) 79 classmates who were not as quick to jump ship, who, unlike you despite all the bullying and harsh critics, they’d still rather stay true to their roots than to be indoctrinated to the shallow depths of a half-baked life. although this strategy may work for a time, you begin to feel ever more alienated because (a.) everyone knows you’re african, and (b.) everyone notices how hard you try to hide it. you never feel at home with any group because you’re never sure when to let your guard down. it’s a balancing act, being an immigrant. you get the best and worst of both worlds. the desire to be so firmly planted in one group lingers still, and you seek out any avenue of connection and understanding. over time though you begin to accept your accent, love it even. every slip of the accent into a more traditional one outside of home now represents a reconnection to a shared heritage. sundays are the days you feel most comfortable; the medley of tradition combined with youthful empathy, for a moment, drowns out the pain from the past week and beyond. then you wake up the next day at six o’clock in the morning to replay the reality of being a foreigner in another country. 18 the problem with funeral plants kim kile i have a peace lily in my dining room, a reminder that you left too soon and i’m still here trying to keep this damn plant alive. i see it every day—the drooping, withering leaves, the brown, crispy ones peeking from beneath. i can’t make myself give it water, to quench its soil and be the hero daughter— the one who keeps your memory alive by caring, watering, and fertilizing a plant while you nourish a strip of grass in a cemetery too far away from my grasp. 137 14” x 14” oil paint elise howe sister golden hair 162162 i’ve always had a sliding scale of anxiety about my father’s mortality. him being nearly 50 when i was born didn’t help that and made me much more aware than my peers that, wow, my dad is old. having a parent in that age range was incredibly abnormal where i grew up, and my classmates in elementary school constantly confused my dad for my grandpa, and i’d have to correct them when they commented on how cool and nice my grandpa was. i’d turn around at lunch and say, “that’s not my grandpa, it’s my dad.” eventually, they caught on, but there were definitely kids who thought i was lying or joking around about that for a while. it made me overly aware that my dad was notably older than most parents, at least back in the early 2000s. when i was around ten years old, i realized my dad’s age meant i’d lose him far before i was ready. not that i’ll ever be ready, but that it could happen when i least expect it. that was the moment the anxiety crawled its way into me. it wasn’t even particularly rational as far as anxieties go because it wasn’t tied to his current health status; it was more of a total acknowledgment that he was getting older, and i was starting to understand and grapple with what that meant. grieving the living became a very concrete concept to me because his aging meant he could die. back then it was the thought process of a kid who has older parents and very little lived experience with death. i’d come to learn that even as death did happen to and around me, it didn’t ease my fears about my dad, but instead exacerbated them and made me imagine what i’d say at his funeral, how i would put his eulogy together to sum up what he meant to me. speaking of eulogies, we started discussing the idea of me writing his around my early-to-mid teens. i’m still undecided on whether that helped quell my worries or just made my imagination run more wild. this is also when, as a family, we started having realer conversations on the possibility of him dying. he was in his early sixties at the time, and once again not particularly ailing, but we had to talk about it anyways. my refusal to talk about it started then, and to a large degree still follows me now. to this day, my dad tells me, “don’t cry when i die, i’ve lived a good life.” as if that’s going to make it easier for me to accept or live with. i’m happy he feels fulfilled, but how am i meant to live without him? thankfully, these conversations didn’t start to feel real or carry weight until my early twenties. up to this point, his health had been fine, but this was when alarming things started to happen. this was a period where i started thinking, oh shit, it could really happen. this isn’t just a child’s worst nightmare anymore. the instance that brought this to the surface for me was when i was 23 and got ashley vega grieving in advance 163 a call from my mom telling me my dad was in the hospital. he had a severe nosebleed, one that was nearly impossible to stop. he had to call an ambulance, and later i was told his apartment looked like a crime scene; there was so much blood. he’d gotten a couple before this one that weren’t quite as catastrophic but seemingly served as omens for an occurrence of this magnitude. at the time, i was 400 miles away and felt helpless standing in the break room at work. everything would end up fine, but it pecked at that part of me that, on train rides home, would think about the fact that i was so far, and he was in his seventies. now, he’s in his mid-seventies. he and my mother, many years divorced at this point, are roommates. i’ve moved back to indiana not only to go back to school, but to be closer to him. he’s just been diagnosed with cancer. fortunately, not the kind that kills, but here i am, feeling like that terrified ten-year-old girl again. nothing prepares you for how horrible the word “cancer” is when you hear it about someone you love so deeply. it’s not like i’d never heard about someone having cancer before, but now i intimately know what it feels like because it’s wriggled its way into my family, into the one person i can say i love more than anyone on this earth. i hear what the doctors say about outcomes, and i do believe them, truly. they’re not deceiving my family and i when they say this is highly curable. that doesn’t stop me from getting the news and staring up into the dark of my ceiling and sobbing, from catastrophizing. it doesn’t stop me from telling my siblings, who i know are also processing this and hurting over it, that i’m not willing to face the possibility of this being the thing that kills him. i won’t hear it, and i don’t want to talk about it. i’m scared, obviously. it all makes me come off as a petulant child, a porcelain doll, but i don’t care. my dad is my best friend. he’s the person who made me care about keeping up with the news, shaping my political philosophy very early on. he gave me a comedic edge when i was young because we watched late-night tv together all the time. he let me know all the time that no matter how old i was, watching cartoons would keep me in touch with the kid in me. he’s taught me everything i know about life. i cannot imagine the world without him. i don’t know who i am without him. parents talk a lot about their kids being their “mini-me’s,” but since i was old enough to imagine a life where i traveled and saw the world, my dad has looked at me and said, “you’re just like me, not afraid to go out into the world.” even though he taught me to go into this world unafraid of it, what he doesn’t know is that, even though i know what he means when he says that, it’s not fully true. i’m scared of this world more than he can even fathom if he’s not here to keep guiding me through its twists and turns. without his knowledge, his smart remarks, or him telling me “love you more” before we hang up calls, i don’t know how 164 to navigate this life. how am i supposed to make sense of anything if one day i can’t call him every day? 42 i like raspberries on my fingertips, stained red and sweet my lips tingle from off-brand seltzer shoes shuffle across the floor, wood laminate underneath worn-out reeboks steps leading upstairs fingertips looking for a drawer to pull out too soon to tell it smells like purple and perfume luminescent, flickering like tongues and candlelight on top of it all, three is my lucky number, writing my name on your teeth a cat’s cradle in the bedroom, hot breath on a pillow not everything fast is battery-powered ruthie barakat vibrator? hardly know her. 74 digital isaac chaifetz the danse macabre best of art i prayed to santa fe julia rose led by the sisters of loretto, the loretto chapel was constructed around late 1870 in santa fe, new mexico. the sisters of loretto were a group of nuns responding to a request from new mexico’s bishop to educate the young women of his territory. with the assistance of a prestigious french architect, projectus mouly, the loretto chapel slowly came to be. the outside is influenced by gothic architecture. its ceilings stand twenty feet high; arches rise to a point. the quadrilateral supporting structures that protrude from the sides of the church, the buttresses, are a slightly warmer beige color than the walls themselves. the entire church is made of sandstone. if one were standing directly in front of the loretto chapel, like i am during a vacation in the driest heat of june, our lady of loretto’s likeliness would look down on them atop the building’s center protuberance, rock robes shaped to be forever rippling in the kind of breeze new mexicans scarcely experience. my parents take pictures, my siblings' interests are glued to their phones, and i busy myself by challenging a circular window above the chapel’s front door. sizeable, and as on-display as our lady’s statue, its panes are webbed like that of a single veiny eye; i find myself in a staring contest with it, the cyclops-church, shuffling my sandals on the sidewalk beneath me as i squint in the sun. our two-week trip has led us here, and i feel nothing yet. as a child, i’d flip through my mama’s scrapbooks, page after page of shiny, rectangular photographs developed from disposable cameras. once, a snapshot of their wedding day stopped me. mama and dada’s beaming smiles radiated through the plastic scrapbook sleeve, wide and white and young. i’d carefully slid the picture out and held it closer to my eyes. behind them was an altar with a priest’s chair. my dad’s suit was grey; he wore large, round glasses and was just starting to bald. the sheen on the photograph made my mother’s dress glow a rosy pink. i figured they were in a “church,'' a type of the various (they did not have a regular church when i was young due to frequent moving) grand buildings our family would visit some years on easter, where we children had an obligation to sit quietly. growing up, my parents did not venture so much as to even place a bible in my lap. the few times i visited my friends’ churches (my friends’ parents had rules like sleepovers on saturday included attending mass on sunday, but i never held any friend, thus this ritual, for long), i refused communion because i didn’t know what a “body of christ'' was and i was scared to stand afront a priest. i moved my lips to hymns i did not know and responded only with “thank you,” in response to any churchgoer’s well-meaning “god bless you.” in high school, my friends would post on social media about their love of god, yet i found every 40 41 different carved pair of eyes on a church’s jesus shrine not to be sorrowful, but indignant of the things he must have known i was doing: thinking of sex at night, of kissing girls and boys; flipping my parents the bird every time their backs were turned. my parents are flawed as parents, as people, and i resented them for justified reasons, but in my high school years, i was pigheaded when it came to any type of forgiveness. now, in a way, i pity them. my mother’s parents emigrated to the states from mexico. she grew up in chicago, one of seven kids, a poor mexican family. my father is from vermont, and his parents have both passed. his father killed himself when my father was about to start college. my father’s mother lived for a long time but died from a lung cancer so bad that when her doctor found it, they stitched her up and sent her home. neither of my parents have had easy lives. i do not know why my parents did not teach my siblings or i about religion. they expected us not to sin, but failed to ever explain what a sin is beyond something bad; they did not explain god beyond someone you’d ought to respect. when my siblings and i reached adolescence, old enough in my father’s eyes to make our own decisions, “god” was only said in conversation between my parents and i as an exclamation before a door slam. i’m not sure if my siblings ever privately pushed my parents to teach them the word of god, but my siblings are about as religious as i am. right now, my teenage sister has a scowl on her face; on the car ride from the hotel to the chapel, she’d leaned over to me and whispered that churches make her uncomfortable. religion is only one aspect of my parents' and my tumultuous relationship. the summer before i started college, i wanted to leave our small house in bristol, indiana, which was the catalyst of a screaming match that ended with my father telling me i wasn’t his daughter anymore. since then, we have mended, but in the way a patch is sewn onto a torn pair of pants: the stitches are newer, obvious, and the pants don’t look like they did when the price tag wasn’t cut off yet. a patch is never like the original finished product. but such is life, and even that, and all the times i wished my parents dead in my adolescence, could not prevent me from yearning for my mother’s powdery kiss on my cheek and my father’s throaty laugh when i was in college. my parents were nearly two hundred miles away from me. after my sophomore year, when i was twenty, they asked me to come with them, my younger sister, and my older brother on a two-week trip to santa fe, new mexico. eager to rebuild a relationship (certainly more eager to travel to a state i’d never been to), i accepted. a few days into our trip, my family and i were seated for dinner in the long booth of an italian restaurant. (my dad said we’d had enough of this mexican food, at least for one night.) our talk was of the sights we’d seen, the adobe houses and cactuses and the preachers on the dusty cobblestone streets of santa 42 fe. santa fe oozes religion. from the dozens of churches to the lasting influence catholicism has on native culture, santa fe is a holy city, and my parents, whose eyes had lost their shine for god in raising four children, were starstruck. they were giddy. only recently before the trip had they returned to attending church in their small town. “and do you know the story of juan diego?” my mother asked. her pixie cut was a dark, dyed magenta. she’d told me my father picked out the color. our waiter’s arms, bright and crisp in his pressed white dress shirt, suspended over us as he balanced our large pizza on the metal c-shaped pizza stands. i held my tongue from saying something mean (“how, mama, on earth would i know that, since you’ve never told me?”), instead just shook my head, raised my eyebrows for her to continue, not prepared for the story of a miracle she’d share with us over the clinks of silverware against dinner plates and ice cubes in water glasses. the virgin mary appeared in mexico in the 1500s to an aztec farmer named juan diego. her skin was coffee-colored, like his, and a ribbon was tied around her swollen belly to show she was pregnant: the holder of immaculate conception. she pleaded for him to go to the local bishops and have them build another church so her children could pray. it was the first time the blessed virgin appeared without fair skin, and she did this so she would be familiar to juan diego and the indigenous people of mexico. this apparition is now referred to as our lady of guadalupe. “so she was brown?” i asked, picturing the white marys that result from a google image search. across the table, my father was on his phone, looking at pictures of lizards he’d taken on the walking trail outside our hotel. i thought of juan diego, how he might have reacted if our lady had appeared with a snowy pallor, like a ghost. i didn’t want the story to end. “yes, she was brown… so was he.” my mother speaks spanish fluently, and as soon as i was old enough to understand she was speaking on the phone to her sisters in a language i did not know, i was envious of her understanding and wished to speak in her mother's, and my mother’s, tongue. even after expressing my interest to her, i wasn’t taught much more than pendeja (stupid; of a feminine subject) or cállate (shut up). ignorant of the spanish language as i was, i have my mother’s latina nose, dark hair, and olive skin, so my role models were of those sorts, selena quintanilla’s music and the poems written by pablo neruda that i did not understand but cried to anyway. in a way, i am an imposter of my culture, admiring those who are mexican than i was, never becoming more mexican myself. full of pizza and magic stories, we returned to our hotel, where my father announced that he had decided what the family would be doing the next day: visiting the loretto chapel of santa fe. i was angry because my request to go to 43 art museums had been denied, so i bummed one of my mom’s cigarettes, crept outside, heard my tie-dye lighter’s spark ignite into flame. shadowy mountainscapes greeting me under a star-studded santa fe night, i tell you, is like how it feels to take the first drag of a cigarette after thinking about having one all day. i watched as the smoke curled and billowed in front of me, the air around it dead, before slowly dissipating against the range of bluffs. my mind was on juan diego, and on my mom, the way her eyes glittered when she’d say, “our lady of guadalupe,” the way her accent swallowed the g and made the sound of a w. our lady gifted juan diego a tangible miracle, guiding him to the top of tepeyac mountain where a bush of roses grew in december. he piled them in his coat, his tilma, and when he revealed them to the bishops who didn’t believe him the first time, our lady’s likeliness marked the tilma like paint, and the bishops fell to their knees. i pondered on our lady ‘s apparition, if she appeared to juan diego in a cloud of smoke or if she just popped on and off like a lightbulb. i wondered what i’d have done if i were juan diego. the next day, when i am inside the loretto chapel, the first thing i notice is a spiral staircase located in the back corner, known as the miraculous staircase. miraculous it is. the staircase turns twice, lacks support railings, and is roped off with velvet crowd control barriers. though shielded from my and every other tourist’s reach, it glints from a glossy finish my fingertips ache to caress. the wood curves like flowing water. beyond the staircase are double rows of mahogany pews and a golden t-spread jesus statue, front and center. i tip my chin upwards to the ornate marble, see that inside, the veiny eye is a circular, stained-glass mosaic window that casts a rainbow projection on the floor. carved, naked angels draped in stone satin sheets dance along the trimming. it is one of the most divine places i will ever stand. a voice drones from surround-sound speakers set up at every corner. the modern technology, black and sleek, is out of place. i am reminded of juan diego when the voice explains how the staircase before me entered the chapel like a thief in the night. the loretto chapel was built without access to the second-level choir loft, and after the nuns prayed to the patron saint of carpentry, a man with a donkey appeared and built the masterpiece, then disappeared without leaving a name or taking a penny. i am fascinated to hear the staircase was built without nails, secured only with wooden pegs. the second floor of the loretto chapel is inaccessible because the church is no longer used for services, so the staircase’s twirling steps are obsolete. what might it be like to walk a staircase that has not been used in years? in this moment, looking up at the twisting helix, my dress tickling my ankles, my parents forming the sign of the cross in front of the sorrowful jesus statue, i understand what nuns feel when they grasp rosaries; what preachers feel when 44 their voices echo during a sermon. i’ve always wanted someone to pray to but cannot forgive the exclusions in the bible, the stories of westboro baptist church and those like it; i cannot forgive my parents for never teaching me about god, never introducing me to the statues they prayed underneath and shaped their life around. jesus is a stranger to me, but standing in front of the miraculous staircase, the staircase that was built by a mystery man who only meant to aid believers in singing their hymns, i think, i could believe in this. at the front of the church, next to jesus, is a vigil shrine with rows and rows of red glass votive candles. they’re so small i could cup one in my palms, and some are burning, some are not. in front of the candles, on a podium, is a wooden box with a slit. the box dons a sign that declares, “donations are welcomed.” i ask my mom for a dollar, choose one of the many wooden sticks resting in the vigil sand, light it against a candle already burning. “you need to pray when you do that,” my mom says behind me. the stick glows like the incense i burn at night back home. “pray to jesus.” a portrait depicting our lady hangs on the wall to the left of jesus. i hadn’t noticed her when i first entered. i wonder why, in new mexico, with street markets full of indigenous natives selling their copper ear cuffs and sand art, our lady of guadalupe is not the one with the center shrine. why jesus is gold, and not dark with mestizo features like those that have stood in this church for centuries. our lady looks at the ground in her portrait; jesus holds my gaze. as i light an awaiting candlewick, i close my eyes to jesus and think of how i want to believe in something good, and the staircase convinces me goodness is not an idea but an action one gives to others, something that i can achieve even with the sins that i’ve heard stain my soul. i am sixteen again, my mother crying, “you have nothing to offer your future husband,” after she finds out i am not a virgin anymore, and my sexuality bloomed like a daisy’s petals: once they opened, there was no closing them again. i hear the christmas carols that background the noise of our house in december, “hark! the herald’s angels sing,” fanfare over my father’s spitting “fuck you!” to his eldest son (who doesn’t talk to any of us much anymore). i think of the virgin mary appearing to a confused indigenous man, mirroring his teak skin so she would not be a stranger to him, and i remember when a classmate in third grade called my skin dirty, and i didn’t understand because i didn’t know myself as anything but white. then, i pray—the first time in a holy place, in the loretto chapel, i pray. i leave those moments in santa fe, where i pray to our lady of guadalupe, even though i don’t know how, and i bring with me the miraculous staircase and juan diego. when i open my eyes, the wick burns and builds, hot and smoking, then eases into a soft, orange glow. it is a miracle. 23 raven mocker raeya wilhelm acrylic paint; 12”x16” block c camille millier, 2015 93 this is warden hartwell mccullen of rosenbaum state penitentiary trying to reach district attorney steve zenotov. friday, september 27th, 2163. 10:42 pm. calling to report an accident involving prisoner 339 and officer brett st. john, guard in charge of block c. full report with details will be filed and sent to the office as soon as possible. this has been a terrible inconvenience, will need a temporary replacement guard immediately. end transmission. thursday, september 26th 8:52 am. brett st. john exhaled smoke as he leaned against the stone wall just below the stairs leading up to the giant, ancient doors of rosenbaum state penitentiary. he sweated underneath the militant green pea coat and matching peaked cap of the uniform in the early fall air. down the hill a distance, the ocean crashed at the edge of the grounds. the great, stately fortress structure of the prison and the ocean must look beautiful from the water to an outsider. the insomnia was getting bad again. in fact, he couldn't remember a time in his life that he didn't have difficulty sleeping. even in his blurry childhood. but today was just another day like all the rest. "officer st. john!" brett looked over to see alexander snodgrass strolling toward him, holding up a hand in front of his face to shield his eyes from the sun. alex was the young guard in charge of block d. he had dark brown hair and the demeanor and attitude of a chipper character from an old film. he treated every encounter with officer st. john as if he were greeting an older brother home from college for the first time. "morning, alex." brett dropped the cigarette butt and scraped it with the toe of his shiny dress shoe. "gee, am i nervous." alex said with a breathless laugh. "i'm getting a new one in today. warden mccullen said he's an armed robber. made away with about two million down in westmore ‘fore they caught him.” brett nodded as alex continued, before turning to walk up the stone steps while alex trailed alongside, still talking excitedly and looking at brett for approval, through the doors, down one hall, and then another. "i bet he won't be so tough though. say, it's not as exciting as your job. that's a fine gun you have there. i wish i could be on the block with the automatons. you'd never know what to expect." and then "okay, see ya later, officer st. john," as brett opened the steel door to block c and tagged out the night-shift guard. block c was the smallest of the prison, with only twenty cells lining the hall and only about five of them ever occupied at a time. there were no cots 94 or toilets or sinks in these cells, just concrete walls. although they were almost indistinguishable from humans now, the automatons didn't need any of those comforts. they only required a confined space to stay in for a few days until a government truck came to pick them up and take them to the ctm—center for technology and machinery—to be shut down. automatons used to have a kill switch on their bodies, at the beginning when they were made of steel pipes and gears. but too many instances occurred in which the switch was accidentally bumped or pushed, resulting in a permanent waste of a perfectly good automaton. now they had to be shut down officially if they malfunctioned, short-circuited, or wreaked havoc. officer st. john walked down the hall and looked into the occupied cells. printed on the labels outside the bars were the prisoner number, model number, and reason for confinement. prisoner 336, model number cv 4.568 x, short-circuit, killed family dog and destroyed home. prisoner 335, model number cv 6.889 j, corrupted sim chip, seduced male owner, caught by wife. prisoner 338, model number cv 8.113 l, malfunctioning hard drive, could not understand simple tasks—did opposite. and so on. brett sat down at his desk, placed at the end of the hall. the job was easy, to make sure none of the inferior beings caused any trouble. they usually didn't, and he would spend his time reading. he had never had a chance to use the gun. it was a revolver loaded with highly magnetized pellets, designed to destroy an automaton's main circuit board, or at the very least, wipe the hard drive, reverting the machine to a dull yet docile personality. he was given the gun on his first day, five years ago. warden mccullen had handed it to him delicately, ran a hand through his own white hair and looked intensely at brett. "it won't be necessary very often, but i've had to use one a time or two before. believe me when i tell you these no-good pieces of tin are strong, and it ain't worth you or anyone else's life to clam up in the moment. so if one of 'em gets outta line, don't hesitate to take the motherless bastard out.” • • • the steel door crashed open and in came warden mccullen and alex, each struggling to hold onto one armpit of the automaton between them, who dragged his knees on the tiled floor. the automaton was a male, with curly brown hair that flipped vigorously as he convulsed and snarled. he was wearing a dirty white t-shirt and black jeans. brett sprang from his chair and helped push the machine into one of the empty cells. the other automaton inmates slowly walked to the front of their cells and watched curiously. prisoner 338 stood up straight in his gray suit and turned his head to see the action, while prisoner 336 hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the floor inside his cell, his shoulders twitching up and down from the excitement. prisoner 337, who had caused a six-car pileup on the highway while driving his owner to an optometry appointment, 95 stuck his arms through the bars and yelled, with extreme volume, "we got a live one!" the three men panted. mccullen wiped sweat from his forehead. "sir, what's the deal?" brett asked. "you didn't say anything about this.” mccullen caught his breath and sighed. "it's bad. just happened. he needed to be contained immediately.” just then, the new prisoner slammed his body against the bars and made the officers spring backwards. "come to my office, st. john.” thursday, september 26th 9:05 pm. "hey, st. john," warden mccullen called as brett crossed the office door threshold. "don't work too hard or you'll become one of 'em yourself.” the warden laughed, and brett said, "will do." brett carried the newly written label to the newly occupied cell and hung it on the tiny hook. prisoner 339, model number cv 5.600 x, strangled elderly owner with rope until dead. "hey.” a scratchy voice came from inside the cell. he appeared to be sitting with his back against the side wall, but only his legs and dirty work boots were visible. brett slowly turned his head back. "what's wrong, prettyboy?" the prisoner cackled an airy laugh. he appeared in the light as he neared the front of his cell. he extended an open palm through the bars. "my name is jamie,” the automaton said. officer st. john looked at the hand with its shiny white skin, and then up at the prisoner's face. his eyes were still and tranquil, focused on the officer's own green eyes. so different from this morning, when his glass eyeballs were rolling back in their synthetic sockets. "your name is prisoner 339:' brett said slowly, "and you are not to speak to me unless i speak to you first." he turned and left jamie there, hand still outstretched. thursday, september 26th 11:15 pm. brett sank deeper into his leather couch and swallowed the rest of the vodka tonic. his tie was draped around his neck at both sides and the starched white button-down was loosened to reveal a gray-stained t-shirt. victoria appeared from the small kitchen with a refill in her hand. she was wearing a tight red dress and her chestnut hair was swept back into shiny rolls. she folded herself onto the 96 couch next to brett and stroked his strawberry-blond hair. silver and diamonds glittered on her wrist. “are we gonna do somethin' or what?" she asked. for whatever reason, she was programmed with a jersey accent. "no," he said. she scoffed. "i've just never had a customer who wants me to pour 'em drinks and sit next to 'em." "then go,” brett moaned, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the back of the couch. she looked at him apologetically. "what's on your mind, love?" he looked at her. she was pretty, he supposed. she better be, for the price her owner was charging. philonels robertson—the town treasurer who owned over fifty female automatons and sold them off wearing revealing clothing and smelling like a french bath house for $500 a night. he rubbed his eyes. "i got a new prisoner today.” " ... and?" "he murdered his owner.” victoria looked confused. "sometimes i just feel like,” he thought for a moment, "every day is the same. i do the same thing over and over. i don't want to become so robotic, mundane.” brett knew she didn't understand. he told her never mind, and kissed her unnaturally firm red lips. "same time next week?" brett lay awake in bed like every night he could remember. tonight, he blamed his insomnia and lack of sex drive on recurring thoughts about prisoner 339. the glassy, empty eyes that stared through him. the eyes that watched the brutal death of its human owner. brett had predicted it a long time ago—the automatons were going to be the downfall of humanity. the fatal flaw that would develop into mindless evil, created by humans themselves. friday, september 27th 2:30 pm. prisoner 336 made a constant buzzing noise in his cell. prisoner 335 sang softly to herself. brett sat at his desk, scribbling his initials down the side of the twenty-five page cell maintenance report. "hey,” a scratchy voice came in a hoarse whisper from a cell on the left row. brett shifted his eyes from the paper up to the source of the sound. after a few seconds, he continued the report. "officer st. john,” came the whisper again. it was prisoner 339. he 97 sounded as if he had an urgent secret to reveal. brett ignored it. it came again a few seconds later, louder this time. "officer st. john. hey! come here.” brett's chair scraped the floor as he forced it back and strode to cell 5, where prisoner 339 stood, hands wrapped around two bars like a child at the zoo. brett stared at him in disgust and expectation. prisoner 339 scanned the officer's chiseled face and made a grin that evolved into a high-pitched, insane laugh. "what do you want, filth?" brett snarled. "jamie,” prisoner 339 responded. brett laughed. "i will not call you by name like an equal.” "suit yourself,” jamie hummed, "but we're more equal than you know.” brett told the prisoner to shut the fuck up, and turned to walk away when his arm was caught with a crushing grip through the bars. "wait, listen,” jamie pleaded. he licked his lips and his eyes darted around before settling back on brett's face. "i want to talk to you. outside of this cell.” he suddenly looked concerned. "trust me, it's something you need to know. please." jamie loosened his grip and gently let go of the officer's arm. brett glared at the prisoner, and straightened his own rumpled jacket. jamie's automaton eyes looked desperate and pleading. brett decided to humor the prisoner with a little metaphorical game of wit, which he would most definitely win against a lowly, scum-of-the-earth creation. it could be entertaining, if nothing else. if anything happened, he had the gun at his hip. "you get five minutes. later tonight,” brett said. jamie's eyes darted. "thank you for trusting me, officer.” brett turned around and gave the automaton a sharp look. "i don't trust you,” he said coldly. “i’m just bored.” friday, september 27th -10: 15 pm. brett lit a cigarette and stared across his desk at the disheveled automaton sitting on the chair opposite him. jamie was rocking slightly, rubbing his hands on his knees. brett exhaled smoke. "talk.” jamie watched the officer smoking for a few seconds before speaking. "you're a man of your pleasures, i see,” he said. brett took another drag and quoted a favorite vintage film noir. "what else is there in life, i ask you?" brett smiled, partly impressed by his slight to the automaton. jamie smirked. 98 "you know, it's funny..." he trailed off. “i’ve always been intrigued by the concept of being human. i mean, as i sit here and have this conversation and i wonder...what's the difference, really, between a human and an automaton?" ''i'll tell you the difference, my friend,” brett said. he reached into a bottom drawer of his desk to pull out a clear glass and a bottle of amber liquid, expensive brandy labeled year 2105. he poured the alcohol into the shallow glass and lifted it, as if giving a toast. "i, for example, can enjoy this brandy. i can smoke cigarette, i can make love to a woman.” he looked jamie in the eyes. "furthermore, i'm capable of a higher level of thought and consciousness than you could even try to understand.” jamie leaned forward, not breaking eye contact. ''actually, officer st. john,”' he said "they're beginning to adapt automatons to be able to partake in human pleasures, such as food, drinks.” he looked at brett. "want me to prove it?" brett slowly poured another glass of brandy and slid it cautiously across the desk, staring suspiciously at the machine opposite him. jamie tipped it back and poured it down his throat, letting out a sharp sigh afterwards. he set the glass down and looked at brett. brett watched in horror. “i’ll still never understand the appeal, so you got me there,” jamie said about the alcohol. “unfortunately they still haven't mastered the sleep or sex thing, though.” he shot the officer a mischievous grin. “tell me, brett, do you actually do those things?" "i have insomnia,” brett quickly answered. jamie laughed hysterically. "officer, i disagree with what you said earlier. in a way, i have a level of consciousness that you will never be able to understand. because i know things that you'll never accept.” brett clenched his fists, digging short nails into soft palms. jamie continued. "you and i. we're actually very much alike.” he smiled in reminiscence. "i knew from the second i first saw you.” "shut the fuck up!" jamie laughed. "it's clever, really. to create such a perfect prison guard, programmed to hate his prisoners.” brett shook his head back and forth violently, as if trying to stop the input of sound and words flowing through his brain. "you really are a magnificent creation,” jamie said. brett reached across the desk and grasped jamie by his dirty shirt collar, pulling him close with extreme force. he talked in a harsh, breathless voice into the small gap between their faces. 99 "i am not like you. you're a useless, filthy piece of metal covered in rubber meant to look like the human form,” he growled. "you're a perversion of nature.” jamie looked at brett's still, focused eyes, and then began to laugh the same high-pitched, insane laughter he had on the first night in his cell. just then, he pulled the officer over the desk and slammed him onto the concrete floor. brett fought back, with equal force, bringing jamie down with him. within two seconds, jamie was standing, pointing brett's own gun at the officer's chest. "i just want you to see.” the gunshot echoed through the long hallway of block c. the magnetized bullet drove through officer st. john's chest as if it knew it was on a mission. it traveled through skin, metal, and through the fundamental hard drive. the information was destroyed—brett's first day at the prison, the pixelated memory of a red-haired mother driving them to the grocery store, the conversations with alexander snodgrass, the hatred for automatons, all fizzled out like a broken firework. the bullet continued and obliterated the main circuit board. nothingness. a few seconds later, warden mccullen crashed through the steel door, his tie blown over his shoulder. alexander came through after him, looking frantic and nervous. they both beheld the scene in front of them. the warden turned and walked in a panicked circle while pulling on his disheveled white hair. alexander looked like he might cry. mccullen kicked the bars of a nearby cell and the sound rang out through the hall. “god damn it,” he yelled “they said this wouldn't happen!" alex collected himself and jumped into action, grabbing prisoner 339 hard by the back of the neck and forcing him into an open cell, angrily yelling something about the motherless piece of trash. they regrouped and both stared down at officer st. john—his handsome pale face motionless with eyes closed, just above the open cavity in his chest where twisted metal shone. the last tiny flame went out with a final electrical pop. friday, september 27th 10:38 pm. warden mccullen sat down in his dark office rubbing his forehead. he shakily lit a cigarette and sighed smoke. he pulled the transmission machine across his desk, picked up the receiver, and began to speak. 100 friday, september 27th 12:02 am. mccullen watched as the center for technology and machinery professionals closed the final seal on the large, rectangular wooden box. one of them muttered something about how it was a shame—a waste of one of the most advanced experimental automatons of the age. “yeah,” the other replied, “they haven't even started adapting them for the market yet.” the first man carefully taped the label to the lid of the box. for disposal at the ctm. model number: cx 10.650 j fatal gunshot wound unrepairable. 215 18” x 24” pencil paige lamar herron hallway 140 if the biopsy reports had been different, this is what i would have wanted you to know. you may not have been the first love of my life, which is why i know you are the love of my life. if you ever want to relive those first strong emotions we felt for one another, our letters from when you were in law school, and i was still an undergrad are in the green, blue, and white striped box on the top shelf of our closet. don’t worry, i’ve already destroyed letters from anyone other than you, so the kids can’t ask you uncomfortable questions about my love life before you. you’ll also find some high school and sorority mementos that have survived 40 years of moving and spring cleanings, so please handle them with care, and remember that they meant something to me. my phone passcode is my birthday. if you ever want to see the starts to poems and stories i wanted to write one day, go to the notes app. you’ll see some of my most raw moments in short bursts of one or two lines, maybe just a title, but it’s a part of me that you don’t normally see until it’s polished and perfect. speaking of my phone, don’t be surprised if i get a call from the folks who run my harry potter game. i’m one of their vips, apparently, which probably means i spend way too much money on coins and power-ups which you’ll see if you check my bank account. you’ll also find way too much jewelry in the drawer in the closet. please make sure that everyone in the family, including anna and ethan’s future wife, take the pieces that remind them of me. i don’t want anyone to have hurt feelings about whether they were considered family or not. emily can have my kappa key, and i pray that you find your tke pin in there somewhere. it should go to erik one day. i’m looking forward to spending days in the sunroom with you, so if you read this someday, think of me while you watch our indiana sky turn every shade of pink, orange, and red in the mornings and the evenings. i designed it so you could watch a full day of the sun traveling from east to west without ever leaving your rocker. and make sure erin gets all my books. she’s a bibliophile like her mother and will respect them the way i do. i imagine her telling her children, “we never throw away books.” maybe you’ll trip over my “to read” stack one day and think of me kindly instead of swearing about more stuff on the floor. please continue decorating the house for the holidays-go big, celebrate like each one is the last one, and welcome all into our home without being worried about pet fluff and dust. i’ve spent too much time caring about the way the house looked instead of living in the moment with the people who share the house with me. make spinach dip and have friends over for butler basketball games, watch “it’s a wonderful life” every christmas eve, and think of me when you see a mourning dove out the window or pick up a penny from the sidewalk. i’ll be in the moments that you least expect to find me. kim kile if...then 3939 i have no need for tattoos for my belly’s stretch marks grew stronger and bolder with each baby. dots of chicken pox scars mark my cheek and jaw. a thin white line on my left pinkie the remnant of my sister’s anger and a slamming door. a perfect line the width of a razor up my right shin, a shadow of my mother’s bic lady razor. incision marks on both shoulders, battle wounds of motherhood. a canvas of scar tissue, created over time and catching the fade. kim kile body art 154 por favor, que cada lagrima sea una petición a tu bendito querer, que cada vez que digo su nombre sea un pedido de mi alma – flor del cielo, mátame anhelo morir por resucitar recordando el primer beso tan natural de cada amanecer en convulsiones estoy, las lagrimas quemando, sudando espinas en mis mejillas sobre mi rostro un asfixio divino. aún quedan conmigo cada recuerdo mil tesoros mil latidos implacablesen mi cofre suma una cosecha de flores, cada flor compartida es tuya – las bañe con gotas de sol el recuerdo de tus ojos tu sonrisa, tu linda amor mario stone oración 77 outcries from the oppressive realms, where shadows weep, a realm where serpents are slain but villains are made, in our dystopian misery, black warriors arise asserting the essence of our defiance, bound by shackles, bound by chains, bound by faith, imprisoned by the bloody waxen pagans, bound in blood, the repercussion of an attack. voices echoing and roaring vengeance, but the bloody waxen pagans believed us to be black swans, these same black swans hunted their heads, murdered thousands of their crowned waxen pagans, turning their houses to coffins and taking their recompenses into ashes, bound by shackles, bound by chains, bound by faith, imprisoned by the bloody waxen pagans, terror prowling at their spirits, but their gods conquered, amidst this darkened hour, a tale unfolds. from pagan shackles to a black fortress, where all invaders were annihilated, our audacity seemed to have reeled in a scene, again and again the spectacle of defiance cast it spells, as we navigate this dystopian hell. grand marronage whispers echo loud, for we are the african diasporas, the descendants of wrathful warriors, boldly being themselves, hunting for the blood, flesh, and death of this waxen pagan. african culture continues in the footprints of their brave bloody soles. zion o. adedipe shackles to spectacles my parents' crazy hoarder basement tamara watkins sharpie and white gel pen on paper, 22"x30" 50 57 digital photography lexia holmes the silent beast the conductor's funeral aiden heavilin time is spinning away from the human like fraying thread but the human does not reach out an aged hand to grasp and struggle as clockwork unspools, delicately fluttering, inch after spiraling inch. perhaps it helps that this human is not alone, or perhaps this human is wiser and older, though the word older is losing its meaning, and the human is becoming aware that its soul is as young as the laughing infants and as ancient as gravity himself. this human dreams itself as a woman. and so she is a woman. and she is aware of another person beside her as she falls toward the light, offering her relief across leagues of unimaginable distance, comforting her against a loss that seems too much to bear, and they are wrapping one another into a glowing pulsar of love and acknowledgement, acceptance of the tides of absurd unknowing that surround them. this is why she is not afraid, even as she opens their eyes tentatively, barely breathing, and inhales the cold wind of the twilight otherworld. the tide is coming in. marla stands in the lapping waters and giggles. the water musters enough courage to surge against her knees then retreats shyly into the endless beyond, and she feels the way the sand is pulled away beneath her feet in little eddies and vortexes. she breathes the cold ocean air, but as she exhales she is aware that this vision is forbidden to her, and that it will be forgotten as soon as she has been pulled into the clutches of the story that awaits her somewhere behind in the all the tangled streets of a little village quieter yet more tumultuous than the dying city where mr. bjorvan is casting his gaze across leagues of billowing smoke. this will all be gone when she opens her eyes, so in this inhale of grace, she casts her eyes far across the sea, across pitching miles of sparkling water where a solitary wandering albatross stretches its wide wings, gliding so close to the surface that she cannot distinguish it from the hazy mirages and silvery highlights on the water. the ocean courses through colors, pale greens and full blues interlocking in an amorphous jigsaw puzzle. the wash and spray of the water whispers a lullaby. she can smell the salt bleached rocks strung with kelp. the wind blows her hair into her eyes and the vision is lost. she breathes out. centuries pass. the clouds and fog hang so heavy here that she cannot see more than a few feet in either direction. men and women are gazing despondently at their shoes or peering through portholes as if now is the moment that the vaporous curtains shall be drawn away to permit them to see the landscape beyond. 30 the boiler roars like a loud, endless sigh. above them, the cords anchoring the basket to the balloon creak tautly. “where are we going?” asks marla brightly, crying out with delight as she realizes they are flying, flying, no doubt through some unimaginable chamber so large that they might soar for hours before they reach the other side. “keep your voice down,” says a woman grimly. “oh,” whispers marla. “are we escaping or something? is it dangerous?” an old man with silver spectacles shakes his head. “it’s a tragedy how quickly the young neglect the principles. when i was a lad, me and my friends were the first to the orchestra hall and the last to leave.” “i apologize,” says marla, smiling patiently. “i just got here. it’s all a bit hazy at the moment, but if i remember correctly…” “marla…” says a young girl laughing. “what do you mean?” “what do i mean what?” “what do you mean you just got here?” a village huddled against the wolves and things worse than wolves that they know patrol these lawless wastelands on either side. barren stonework blasted and sculpted by the acid rain. great streaming trails of smoke at each corner of the horizon like wispy watchtowers. jagged clouds like spidery writing on a black ceiling so far above them that marla, as she staggers into the town square, dizzy and alone, cannot even make a guess as to the size of the room. this must be the biggest chamber in the entire world, she thinks to herself. “only a few books remain,” says the old man with silver spectacles, and marla shakes her head sadly. “i’m sorry,” she says. “don’t apologize for wrongs you had no hand in committing,” says the man, waving his hand. “bad habit.” “oh, but i did commit that wrong,” she says, averting her eyes. the man squints at her without understanding, and she does not speak of the festival of the desecrators, and the mountain of sacred texts and classics, and the lottery to determine which young desecrator, freshly armed with passion from the training camps, would be allowed the honor of setting the first match against the yellowed paper and then, laughing, retreat from the consuming flames and dance with his brothers and sisters to the music of the crackling bonfire of knowledge. but there’s no more time for guilt, the man told her long ago, when they were standing at the edge of the village and peering into the mouth of the black canyons on either side and watching vague shadows on the distant hills. you were born into a world of lies extricated from the memory of truth, carved into every paragraph of every book of ritual. so is everyone. “i cannot help the stab of fear when i find myself using an adjective,” she 31 says miserably, one night when the rest of the passengers are asleep, and the pilot is too hypnotized by the monotony of his task to pay attention. “i try to say that it is a grand view and i feel a stab of guilt.” “that’s to be expected, young one,” he says kindly. “you must learn a new way of understanding the world.” everything is infinitely interesting, if you pay close enough attention. or at least, that’s what marla feels, reading the few surviving dictionaries and learning a new vocabulary to process the world, finding that in the acquisition of these words, the objects themselves are subtly changed. she listens to the soft guitar music of a lonesome pilgrim and understands that the textures of the music are ominous and eerie, that his voice is gravely and matured. even in the glimpses she catches in the mirror, waking up in the early morning to get breakfast in the common area with the rest of the village, working the tangles out of her hair, she begins to describe herself, and in the describing, change herself. her hair is golden and shiny. her eyes are sympathetic. she is curious and excitable. not much excitability around these parts, the old man with the silver spectacles tells her. excitement is drawn from the new, and this is a land of struggling remembrance. there is nothing new in a world of sulfur and spreading apocalypse, of oncoming twilight that pursues her at every turn through the firelit village. remnants of a city that stood for so long that the world had accepted it as a natural outgrowth of the stone. charred skeletons of buildings surround her dreams, dwarfing her even in their destruction, metal beams like broken bones dangling from bodies that bleed flames into the sky and find no hope of rebuilding. a perpetual cycle of violence, and a man sitting in the heaps of destruction, looking out at her as she waits in the village, standing in the freezing cold. the old man with silver spectacles tells her his name but she cannot remember it. it’s enough to know he is the conductor, a title from which he unsuccessfully pleads innocent like a desperate convict who, finding the verdict unfavorable, shoulders the burden of his oncoming fate with reserved dignity, raising his chin against his accusers as if to say, “enough then. i submit.” he submits as if frustrated to his responsibility but marla secretly suspects that he finds some sense of fulfillment. after all, when librarian’s son suggested that he might try his hand with the baton someday, the conductor’s face, frozen in a static smile, seemed to project such condescension that marla could not help but remember how her own father had smiled at her when she pulled at the pages of a book with clumsy hands, succeeding only in tearing dozens of little strips of paper but sparkling with joy in the attempt. she threw the shreds in the air like confetti and looked up, watching them drift lazily to the ground like paper snow. the orchestra meets every week, which means nothing here. when she arrives at the hall, day or night, rain or heavy rain, they are playing, and the old man with silver spectacles is paging through the last book of symphonies and pausing 32 every few measures to deliver some line of sharp criticism to the assembled players. “this is all we have,” he says to her on board the hot air balloon. “this is all we have ever had. this first, last, and only symphony. it is our mission to perfect it, and beyond perfection, to transform it. i will not rest until we have fulfilled its purpose.” marla’s confusion abates as she spends weeks in the empty auditorium seats, watching as the conductor raises his baton and announces, “second movement, third measure, brass only please!” then counts an empty measure, listening to the trumpets and trombones narrate their contrapuntal melody strangely exposed and cold, lonely without their brethren. he closes his eyes and picks out every individual timbre, listens to every phrase and crescendo, then he shakes his head. “wrong, wrong, wrong!” he cries. “where is the humanity? where is the grace? i hear you play these notes as if you are solving a math problem. a plus b plus d… there is a story in that phrase, and you are neglecting it entirely, and i can hear it! again, again!” but if you haven’t achieved it, mr. conductor, mr. old man with silver spectacles, then you won’t achieve it, will you, taking your position as the leader of the multifarious rituals and stomping his foot in anger at the dozens of mistakes he perceives yet lacks the energy to criticize. so we journey onwards. are we dispelling the clouds or merely becoming one of them, bodies dissolving in a southern wind? marla stands at the edge of the basket and gazes into the pale abyss and, although she dimly senses the staggering altitude, she cannot remember any world that did not consist of clouds. the conductor taps his baton upon the stand and says, “movement one, measure one. play the whole thing through,” and then he lets his baton chase invisible vertexes, dictating strange constellations of rhythm and desired expression, as his left hand motions “come hither” as if coaxing from its cave some mighty dormant dragon that, when it stretches scaly wings and crushes the mountains between its talons, will so transcend this little village that its inhabitants shall return shocked into a familiar yet slightly changed world where all the daily tasks of gardening and cleaning seem like privileges granted a lonely prisoner. he says it is possible. he says it is coming and that no one can stop it but that we can make it come quicker if we try our hardest. perhaps, he imagines in his deepest despair, he will never achieve the perfect performance, but there will at least be a perfect measure, a sudden alignment of hearts, the entire orchestra looking up in astonishment and realizing that they are no longer reading music, they are merely playing what is right, and that what is right happens to conform perfectly with the master score. it’ll happen one of these days, just you wait, if that word means anything. marla asks where they are going, and someone says they are seeking the composer, an annual pilgrimage to the great temple in the mountains where he 33 will sit waiting, endlessly compassionate and endlessly brilliant, narrating the music of the world with his quill pen as heartbreaking melodies pour from him instinctually like babble from the mouth of a madman. and just beyond this next bank of impenetrable clouds he will sit at the edge of a cliff looking down into a broad valley of crystal waterfalls and he will look up at the hot air balloon and say, “welcome, my musicians!” but they emerge from the clouds again and again and there is no composer, there is no music to echo in the deep mountains, and they are once more making their return journey to the little village where the conductor will disembark and scream, “you failed me! you failed all of us! you failed the music!” at no one in particular, and the musicians hang their heads in shame. they try again. he raises his baton and says, “fourth movement, twenty seventh measure,” then begins conducting before any of the musicians can flip to the proper position. false starts and dissonant tones. the conductor says, “you should know this by heart! no! put down your music! play with your soul! you should know this all!” but they don’t know it. the violinists peer sadly at the conductor and look to their fellow musicians for help, but it would appear, regardless of the years they have spent rehearsing, that no one has memorized the music. the conductor whirls his baton but the orchestra sits baffled and silent until tears burst from behind his silver spectacles and he hurries off stage. when he returns the following day, his words are grimly serious. “i sustained my people in the wastelands,” he says in a whisper amplified by the acoustics of the concert hall like a gentle cymbal solo. “i brought my people out of the desert of nothingness and led them to a land of life and water. it hasn’t been perfect. i admit that. but we have survived. and it is time to move beyond survival and achieve that pinnacle of sophistication that only humans are capable of achieving. this…” he taps the book of the symphony, “is the last recorded music in the world. and until we have read from that book and understood its meaning we shall be just as lost as we were when we floated aimlessly through the void. we must understand the composer completely, we must replicate without error the music he imagined and in doing so, resurrect him in all our minds. only when we have done that might we say we have achieved our rest in this cruel and unforgiving world. only then might we feel his soul running through our own and glimpse the divine order.” marla, having listened to the orchestra rehearse for century after dizzying century, returns to her own home one day having bartered away a few memories for a stack of paper and a pen. she doesn’t know how to write music, but there is music in her mind, and, opening her eyes as if from a murky sleep, she begins to scribble on the paper. it begins with a drum roll, light hammers tapping away on the timpani, 34 35 and then the horns enter in a bright, joyous fanfare, before quieting down into twinkling filigree accompaniment, accenting a pompous melody carried primarily by the strings. years later, when the conductor discovers marla’s music, he furrows his brow in concern. “my child,” he says without anger. “you are getting ahead of yourself. only when we have fully understood the music of the past might we forge ahead into the music of the future. oh, believe me, i have thought of composing many times myself, but that is not my role here. first we must come to know the true composer.” “but there is a melody in my mind,” she says. “and i want to write it down.” “there are melodies in all of our minds,” he says sadly. “but we must learn to recognize their ephemeral nature. we must learn humility. we must remember that the composers of the past drew upon a long tradition, and we have only one symphony remaining to remember them by. only through careful study of this piece of music, over generations, might we come to an understanding, albeit incomplete, of that old tradition. and only when we understand the old tradition as best as we can, only then might we move on to a new tradition.” everything has already happened, and the ultimate fate is known to all, plainly, waiting outside their doors with a blank smile, following at a few paces behind down every street. yet when it arrives, they look up with a flash of surprise and stammer out excuses, alone in the shadows that are rapidly swelling out like soft wings to enfold them. marla wakes up. the hot air balloon hums and creaks threateningly. that’s the word she happens upon, shifting to a sitting position and breathing on blue fingers to warm them against the nighttime air. at the tiller, the conductor stands still like a statue… stone statues in conflict a knife in a bony gray grip and a shimmering mirage in the air… but as she adjusts her eyes in the dark, she can see him breathing almost imperceptibly, faint steam like candle smoke escaping his nostrils. he is old and weary and she has watched him die time and time again, a failure, abandoned by all, slipping into beyond in a last moment of annoyance and anger. there’s children outside. they’re far too loud. get them to shut up will you. get them to shut their goddamn mouths! marla has leaned close to the conductor on his death bed and listened to his faint whisperings, accompanied him as a final friend during those torturous weeks of timeless illness, affliction that spread through all that had been and all that would be. he told her that he wouldn’t wish this on his worst enemy, and then paused and said maybe he would. “conductor,” she had whispered to him, last kindness splashing fruitlessly against stubborn bulwarks. “conductor, can you hear me?” “don’t call me the conductor,” he had said, straining to enunciate each syllable. “you are to call me the composer. i understand him now. my musicians fell short, but i have finally heard the music as it was meant to be played. he is my friend now. he told me to tell you this.” marla had paused and gazed with wonder and eventually found herself asking, “what is he like?” “well, he’s actually a lot like me.” marla shifts to a more comfortable sitting position and says, “this has been a longer journey. are we not seeking the mountain?” “no. i must return to my homeland in search of the ancient libraries. perhaps one survived. there is always hope. there is always hope. there is always hope.” on his death bed, the conductor had wept. he said, “if only there were paper left in this accursed village.” the conductor says, “i hear music. i’ve heard it all my life.” 36 24 making arrangements kayla mcveigh you can take my body and have it bound in strips of linen you can dye the strips with turmeric or beet juice do this so it will be vibrant and uplifting allow the color to invite you to sit with me to whisper what you can barely speak and then i’d like to take rest in the earth to retire my bones in soil to be composted down you know for me there would be no greater ceremony do this to help return what i have borrowed in this life allow me to spark life like whale fall know better than to think these wishes speak against my contentment with life you know my joy in all phases you know my being present is what moves me to make these arrangements to be here, but taking note of each rotation around the sun see every stage as intentional shouldn’t this include our most transparent surprise the flesh of my body and feelings of my experiences are temporary but my continuation will be endless silver flash minnows and pickle green frogs ron keedy silver flash minnows and pickle green frogs, brown-eared bunnies inside hollow logs. off in the distance goes the velvet moss trail, from under the mud peeks an old rusty pail. crawdads swim backwards in water so clear, dragonflies buzzing without any fear. squirrels loudly cussing perched high in the trees, wildflowers nodding in the afternoon breeze. a fast moving ripple gives bare feet a tickle, a snake crosses path causing neck hair to prickle. wade through the shallows to the big bar of sand, a tiny warm island detached from the land. sand buried toes toasted by the sun, wind at your back ain’t no better fun. kingfishers diving, catching fish in their beak, fond memories always of my sugar creek. 81 44 the butterflies in my chest have been dormant and sleeping for ages but when you brushed up against me and knocked on my heart they awoke in a frenzy and threw themselves against my ribcage, fervent, aching to be set free and land gently on your face and adorn your gorgeous eyes and decorate your cheeks like freckles selma adie butterflies 127 kira taylor 12” x 18” hardground etching anomaly 19 there’s something they’re not telling me nicole hay digital art; 6”x8” 156 perhaps he saw me as dry clay. he knew his hands were wet. he knew he could mold me into anything he desired. he grabbed me and unwrapped me. he saw my ugly and my beautiful, but still, what he had in mind was better. he threw me on his pottery wheel– and it spun, and spun, and spun. i never had a chance to get off …unless he took me off. everything spinning around me and i had no grasp to stop. once he got me molded into his desired idea of me, he threw me in the kiln and watched me burn… forgetting to ever take me out. alexandra kluger kiln kind of love 20 there is no prison sentence harder to stomach than having to move back in with your parents at twenty-nine. but isn’t that the point of prison? to punish, to be quarantined from the rest of decent society while you learn your lesson? maybe it’s what she deserves – after all, she chose to try and outrun this place, it would make sense that her punishment for fucking up her fresh start would be to return to square one. still, it’s unfair to call her homecoming a prison sentence, even if that’s how it feels. there are reasons she’s back – filing for divorce and your father’s cancer becoming terminal in the same week would be enough to drive anyone back home. and so she’s come back, with her head hung low over the steering wheel and tail between her legs. the tiny main street almost looks like the backwater hick town kit remembers – bright storefronts that have been molding since the 60s, vandalism on the stop signs, unattended kids walking down the middle of the street. she doesn’t recognize any of the kids though, and doesn’t know who’s driving which car, and the snow lands a little differently on the curb now. still, it’s the same kind of cold judgment in the air as when she left, the same harsh indiana winter, the same chill deep in her bones. she goes to the new grocery store in town – a big chain with giant block lettering, cluttered aisles, and a proper produce section. she weaves up and down the aisles, grabbing canned food and packaged dinners to cover up the appalling amount of liquor in her cart. a raincloud follows her around the store as she shops – disapproving glares from strangers burn holes in the back of her head as she moves, winter hat pulled down low. the kid at the counter rings her up with huge eyes, almost like he’s seeing a ghost, and he may as well have. the phantom glares follow her through the parking lot, bolstered by whispers as she weaves through the cars. something is intoxicating about the anonymity of a new city where no one knows who she really is, where it doesn’t matter, where the name kit graves fades into the background and ceases to exist to everyone around her. but here, it feels like quitting that freedom cold turkey. the older people remember her, the ones her age look right through her. they all know why she’s back, all taken part in flinging rumors of her personal failure around behind her back. she can practically picture the church luncheons, the late fridays down at the thirsty cow, the snickers and endless choruses of bless her heart from her former classmates. if he was here, jack would shake his head and insist she was just hyper-aware, that sometimes a marriage just fails, that none of them judge her for putting off the visits to her dying father, and the most infuriating part of that is that he’d be right and it wouldn’t change a damn thing about how she feels. kate weber homecoming 21 the parking lot goes eerily silent as freezing rain starts falling and she hurriedly loads her trunk. cars zoom past on the street, pushing muddy slush into the dead grass just beyond the curb. she slams the trunk closed, flakes of rust falling to her feet, and is turning around to push the cart back to the corral when she sees him. he’s old now, which is the first thing she notices. old might be a harsh word for it – maybe he isn’t old, maybe he’s just thirty. he’s got faint crow’s feet, traces of a life spent smiling without her. his hair, now salt-and-pepper, falls into his eyes the way it always has. he’s wearing a blue button-up with a dark red tie. she’s sure that if she gets close enough, she’ll find his hands covered in papercuts and ink stains – no doubt with a wedding ring around his finger. even from across the lot, he looks happy. “ben!” she calls, her mouth faster than her mind. she’s glued to the cement as he whips around and squints at her. his face is a mask of confusion for long enough for her mind to realize what she just did, and then his eyes open wide with realization. “kit?” he says her name like a slur, his squint sharp as a knife. she internally groans, cursing her mouth for betraying her. they start the awkward walk toward each other, shuffling feet and heads bent against the rain. they meet in the middle, both of them all awkward hugs and forced laughs as they take in the effect the years have had on their faces. she wonders vaguely how she looks to him now, with her college hoodie and already graying hair. proof of a life lived without him. “you’re old!” she giggles like a teenager, overwhelmed with the sight of him, the smell of him, the way his chest is still so broad, the way seeing him feels like going home and being locked in a cell all at once. “you are too!” he laughs, absentmindedly brushing her hair from her face. “miss big scientist, why on earth are you back here?” “just back for the holidays, i only got in last night, i wasn’t expecting to see you so soon,” she lies, intoxicated with the friendly ignorance of old friends. it almost feels like they’ve spoken at some point since she skipped town – they haven’t. oh jesus, they’re just old friends now, aren’t they? but then, is it possible to still be friends? perhaps it would be more appropriate to call him a partner in crime after all is said and done, but then, usually, you like your partner in crime. “how long are you in town? christ, it’s been ages. you still at the old house on 17?” he’s still shocked, face as pale as the kid at the register. she realizes she 22 homecoming hasn’t touched him since the night of the accident, and hasn’t heard his voice in a decade. “yeah, you know how my folks are, too stubborn to admit they need help looking after the house and yard – the basement flooded last spring and dad’s been too sick to clean and fix it properly, so, you know, i have my work cut out for me –” she can’t stop herself from rambling, but ben looks like he’s clinging to every word. his eyes are hungry, pushing and pulling her away all at once. she wonders if he’s also looking at her through rose-colored glasses right now, wonders how long until they come off and he looks at her with the hatred she deserves. “and how’s he doing, by the way? warren, i mean, he hasn’t been coming to church or anything lately.” she feels her face flicker at that and curses the way her body starts chewing on the inside of her cheek, completely ignorant of her brain’s instructions. grant, her brother, called her with the first diagnosis about six months ago. stage three, staying hopeful. and then the fatigue and treatments started and now…well, the man’s a shell. a ghost, waiting to die. “he’s fine. doing freelance repairs in the meantime.” she cringes as she says it. in the meantime is such a crude way to say while he’s waiting to die of brain cancer. ben nods sympathetically, though, and they fall silent, standing a few feet apart. for a second her heart leaps into her throat with nostalgia. her mind floods with memories of him driving too fast down country roads, awkward silence drowning them both in the car as they stumble through conversations that feel way too grown-up for them to be having. “what have you been up to?” she asks quickly before he can turn away. he closes the trunk of the car and lets his hands rest on his hips as he leans against it, looking at his feet. he runs a hand through his hair as he talks. “just busy ending up like my parents, you know how it is for us townies.” she nods, eyes still fixed on the ring on his finger. her runaway mouth starts moving before she can stop it. “you’re married?” she manages to ask without her voice breaking, a feat she’d deemed impossible years ago. when grant called her with the news, she spent hours crying over it, sick to her stomach with disappointment and fighting the urge to drive back to hythe and apologize to him, sobbing on the moldy couch in her apartment while jack fussed over her, absolutely clueless and unable to understand why it hurt. “what are you so upset about?” grant had asked over the phone, voice gentle. 23 kate weber “you weren’t going to come back for him. you know that.” but in the parking lot, the stupid, entitled teenage part of her mind starts nagging at her. you came back, see? you came back. why is he still married? you came back! ben looks at his hand as if he’d forgotten he has a ring on, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “yeah, back in ‘91. god, that sounds like forever ago, doesn’t it?” she shrugs, doing her best to smile at him. some of it’s genuine, most of it is, she swears, and logically she knows she has absolutely no claim to him, but she can’t help the small sinking feeling in her chest. “that’s good, i’m really happy for you. you deserve to be happy.” she doesn’t realize she’s quoting herself until his face flickers slightly, but only for a fraction of a second. he brushes it off, though, so quickly she wonders if she made it up. “what about you?” his eyes narrow. “anyone managed to tame you, yet?” she shivers slightly, either from the january wind or from his implication that she is and always was some kind of wild animal. “briefly,” she breathes. “didn’t work out. you know me.” it’s not the rehearsed statement they’d agreed on when jack told her he was done. it’s not even close, it leaves out the endless fighting, lying for no reason, and silent treatments. nobody wants to hear about all of that, though, and ben would probably just hate her more for her handling of it, anyway. she can practically hear his voice, somewhere between sad and cruel, he was too good for you anyway. they stand for a few more minutes, parking lot slush seeping into her tennis shoes. she fiddles with the pack of cigarettes in her pocket and wonders if ben still smokes. he used to, fat clouds pouring from his lips and calloused fingers twirling joints and cigarettes as if they were drumsticks in tommy lee’s hands. a voice in the back of her brain pipes up, jack hates it when you smoke, you know you should quit. she brushes it off and desperately searches for something to talk about. ben fiddles with his ring, looking absentminded. a small, spiteful part of kit hopes he’s just as lost as she is. they stand in uncomfortable silence until a woman gets into the car next to ben’s – she stares at them, blinking confusedly. kit doesn’t recognize her, but ben gives her a small smile. it feels a bit like being stabbed to see him be polite, like the butterflies she used to feel suddenly grew razor blades for wings. 24 ben looks away from her as the mystery woman backs out of her spot. kit can’t breathe. “i should go,” he’s saying, digging his keys from his pocket. the metallic jingle echoes around the parking lot, the loudest sound in her ears. “it was nice to see you, though. i missed you.” “missed you too, ben.” she sighs, turning away. she can picture him in her head, opening and closing his mouth as though he has something else to say. she wants him to have no choice but to leave without a word to anyone, without her forgiveness. she wants to haunt him exactly as he’s haunted her all these years. wants him to jump at strangers in gas stations, dial her number and hang up, and drive past her house on the way home from work. before she can even register what she’s doing, she’s in her car again. david bowie plays over the broken radio, static buzzing with his voice and speakers shuttering with the bass. again, she finds herself driving away from him, confused and stupid. she turns left out of the lot and starts the familiar route back to the blue house on 17, finally returning home with just as much hurt and regret as she had when she left. a bone to pick tara ventura the boys played games in the back of the butcher shop. blackjack, poker, it didn’t matter. they all ended the same, with their own urbanized version of russian roulette. i was fresh out of the army then, a field medic of all things. i was 95 pounds and in basic training a week after my high school graduation. got my degree. did a tour in desert storm. cut into the wounded with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. when that couldn’t do it for me anymore, i started counting during surgery. i remember this one guy, bishop from fayetteville, got carried in with his left arm turned inside out but the bone, by the grace of god if you ask him, still intact. i counted all the way to 16,752 on that one. i always took the first two beats to breathe and cut into the skin on three. i never got used to the feeling of my knife slicing into their flesh. didn’t matter after khafji, anyway. i took a bad fall, messed up my hip, and that was it. i sat at home with my dad through the spring. drank beer. watched golf on tv. he didn’t ask me for war stories and i didn’t offer any up. i was twenty-five years old and burnt. hobbled around the house. sucked on snack cakes and aunt chrissy’s cobbler until one may day when i pinched at my waist and found a new layer of fat. “what are you doing?” my dad asked when he found me lying facedown, cursing at the floor. “planks,” i muttered through my teeth. “jen,” my dad huffed. “this ain’t doing nothing.” i collapsed. “it was doing something!” i protested, trying to find comfort in pulling my knees to my chest. i tugged on my shins, wanting so badly to reign them in. my hip locked, blocking its path. one leg fell lopsided on the floor, the other touched my chest. the walls of my room were still the same tiffany blue that my dad had painted them when we first moved to staten island twelve years ago. he said new york was a city of islands so i asked for the room downstairs, my tropic of cancer. a gallon bucket of paint had sat on the floor since my return, collecting dust, reminding me of the reality of what staten island actually was; slate grey, minus the sparkle. there it all sat in the corner, so unbothered by itself. a gallon of grey paint. me and trips to the v.a. and gas station down the street and all of staten island for that matter sealed inside of it. “my buddy, louis, you remember louis, don’t ya’?” i shook my head no. “oh, come on, uncle louis? with the, the uh, the red leather jacket he always had on and that son of his, nico?” “dad,” i spoke, half asking him to stop this train before it got to wherever it was going. 16 “he owns the deli on adele?” my dad tried one last time. i knew the one. “well anyways, baby, he needs a cashier. said the job’s yours if you want it.” “i don’t know if-” i retorted. “he’s got a stool all ready for ya’. no standing required.” a man conscious of the hip. “okay, sure.” i agreed and became all the worse off for it. when i walked in the backdoor of the deli at 4 a.m., i sneezed. it was cold and reeked of carcass. peppercorn littered the countertops. no standing became two hours of nothing but standing real quick when nico handed me a spray bottle of bleach and rag and told me they opened at six. so i cleaned. i scrubbed and washed and turned my back when i heard nico and his five friends shouting slurs at one another while gathered around a folding white table. they were all drunk off their asses, throwing jokers to the stain-splattered floor. they hadn’t just started either, at 4 a.m. they were deep into two bottles of vodka. “fuck you and fuck your mother,” i heard one of them yell, slamming his hand down. “it’s not going to be me tonight, boys.” it felt like the army again. the boys looking for a rise and me refusing to give it. i mopped with more vigor. pretended a sergeant was looking over my shoulder. i scrubbed grease off the walls that looked older than me. the floors were cream-colored after but not before. fifteen minutes from open and my stool. that’s when i heard them flip the meat grinder on. “you don’t bet with money when you work at a deli and nobody shoots a gun in new york without somebody else around to hear it,” nico told me when he noticed me peeking. like that explained it. “it’s now or never, michael,” nico warned. “lose your hand and you might lose another,” one boy teased, nudging michael closer to the machine. michael closed his eyes, bit his lip, and screamed, “now!” right before jamming his hand in the meat grinder. nico pulled the plug and michael’s hand returned in one piece. “maybe next time, mikey,” another boy joked. i leapt, the medic in me wanting to inspect the hand that had somehow escaped the claws of death unharmed. “jenny, you tryna’ be our virgin sacrifice or something?” nico asked and the boys laughed, and i thought about it. that rush-hour savior that i used to be really thought about it, and when the rational, 'doing planks in my bedroom alone is enough thrill for me' part of me jumped out and tried to resist, i gave her and the boys and the rest of staten island the finger. show off. girl with a grudge. a bone to pick. nothing but carcasses came through the back door of the deli. the belly of a pig swung by my face and i dared it to spill its guts. 17 “alright, jenny,” they whooped and hollered from behind. nico stood with plug in hand, ready to yank, the meat grinder rumbled on. “one, two,” and i thrust my hand forward. a chorus of "holy cows" could be heard from behind me but i was the cold cut. i was the mangled meat, wounded soldier, wrist-deep in a mess of my own making. “three,” and i cut myself free with a butcher’s knife as the boys watched, mouths wide. i stood up tall and saw the cream floor beneath me turn red, heard someone say “lock the door.” i’ve cut to the bone before. it was nothing new, not really. i performed my own autopsy and lived to tell. cause of death: who cares, ask the v.a. i came home from the hospital a week later, all bandaged up and fixed by doctors who found a life in medicine more stable than i ever could. my dad didn’t ask me why i did it, just if it hurt and by how much. my first night home, i woke up sweating but silent, like after so many nights in the desert i had forgotten how to scream. it was summer in new york, hot and stuffy. more uncomfortable, harder to ignore than the desert’s dried-lips kiss. 'i had lost my hand without ever even playing the game,' i thought to myself. my room was too small. too optimistic. opening the windows just meant letting this city win. again, i picked up a knife, felt its familiar blade. glorified it, lied to it, hated it. used it. slashed open that can of grey paint. tore down my posters of the everglades and coral reefs that i would never see. took my one good hand and painted all through the night. became the begging city bird staten island always knew me to be, hungry for a taste of something carnivorous. 18 jas sarah wulf i’m pretty sure my friend jas is dead. she could be in the hospital. she could be with her aunt and uncle downtown, which is what my older sister elsie told me. during recess, the teacher told me and some of the other third graders that she’s on a vacation with her grandparents. i don’t believe it. not really. i don’t know. my parents won’t tell me. they don’t tell me anything. they’re mumbling to themselves about electricians and bills when i walk into the kitchen. “is jas dead?” i ask. my mother’s eyebrows sew themselves together as she looks down at me. “dead? why are you thinking about death, sweetie? that’s for the adults to worry about, you go play.” i open my mouth, but she’s shooing me off. i walk to the door and shove my feet into my shoes before i step out into the hall. without jas, i don’t have anyone to play with. i walk down to the end of the hallway, by the window where we usually play, and sit down on the orangey-red carpet. usually, i sit on the side of the window by the socket while jas sits on the other side. but there’s still a fork in the socket. i lean against the wall and pull my knees to my chest. i want to get rid of the fork, but i can’t grab it. i can’t shake it either, which is how i get the chess pieces out of that plastic holder jas has, or had. thinking about chess just reminds me of jas. we always play chess when we’re bored but now she’s not here. i rub my hands through the thick carpet while i think about her. she and her family live on the same floor as my family. we’re both in third grade. we both play chess. we walk to the bus stop together. on monday i was going to apartment 19 to meet her. that’s when i saw her lying on the floor at the end of the hall, right next to where the fork was stuck in the socket. some of her long black hair was stuck up, while the rest spread across the carpet like ink out of a spilled pen. her brown eyes stared blankly at the red and gold wallpaper without blinking. it reminded me of travis, elsie’s old boyfriend. i sprinted down the hall and pounded on my parent’s door. “jas is dead!” 41 jas 42 “don’t be ridiculous. of course she isn’t,” my father said while he shoved me back into our apartment. “she is! she is! she’s not moving!” i cried. my mother pushed me into elsie’s arms and said something about taking me to the bus stop. elsie checked the clock, and sat back down for breakfast. i curled up under a blanket on the couch. sirens blared outside and the sound of boots thumped around the hall. dad came back in and went into the kitchen. “maybe she should stay home today,” elsie said. “that was probably pretty traumatic.” “she’s too young to know what happened,” dad replied. “just take her on the elevator today. she loves the elevator.” elsie wound up driving me to school, because i missed the bus. i spent all day feeling like my whole body was full of water. it splashed around my mind while we did math and made whirlpools in my stomach during lunch. when i got home, i asked my mom what happened to jas. “that’s for the adults to worry about. go do your homework.” i know a fork in the socket is bad. last year, in second grade, we watched these old, grainy videos about home safety. in one of them, a boy with a mullet pushed a fork into a socket and the film cut to black. it made me feel like i had a bowling ball in my chest that stayed there all day. when i wasn’t eating, my parents asked me what was wrong. i told them. “he’s fine!” mom said, “his parents took him to the hospital and they made him all better.” the bowling ball feeling didn’t go away. jas could make them tell us. she once pestered her parents until they told us that the guy down the hall was sent to jail, and wasn’t just being questioned. at the very least, she’d know what to do about how empty i feel. it’s like someone went into my body with an ice cream scoop and replaced everything with oil. she’d calmed me down before, the time i found travis. travis was a good boyfriend, from what i knew. he bought me the cheap coloring books from the dollar store sometimes, and elsie could never stop talking about him. i’d found him in our living room, draped across the leather couch. i’d been going to the kitchen, and snuck by him on my tip-toes so i wouldn’t wake him. then i saw his eyes were open. they stared at the floor, never focused on anything. his breaths were small and rattled in his throat. i got so scared, i ran to jas’s apartment and slept in her room. she distracted me by telling me about a movie she’d seen, until she fell asleep. she radiated heat, and her breaths were deep and even. sarah wulf no one had ever asked me why i slept at jas’s house that night. when i asked if travis was alright, my father pretended to look confused. “travis wasn’t here last night. you wouldn’t know anyway, you slept at jas’s place. travis is fine.” my sister sobbed. my parents went back to their conversation, which included the words “rehabilitation” and “xanax” a whole bunch. i lie on the orange carpet and tried to imagine jas helping me. her eyes come into view, dark brown, before they go glassy like doll’s eyes. like travis’s eyes. and then they become travis’s eyes, and i can see him, pale and limp across the couch by the orange medicine bottle before he becomes jas again. stiff, motionless. words like “cardiac,” “icu,” “aed,” “rehabilitation,” “probation,” and “alprazolam” all fill the air above my head. my eyes fly open, and i grip the carpet until strands come loose in my hands. i want to throw a tantrum. i want to rip out my hair and scream and kick walls and punch floors until someone tells me what happened to the boy in the video that put the fork into the socket and where travis is and whether jas is alive or not. jas could do it. jas would’ve done it already. i kick the fork with the bottom of my shoe and it goes flying. it glints where it lands on the thick carpet. i roll onto my side and bury my head into my arms. i can’t do it. jas is somewhere dead or alive, and i don’t know where. and no one is going to tell me. i feel sick. 43 143 as i slow to a stop and the car behind me switches quickly to the other lane, i am reminded of the first time i made this turn. the car behind me almost hit me then, for the weeds and the woods were so overgrown, it was easy to miss the mailbox and the gravel road beneath it. this entire home, at the time, seemed like a forgotten property. abandoned, neglected, the greenery growing whichever direction fed it most, a home for no one who cared to take care. this indiana intersection off allisonville road is relentless, but this home was quiet, and forlorn. now, though it’s dark, the space between the thicket of trees is cut back well behind the mailbox, and the gravel driveway inches out to the road welcoming me in. the gravel crunches under my tires, spewing as my honda climbs across because i still turn too fast, but i slow as i come up on my family’s vehicles. all four of my siblings drove separately, each of their cars lined up on the left, and i spy my mom’s bmw tucked between them as if hiding. i’m excited at this development, but nervous, the past begging me to be cautious of disappointment. pulling up to my dad’s chevy pickup and his prius (ever the most practical, this man), my honda fit squeezes comfortably between them. i switch off my volume and flick off my headlights. the bright white of the projector’s light shines through the screen into the front of my car, the images on the screen backwards. i’m late to our movie night. as this yard stood prior to my dad moving in, these nights wouldn’t exist because the brush was too wild, the lawn unmowed, the weeds encroaching over any available space. snake holes and hollowed mole hills made the ground unfit for chairs and dangling legs, and the biting bugs were nuisances none of us wanted to bother with. there used to be tall switchgrass that dipped over the front walkway. it was one of the first things my dad cut away, opening a path to his always unlocked front door and up to the rest of the yard. he then mulched the path and placed circular cobblestone disks as walking steps up the middle. as i step from my car and approach my family, my dad’s rust-colored dog comes sprinting from the darkness and i curse, almost tripping over the wire staking the projector’s screen in place as he runs circles around my feet. i heard my brother, nick, snort and i’d flip him off if my hands weren’t occupied with my bag and my sweatshirt. he whistles, and the dog darts to him instead. in front of where my family sits, on a pole that extends from the front porch by the porch swing, where one would normally hang a flag, hangs the screen. from the little table on the porch sits his janky laptop, bowed away to keep the light distant, playing some streaming service to which the projector is connected. in front of all of us is a fire pit, a small one compared to the massive pit he has alicia rump rebuilding home 144 rebuilding home further down in the backyard. the trees surrounding the three-acre property form a perfect circle, fortifying the house and its inhabitants against the rest of the city and its occupants. tonight, we are watching ready or not, followed by the fifth predator movie, prey. “there she is! finally.” my mom calls over the lone jbl speaker. something loosens in my chest. she sounds like she’s enjoying herself. “yeah, yeah, i’m only a bit late.” i reply. my dad has pulled out one long sofa resting just behind the path, and my twin sister, addie, and my sister, maddie, sit buried beneath the best blankets alongside my mom. where my dad is all about practicality, my mom and maddie are all about quality. two bottles of sauvignon blanc peek out beside the legs of the sofa next to my mom, and as i watch she leans over and wrenches something from maddie’s grasp. “mom, that juul is mine!” maddie says, and leans over, slapping my mom’s arm, trying to retrieve her stolen vape. “then where is mine?” “i don’t know! wherever you put it last, but that one-” maddie snags it and yanks, “is mine!” my mom leans in to fight her for it. “guys!” gabby, our younger sister, is looking at them in annoyance from her spot on a folding chair beside them. “she started it.” maddie mumbles. “i don’t care.” she says. she’s annoyed, but no one takes her seriously, as seen when my mom and maddie keep fighting, only quieter. addie waves and lifts up her arm, showing another blanket she has hidden away, my favorite one, and i smile, winking. gabby sits with her legs kicked over my brother, the youngest, who’s 6 ‘4 frame sits in the folding chair beside her, the both of them swamped beneath a knitted blanket my grandma made. there’s an empty folding chair beside them, and i place my bag on it and pull my sweatshirt on, before kicking nick in the shin as i ruffle gabby’s hair. she swats me away with a grin and smacks me on the leg. nick smiles around what looks to be oreos, and says, “sup.” “save some of those for me,” i warn him. 145 alicia rump he grins again, about to speak, but gabby beats him to it. “he bought four bags, plus cheez-its, and three bags of fruit snacks. trust me, there’s plenty.” my dad stands from the loveseat by the porch and hobbles up to the computer and pauses the movie. “bathroom break,” he calls to all, and then to me, “you hungry?” i grabbed my bag and follow him, leaning over to give my mom a quick hug. “glad you came,” i say. “i’m glad i did too.” maddie chimes in, “can you plug this in for me?” i grab her juul, ignoring her and my mom as they return to arguing about whose juul i am now in charge of charging. “grab me a water!” nick calls out behind me as i follow my dad through the screen door into his dimly lit house. there’s a flickering warm glow from twinkling lights wrapped around a fake fern in the corner of the kitchen. my dad’s hip buckles, still adjusting to standing, and i’m struck yet again by how things have changed. he reaches an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into a hug, kissing my forehead. “there’s lasagna and blueberry tarte on the counter and drinks in the fridge. i’m going to use the restroom, grab me a mountain dew?” i chuckle, nodding. it wouldn’t be this house, his house, without something warm and sweet on the stove and mountain dew in the fridge, his addictions sans vodka. at the end of the day, was it this man’s sobriety that brought us to this moment? it’s more than that, though. it’s been every choice since. i look around, the past pulling at my vision, at this moment, begging to be recognized. 2007 we’d lived in a three-story brick house behind a gate, with a barn out back, and 22 acres of property. at this time, my twin sister and i were eleven, and there were eight years between us and the youngest, our brother nick. this was 2007, and our dad must’ve known far before any of us the effects of the recession because he’d started drinking again. we didn’t know until our mom 146 rebuilding home knew, and she only found out once he wrecked his four-wheeler into a tree and almost died. he broke his skull, lost his ear, broke his neck, and survived, but his secret was out. the water went first, and then the heat. we’d shower at my mom’s friend’s house, and cuddle together in addie’s and my room. their dream house, a failed dream. a foreclosure soon followed, as did their divorce. from 2008 to 2018, throughout 10 years, we moved between our mom and dads, between 14 houses total. from riches to poverty, from whole to pieces, from stability to chaos. we carried our clothes from one house to the next in kroger trash bags, hoping to god our dad wasn’t drunk when he picked us up and hoping our mom wouldn’t be there because if she knew, then the fight would be worse than the risk. we broke the structure. our uncles and aunts, all happily married, all in the same house for as long as we’d known them…we were outliers. unstable. like the houses we lived in. the tamarisk house. the worst because it followed the big house. a mess, smelling of cat piss, all of us full of lice…we fended for ourselves. our dad tried to help, but once every other weekend didn’t cut it. our mom worked, and worked some more, and hated him for our circumstances. there was dad’s house off river road, too small and cramped, two people couldn’t fit in the kitchen unless it was one of us and our brother nick, who was maybe three at the time. we had a pet snake. it died in this house due to neglect. our mom would drop us off, never sticking around to talk to him. they fought a lot around this time, and neither the house nor them had space for us. there was his house off spring mill road. it was a huge house, but it was empty. there was a speaker system that worked and ran throughout the house, but there was no heat. we’d cuddle up on an air mattress in the living room, falling asleep to scooby-doo movies, surrounded by space heaters. it was cold, and it echoed. it was hollow. my mom never visited this house. there was his apartment off eagle creek, even smaller than river road. it didn’t matter so much that three of us slept in one bed, my brother sleeping in my dad’s, and one of us was assigned to the couch. it had heat, water, and electricity. addie and i had our learner’s permits, and our mom trusted us to transport our siblings in favor of interacting with him. there was the house off wooster ct. it reeked of animal feces and cigarette smoke, past caretakers forgoing taking care. i slept in the best bedroom because it had hardwood floors, and, since i have asthma, i got it. it didn’t matter. i couldn’t breathe, regardless. this house, like all the rest since the divorce, since the recession, since he 147 alicia rump started drinking again, felt as helpless to its circumstances as we were. beginning 2018 “hello?” i ask, groggy with a sinking pit in my stomach. my aunt had no reason to call me. there was only one reason she would. “your dad is in the hospital. he was in an accident. you need to get your siblings and get to the hospital off post road. i’m sending you the address.” succinct. matter of fact. “was he drinking?” i asked, already sitting up and pulling on pants, knowing as i asked that this question was pointless. “we don’t know anything yet. all we know is that they said to collect family.” “we’ll be there in an hour and a half.” i hung up, feeling nothing. i pulled on jeans, my shoes, and grabbed my keys and drove to the breakfast restaurant my twin and i worked at. the restaurant hadn’t opened yet, and she was smiling when i walked in. her face fell as i walked behind the counter and grabbed her wrist, stabilizing myself more than assisting her. i was numb until i tried to say dad was in an accident. i only succeeded in saying, “dad-” before the emotions hit and my throat tightened and i couldn’t speak and all i could think was she’s going to think he’s dead, and we don’t know that yet, get it together! i remember everyone who had been there, laughing and talking, disappeared. she waited, her face falling, until i could choke it out. our manager came up, addie excused us, and we met at her car to drive from bloomington back to indy, up to the hospital. there’s nothing quite like the phone call you’ve been dreading. there’s nothing you appreciate more than a lack of a definite; there’s nothing as dreadful and as hopeful as a lack of answers. along the way, we collected our siblings, informing them one by one, and collectively coming together, bracing ourselves yet again against a new pain from our parents. i remember my mom asking if she should inform our brother. we denied her, saying we were on our way to pick him up from our aunts, and that we’d explain. in hindsight, this may have been something within her responsibility, but we were far too used to taking on that responsibility that we couldn’t allow her to have it. not when it came to our father, who she despised with passion. addie and i met gabby at our aunt’s, picking up our brother, and merging in the same car. maddie was on her way back from ball state. all our destinations converged at the hospital. 148 rebuilding home ending 2018 he looks old, but in a different way than how he looked while drunk. while drunk, he seemed 20 years his age, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to ask if we needed help to get away from him. he looked like a creepy, old drunk bothering teen girls. the bags under his eyes, unkempt appearance, watery stare, it aged him. now, he’s lost weight. his hair is gray, and he limps, his hip replacement a permanent pain. the lines in his face are deep set. his smile, though, is bright. his blue eyes are clear, and he gets hyper, an unusual youthful energy not common in 58 year old men. he’d barely survived his accident, which we now call a blessing. with a bac of .48, had he made it home, the next day we would’ve found him dead. more accurately, my little brother would’ve found him dead. the apartment dad lived in at the time was within walking distance of my mom’s, and he was the only one who still visited my dad. instead, he went to the hospital where he stayed in the icu for a month. he survived delirium tremens, hallucinating and shaking, completely unaware people were in the room with him while he talked about forks walking on the ceiling. he ripped out his catheter during one of these moments. it was brutal. he became sober. the first thing he remembers is the priest who visited three weeks into his stay. the last thing he remembered was two days prior to his accident. he’d been drunk since the week of christmas. through ct-scans and x-rays, the doctors found an abdominal aneurysm. had they not, he wouldn’t have made it to the following christmas. they opened up his stomach and added another scar to his repertoire. he recovered. he went to jail. he got out. he reapplied for the real-estate license he’d let lapse over the years and started working. desperate to avoid idle hands, he found a steal within the aa community. someone wanted to stop taking care of a property, but it wouldn’t sell because it’s set to be taken by the government under eminent domain. they let my dad move in as a gesture of good faith and community. he rebuilt, starting with this house. it’s still set to be torn down, but the date keeps getting pushed back, and instead of one year, it’s now been five. i hear the toilet flush and shake my head. the differences between 2018 and now are stark, obvious in the ways that this house is different from all the rest. this isn’t fragile, or smoke. the kitchen, which had been small and cramped because of its design, has an entirely different layout and is now long with tiled flooring and a stainless-steel fridge in place of the stained white broken one that’d been here before. 149 alicia rump this new fridge has character and life. on one side hangs a personalized calendar with family photos that he checks off daily. birthday cards stick in all directions and on the other side is a photo of his father who passed away a year ago. a folded card sticks to the fridge right in front, the cover of which is a drawing of this property i sketched out in pen instead of signing my name, while inside is a gratitude letter i wrote to him the first christmas we spent here. this sits next to another drawing, another letter, where i sketched his face, his smile, on the cover, for his birthday the following year. no longer smelling of stale air and dust, smoke from the firepit drifts through the screen door, along with the toasted scent of sugar emanating from the blueberry tarte. pictures of us and his family, his friends, and his dog line the walls. a wooden plaque hangs in the hallway that reads ‘best dad’ with all of our names carved out below it. he already has his christmas tree up, along with pumpkins and leftover decorations from my maddie’s birthday on october 10th. my mom, unable to be in the same room as him for 15 years, now sits outside laughing with my siblings, her voice loud even while trying to be quiet. i drop off my bag, grab a mountain dew and water, plug in maddie’s vape, and meet my dad again at the front door. i hand him the mountain dew and he holds open the door as i slide past. i duck once more beneath the projector screen and grab my spot on the last available chair, passing nick his water. addie throws me the blanket she’d tucked away, and i settle in and get comfy. when i breathe out, i’m hit with a feeling i can’t identify. it’s not nostalgia. our family hasn’t been together like this, as a whole and at peace, in almost fifteen years. i reckon it’s probably gratitude, or awe. whatever it is makes my chest simultaneously tight, while also making me feel like i’ve inhaled a much richer oxygen than i’m used to, like i’ve given up smoking and my body is trying to readjust to clean air. it’s been five years since my dad’s sobriety, since his accident. every day since has been an effort in rebuilding, and now, for the past three weeks, within the cool and crisp month of october, we’ve been having outdoor movie nights on sunday nights. my mom, after three invites and many, many assurances from both us and our dad, has finally agreed to join us. my dad returns to his seat, and it grows quiet while we watch. every ten minutes it seems my mom or my sister maddie, both talking to each other in whispers and not paying attention, asks a question along the lines of ‘what’s happening’ or ‘why is he/she/they doing that’ and all of us groan, answer, or beg them to shut up. gabby goes as far as threatening to dump her water over them if they don’t and asking addie to pinch them since she’s closer. addie obliges not five minutes later. 150 my dad cracks jokes making fun of our mom over this, and she laughs; the hints of a friendship reinstated. this experience is as soothing as it is bewildering, but slowly i grow more comfortable, my heart thawing with each positive interaction. the firepit crackles before us sending out little incandescent particles in concordance with the wind. the screen pushes back into the bushes separating the driveway from the house as the wind picks up. we can easily hear the jbl speaker below the screen, but it is not loud enough to drown out the sound of my dad’s dog wandering his yard behind us. it is easy to accept the random noises as his dog’s doing, but when the movie goes silent and the wind stops howling, the odd branch breaking creates its own jump-scares. the serenity of the night envelopes us as we all sit mindful of this moment. the movies, though scary, can’t breach the sense of safety and security we’ve crafted these last few years. the jump scares can’t overcome the laughter that follows. the unease can’t trump the beauty of the night sky, and the comforting breeze of a perfect fall night with all of us buried under blankets and at peace. the past was a broken foundation that we’ve now flipped and fixed; this home lively and cared for, no longer forlorn. 201 4” x 9” digital photography sarah hollcraft koi 7272 i. breathe your first breath—inhale life; open your eyes to a big, bright world, full of new neurotic necessities not known. unclench fearful fists to accept assurance of mother’s love, serenading you sweetly. fragile fingers reach out to the boundless blue, to say a happy hello to the sparkles that sprinkle the sky. ii. claim your first step with a steady stomp, & another & another & another. giggle while you run from the mouth that feeds, spouting gibberish until clarity configures. learn to mirror mother’s mouth and speak softly. whisper the word she yearned to hear. iii. skinned knees and sharp splinters decorate your skin from black & blue asphalt adventures. the tragic tear of your first toy: stuffing spilt; thread undone, fixed with fabric to join you on that first day, tucked tightly in the comfy crevices of a backpack. iv. colorful cartoons keep you endlessly entertained, creating static that distracts from bitter exchanges surrounding sudden separation of the family you’ve known. ignore home to swing high & scream loud on the asphalt. v. dance with dreams of the fruitful future, hide the beautiful within masks, crafted from friend & foe. d.a.r.e. to be the teen that your youth had sworn not. caedence jones 7 stages 73 vi. magnetic melodies with blaring beats stretch deep into the night. until the cries of your flesh ring rigorously, blending with the morning birds. vii. breathe your last breath—exhale life. 18 like the mother mary mourning the loss of her flesh, waves crashed onto the mainland. a flood of holy water yanking palm trees by their ponytails, slamming through the front doors, clawing at its walls. a house once the top prize on the top pedestal, abandoned at the tingle of hair standing up on the back of one’s neck. family photos with scribbled-out smiles, blurry faces. the salt as sweet as sugar washing away all traces of debris. deteriorated paint and damaged wallpaper drooping half-way down the wall, scattered lilies blooming, breathing in the water. a table on two legs balancing rose-colored glassware surrendering to its knees. water trickling out to return to its ocean womb. damp wooden floorboards erasing scratches and scuffs from shoes. underneath the chipped pink paint and the smoke-brown wallpaper and fist-sized holes, a blank canvas of drywall awoke like aphrodite from the sea— clean. no more traces of tears, cracks, or fingerprints to see. eliza surdzial hurricane st. agatha through the eyes of a coastal florida timeshare purchased through a costco membership circa 2017 19 the home’s skin shed like a snake’s with every scratch and blue bruise carried away. a shredded self-portrait sewed together with heartstrings and saltwater paper mâché paste revealed itself. torn but familiar, wrinkled but in-focus— a puzzle not with missing pieces but with a revised reflection overlayed that’s clean and free and new. pattern i (recolored) kyle battin acrylic ink, 3-color screenprint on 100lb paper, 9"x9" image on 12"x12"paper 39 165 8” x 8” found image, archival inkjet print on habotai silk, embroidery floss, embroidery hoop sarah montanez mend 24 a stalker’s mercy anthony gonzalez louisiana, 1895. the small fishing village of longue rivière was in shambles. located just south of breaux bridge, the once peaceful and quiet village was disheveled and bloodied. bodies littered the muddied ground, some with tools and makeshift weapons in their hands, most face down in a failed attempt to flee. a carriage, with its shredded cover listing lazily in the breeze, sat crushed on the side of the single road through the town. the small rows of raised houses that lined the road stood hollowed and gaping, looking almost as bloodied and broken as their former tenants. shutters were hanging skewed, doors were torn free of their hinges, and there was nothing but a mournful wind carrying the stench of death through them. only two other things moved through the remains of this broken community, eyes scanning the death and destruction around them. kalista slowly made her way down the narrow road, rifle at the low ready, watching for any sign of life. her hard leather boots sunk slightly into the soft earth soundlessly. she didn’t want to alert anyone to her presence. the long duster she wore looked out of place this time of year with how hot and humid it had been. however, if what she had suspected happened to this village turned out to be true, she wouldn’t dare take it off. she moved around the broken bodies, being careful not to get too close to any of them. they were scattered haphazardly, so it was slow going. walking closely in front of her, eyes and ears constantly alert for any signs of danger, was her faithful hound, remy. the dogo argentino was 120 pounds of pure muscle and power. his white fur stood in stark contrast to the muck and mire around them, a sign of purity in this god forsaken place. he would occasionally put his nose to the ground, searching for any scent that might offer any clues as to what had happened here. suddenly, he stopped and turned his head to one of the houses closer to the river that ran parallel to the road. kalista stopped and raised her rifle towards the door. she listened intently to try and pick up what he may have heard, but all she could hear was the gentle lapping of the river against the bank. the door was open, and the steps leading up to it were spattered with blood. cautiously, she began to make her way up the steps, eyes and rifle barrel never leaving the entryway. the inside of the small house was divided into 3 rooms, with the dining room/common room being the largest. there was a small wood stove in the corner, which provided heat and a place to cook meals, along with a dining table that was covered in the half-eaten remains of what kalista assumed was the former tenants’ breakfast. various types of wooden furniture lay splintered and smashed around the room, and an oil lantern hung broken next to the back window. the first room had its door open and led into a small bedroom. a quick scan of the room revealed nothing other than an unmade bed and dresser. the last room had 25 its door shut, and kalista approached it with slow wary steps. she could just make out the muffled rapid breathing on the other side. since the door opened out, she positioned herself on the latch side of the door and placed her hand on the handle. after making sure remy was on the opposite side, she wordlessly counted to three and threw open the door. the room was a pantry, and huddled in the corner covered in blood was a boy barely old enough to be called a man. he was as pale as a ghost and covered in sweat with eyes so wide they looked like they would pop right out of his head. he was shaking uncontrollably as his hands clutched the wound on the side of his stomach. “please…” the boy gasped, staring at the rifle barrel pointed at him. “please don’t hurt me!” after a brief pause, kalista lowered her rifle and looked at remy. “remy, post,” she ordered. remy padded over to the front door and assumed sentry duty while kalista entered the pantry. “it’s ok. i’m here to help. let’s get you out of there, so i can look at your wound.” the boy looked as if his heart was about to leap out of his chest when she spoke, but he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. she walked him out to the main room and had him lay down on the table. his shirt was torn, soaked with blood, and a long gash had been made across his abdomen. “what happened here?” she asked, setting her rifle against the table so she could help ease the boy onto the table. “the monsters… they came out of nowhere,” he said, still shaking. “it was horrible. they… they just… attacked everyone. i had to hide. god, the screams.” “how many were there? what did they look like?” she asked, lifting the boy’s tattered shirt to inspect the wound. black veins were surrounding the wound, and small sores had already begun to appear on his chest. ‘damn…’ “i don’t know,” he replied, sweat pouring from his clammy skin. “three, i think. two of them looked like regular people but with gray skin and these boils around their face and arms. one of them looked like something out of a nightmare. it stood taller than any man, and its arms were long and twisted. its head looked like a giant hairless rat with a big gaping mouth that could swallow a child whole.” the boy looked up at kalista as she continued to inspect him. she was being careful to keep her face neutral. he stared at the three long scars that ran down the right side of her face. “hey, you’re one of them, aren’t you?” he asked. “you’re a stalker.” she nodded. the boy suddenly reached up and grabbed her arm. “please! please, you have to help her!” he pleaded. “that thing, the big one, it had her necklace caught on one of its claws! please, you have to find her!” “slow down. who are you talking about?” 26 a stalker’s mercy “lucie! she’s been home sick ever since she got bit by a possum a few nights ago.” kalista raised an eyebrow. “a possum? are you sure?” “well, she thought it was. it happened at night. what does it matter?!” he asked in frustration. “she lives with her folks a little way outside the village. please, you have to get to her!” kalista nodded. “don’t worry. i’ll find her.” she gently removed the boy’s hand and eased him back on the table. “now, close your eyes. this is going to hurt a little bit.” the boy looked up at her emotionless face as she reached behind herself. “you promise you’ll find her, right?” he asked, eyes pleading. “i give you my word that i’ll find her,” she said as she reached up with her other hand to place it on the boy’s head. “now, close your eyes and try to relax.” the boy did as he was told, and before he could utter another word, kalista retrieved the bowie knife from behind her and plunged it into the boy’s heart. he let out a surprised gasp and then went limp. she looked down at the poor boy who had died by her hand. the blessed forged blade would ensure that the corruption that was growing within him wouldn’t spread. it was the only thing she could do for him, a hollow mercy that tasted like ash in her mouth. if her uncle were here, he would have said a prayer for him, asking god to welcome him into his kingdom. but he wasn’t here, and she would never waste her breath on a god she felt either didn’t care or wanted his creations to suffer. her thoughts turned back to her own past, and she began to feel a sense of something approaching envy for the boy. she didn’t know if he’d had any family that died in the attack, but she knew he wouldn’t have to know what life was like without them if he had. remy let out a low growl, breaking her from a train of thought that she could ill afford to follow. she still had more to do, more monsters to banish from a world they wished to devour. she removed the knife from the boy’s chest and put it back in its sheath. she picked up her rifle and moved towards the doorway. raspy voices were growing louder with every step. the once deathly silent village was now about to become unnaturally busy. she had a job to do and a promise to keep. outside, the broken and battered remains of the villagers were lifting themselves out of the mud and blood. their skin had turned a sickening shade of gray with black veins spidering around boils and sores. blackened eyes searched their surroundings, looking for prey, and darkened teeth bit the air in anticipation. after spotting the pair at the top of the stairs, the walking corpses shambled towards them with arms outstretched. kalista raised her rifle, took aim at the closest one as it began to ascend the steps towards her, and fired a round through its head. it dropped like a marionette that had just had its strings cut as she chambered another round and fired at the next walker that was trying to climb over its fallen neighbor. more and more plague-walkers began to shamble towards the 27 anthony gonzalez noise, and kalista knew she had to hurry and get rid of them before the big one showed up. after she fired her last rifle round, kalista moved down the narrow porch and jumped over the railing. remy followed close behind, jumping through the posts on the railing. kalista slung her rifle over her shoulder and drew her revolvers. even though it was a small village, there were a lot of walkers with a newfound hunger that would never be sated. she fired round after round with quick precision, dropping them one after another. “remy, roundup!” she ordered once she had fired her last round. remy began barking and darting around the horde trying to get their attention. the walkers began to give chase to the loud and nimble creature that they were far too slow to catch. they began to bunch together as remy quickly circled them, their focus completely on him. kalista used this time to reload, as well as check her surroundings. it looked like almost all the reanimated villagers were now together in one group, being herded by her dog. she began to fire into the crowd, which caused some of the plague walkers to break away from the main group and advance towards her. however, they were slow, and kalista was able to finish off most of the horde before a loud, guttural roar pierced the sound of raspy moans and snarls from the few stragglers that remained. from the far end of the road, a towering abomination was charging towards her with frightening speed. it stood over nine feet tall and waved its long misshapen claws as if it couldn’t wait to tear her limb from limb. its mouth was stretched impossibly wide, and its large black eyes were filled with hate and hunger. tattered rags and dried blood covered the thing’s gray, stretched flesh, and its limbs were far too long and had far too many joints to be considered human anymore. “shit!” kalista swore as she holstered her revolvers and began to reload her rifle. she’d hoped she would have had a little more time before the plaguemorph showed up. as it was, there were still two or three walkers around. once she put the last round into her rifle and chambered it, kalista had just enough time to fire off a few quick shots before she had to roll out of the way of the thing charging at her. it dug its claws into the soft earth, trying to stop its momentum, and charged at her again. kalista fired another series of rounds into the thing, with one hitting it in the hip, causing it to stumble. unfortunately, the massive monster was able to reach her with a swipe of its elongated arms. despite how lithe and sickly it looked, the creature was powerful enough to send kalista flying across the road. she landed on her back with her rifle tumbling from her grasp. before she could even get to her feet, the creature was on top of her. it opened its maw wide, and kalista had to block its bite with her forearm. it was like her arm was in a vice, and she howled out in pain as its teeth tried to puncture the hard leather of her duster. with her free hand, she tried to reach her knife, but it was difficult with her pinned on her back. her hands kept slipping on the muddied handle, and the creature’s thrashing was causing her to shift around 28 too much. finally, she managed to get it free and plunged the blade deep into the abomination’s side. it let out a demonic howl of pain and fury as the blessed forged steel burned its corrupted flesh. kalista pulled the knife out and plunged it upwards into the creature’s heart. it rolled off of her and started to claw at its chest as faint wisps of smoke rose from its wound. kalista pressed the advantage and continued to stab the creature repeatedly until, with one last gurgle, the thing lay still on the ground. kalista sat on the ground panting from the struggle, watching the corpse to make sure it was dead. the last two plague-walkers began to shamble closer to her, no longer interested in the prey that was too quick for them to catch. with barely a glance, kalista drew one of her revolvers and shot both in the head. getting to her feet, she picked up her hat and rifle before moving to stand over the body of the plague-morph. she noticed the shine of a small, silver necklace caught in one of the thing’s claws. “rest in peace, lucie,” she said, once again saddened that this was the only mercy that she could offer. a stalker’s mercy 26 when i look in the mirror, i see myself covered in paint. red around my neck from when i was thirteen. pink caressing my cheek from age sixteen. purple blossoming in the crook of my eighteen-year-old elbow. blue slapped across my back from times i was too young to remember. it sticks to my clothes. it gets matted in my hair. green clumps hang off my split ends, going on six years old. orange peels off my ankle in the shape of my middle school cast. it stains my bed, my walls, the trunk of my car. yellow and gold cover every inch of that polyester interior. i see the paint in every. single. photo. elizabeth terhorst windsor and newtown galeria acrylic 27 the rainbow flashes through my camera roll every time i open the damn app. i scrub. and scrub. and scrub. and scrub. i can never see past the paint. when i look in the mirror, i see myself covered in paint. but, i’m starting to think that’s how other people see themselves, too. that’s why no one comments on the palettes i leave behind, the ones on every seat. 51 i might not be your one, but i promise i’m not rotten. could you stomach a foreign flavor? would it taste better watered-down? perhaps dried-up like the apple chips your mother would buy from whole foods for your little league games. my bones could be putty for you, the hidden pearls beneath the surface. i can tear and rip and dig them out for you to be molded into nana’s cookies, bleached in icing, dressed in sugar glitter like your prom date’s dress— the cherry-blonde cheerleader still framed atop your parents’ fireplace, my own fruit the ash below, an unfortunate side effect to keep yourself warm. you color and sketch your stars in white constellations on my skin, and maybe one day the paint will seep underneath and knead me inside out. i need me outside in to save your hands the strain from finger food staining to be easier to consume. i’d even pray to your god to not make you sick, to taste enough, to be anything to you. eliza surdzial milk-white bones 139 slice through the skin like a sharpened knife against paper clutch the dampened couch cushions as pain grits teeth suck air through a clenched jaw the pain sears and sizzles at the edge of my vision fragmented glimpses of you blink tears drip from eyes i search for your eyes you have none stab at the body blindly as if you are simply a piece of flesh an empty vessel tossed aside for the buzzards and vultures alike search for humanity in this moment of despair, i plead for mercy call their name please do not answer claw with nails, tear through tissue and muscle right down to the bone crack ribs pluck out their still-beating heart with talons a claw machine, your hand dangles and sways mocking what you came for has been found – my heart was only ever yours: to have and to hold. bee fee to have and to hold 39 nina sage justice burning earth, its punishing flames pink and orange in our devastated youth lick our ankles up to the scars on our knees, engulfing us in sappho’s feverish grasp. we paint dogs with their teeth bared all canines and frothing spit. growl at passing men on sidewalks off our oppressive leashes, uncaged unwilling to paint ourselves pure and be blank canvases in a jeweler's display. inside on aphrodite’s couch, though we purr like lions, stroking each other’s cheek and melt, all curly hair and dimples, floral dresses with deep pockets. deep enough to carry all our love letters, like this one. sealed with besitos and all the blood we can drink. 100 16” x 24” acrylic painting raeya wilhelm the eyes dirtied kitley defelice digital photography, 3398x2448 pixels 52 4040 wanted: biological mother (full-time position only)* single, mid-twenties man seeks biological mother. must be short, less than 5 foot 4 inches. looking for matching thin strands of raven hair. education: bachelor’s degree or above, but all levels of education may apply. preferably an educated artist with vibrant mural art in the tijuana cultural center. live in the playas out west on the coast, far from rusted gates. will take either a christian or catholic, not necessarily asking for a saint. not interested in additional siblings, need full one-on-one attention. husband is acceptable but will never be addressed as papá. english preferred for casual conversations. (mi lengua materna no está bien, pero puedo aprender algunas palabras en español.) not a dealbreaker. needs to coparent with another man known as “dad.” expect territorial adoptive mother. may need to contribute to therapy fund. must provide a minimum $50,000 income. if your name is la llorona or if you are vaguely vengeful towards your own children after a messy divorce, please skip ad. *importante: si se encuentra a la madre biológica, por favor contacte por teléfono. no se necesitan planes de viaje adicionales. hasta pronto. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------wanted: romantic partner (serious relationship only)* single, mid-twenties man seeks serious relationship. must be slightly taller than 5 foot 4 inches. bachelor’s degree or above preferred. fashion style: dark academia aesthetic. noir-colored jackets, plaid, high-waisted pants, and wire-framed glasses. your significant other will match the style as well. open to wearing crossshaped jewelry, as well as tattooed verses. contact with new in-laws (certainly) optional. may encounter biological spanish mother living in home. no additional language experience required. courtship is three weeks trial-run before partner is expected to commit. active listening required for trauma-dumping sessions when therapy is not available. consistent reassurance mandatory. xavier neier wanted ads 41 additional requirements include: • texting and calling 24/7 (prepare for 2:00am panic attacks) • spiraling conversations on zillow apartments • exploration for the best indianapolis restaurants for dates ($20 per meal limit) • building pillow forts with emotional security blankets • broken cars that i can fix (wheels only) modest physical contact (handholding, resting on each other, prolonged eye-contact) is considered long-term commitment. if unsure of commitment levels, please skip ad. *important: if the partner leaves after the 3-week mark, they are expected to cover the costs of the other’s therapy sessions. 1 week of dating = 1 hour therapy session. 182 16” x 20” graphite pencil anthony stewart behind the gate 195 digital painting emma cremeans gossip 112 i am from naked birch trees, that blend in with the gray skies seamlessly. i am from the snow that blankets the ground and chills the air with each breath, from a small town that lives within the arctic circle, hidden, not known of. i am from borscht that simmers the back of your throat as you sip, sip, sip on it– hoping to not burn the roof of your mouth or tip of your tongue. i am from strange looking letters; mainly symbols because “letters” are unrecognizable. i am from pointe shoes that leave scarring, bright red blisters and pink tutus that cinch the tiniest waists and float effortlessly as the twirls make us dizzy. i am from the vodka that burns your throat, tingles your tastebuds, causing them to dance freely yet ever so painfully… too much of me and you won’t remember. i am from matryoshka’s, they unstack, stack, unstack, stack... i am from orthodoxy, beautiful, elegant, modest, white baptismal robes. alexandra kluger send to postal code: 184209 113 i am from the brown bears that prowl and hunt; resilient and preserving. i am from tchaikovsky, swan lake. layers of traditionalism. i am from the red, blue, white horizontal striped flag in apatity, russia. 3636 ingredients: (do not substitute anything — this is not a “i want to make it healthier” dessert recipe. you either have to accept your rotting teeth from this glorious sugar-filled creation, or never eat it. your choice). • ½ cup butter, softened • 1 (8 ounce) packaged cream cheese, softened philadelphia is the way to go — my family has never been there, but they make damn good cream cheese. • ½ cup confectioners’ sugar • 2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix or one chocolate, one vanilla packet for any midwestern family celebration, to appease the masses. • 3 ½ cups milk • 1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed cool whip or bust, we are but mere mortals to the vegetable oil gods. • 32 ounces chocolate sandwich cookies with creme filling oreos are synonymous with the concept of cookie sandwiches and that is for a valid reason. anyone who tries to use an imposter will be evicted from the kitchen for their blasphemy1. • optional: gummy worms emphasis on optional. this is a mixture of creamy (pudding) and crunchy (oreos), but if you want to add jaw-exhausting gummy worms to force your eaters to slow down and chew their food, have at it. but i will be judging you through this article. 1. chop cookies very fine in the food processor. the white cream will disappear. a. if you let your child do this step, make sure that the cover is sealed properly. i. otherwise, you’re going to have your yorkie trying to lick up all of the cookie crumbs on the floor while your kid cries because they got oreo crumbs in their face. 2. mix butter, cream cheese, and sugar in a bowl. a. use an industrial mixer (or my mother, the strongest person in the house). 3. in a large bowl, mix milk, pudding and whipped topping together. 4. combine pudding and cream mixtures together. a. make sure that when you’re done, you hand off the spatula and bowl to your kid; they will return with a licked-clean bowl and a chocolate-y face. no matter if they’re four or twenty-four, your kid will have signe nettum my mother’s dirt cake 37 chocolate on their face. 5. layer in container, starting with cookies and cream mixture. repeat layers. a. do not put too much effort into the display of this creation. this is not a soil measure in your environmental science class — this is a pudding cake that weighs in your stomach and makes you think that earthworms might have the right idea in eating dirt if it is this tasty. 6. chill until ready to serve. a. if you think you need two batches, make four. i. my mother finally put her foot down when she caught my cousins going back for thirds and fourths — their excuses were that they grabbed small portions every time. she made all of them their own containers filled with dirt cake. they were intended to have it as a leftover from the event that they could enjoy when they went home. ii. right before my family left for the evening, each cousin gave her back their ziplock containers. two servings in each container, gone in one afternoon. they ended up using their fingers as spatulas to get every last piece of pudding. 1. moral of the story, double the batch, no matter what. 186186 the midnight flight to indianapolis was nearly empty. the lights flickered softly, and the air reeked of coffee and recycled exhaustion. i looked out of the window, more concerned with hiding my face than the view. my reflection stared back at me from the glass, distorted and broken by streaks of condensation — hollow, unfamiliar, ashamed. somewhere far below, the lights of my home town flickered like dying embers, fading with each mile. before i left, baba had been standing by the door, one hand tightly gripping onto the frame as if holding himself up, the other dangling loosely by his side. he didn’t say much—he never did in moments like these. just a soft nod, the kind that might have meant “go,” or “don’t worry,” or maybe even “come back soon.” i didn’t ask which it was. i couldn’t. a part of me still remembered the days when his breath grew shallow, when covid almost took him from me. the fear that had gripped me then had been my silent companion ever since. i couldn’t bring myself to let go back then—not after everything. but now, there was no choice. i was leaving. when the car pulled away, i looked straight ahead, focusing on the road instead of the rearview mirror. the sound of the crunching gravel was the only thing anchoring me in the moment, but even that faded too quickly, leaving behind a silence that felt suffocating. i had meant to leave a note—something short, maybe a few words scribbled on a scrap of paper. but as i sat at the dining table that afternoon, pen over the page, nothing came. not because i didn’t know what to say, but because i knew there wasn’t enough space to say it. how do you condense a lifetime of debt and guilt into a single sentence? baba had always held the belief that serving the homeland was a calling higher than any individual ambition. he never said it outright, but i knew he saw my decision to pursue an education abroad as a quiet surrender to a different ideal—a path he hadn’t chosen, one he might not have fully understood. yet he never once tried to stop me. somewhere over the atlantic, i reached into my bag and pulled out a packet of cashews baba had slipped in without telling me. he always did that—packed something small, like a talisman against the unknown. i stared at the crumpled packet for a long time, the faded logo mocking me with its familiarity. i didn’t open it. shyama prasad dash the midnight flight 187 in my mind, i kept replaying the last few weeks, the quiet rituals of leaving. baba’s disapproval wasn’t loud; it was in the silences, the way he busied himself with my packing, his hands steady but his eyes betraying the weight of unspoken fears. i had felt the weight of his convictions over the years, and i knew that a part of him struggled to reconcile his ideals with the reality of my leaving. the way he handed me item after item to pack into the suitcases, how he folded my clothes with the care of someone piecing together something already falling apart, his silence at dinner, the unspoken things weighed heavier than words. the night before i left, i found him sitting alone in the living room, his glasses perched on the edge of his nose as he pretended to read the newspaper. the ceiling fan above him creaked faintly with each turn, and his tea, gone cold, rested on the arm of the chair. i wondered if he was replaying his own departure from his father’s house when he left his small village to make a life for himself in the city, decades ago. i didn’t ask. as the engines settled into a quiet hum, the seatbelt signs turned off and the flight attendants got up to start the service. i hurriedly wiped my tears and settled in for the long journey ahead. there is a peculiar weight to the moments we leave behind. a stray glance. a hand brushing the edge of a suitcase. the lingering smell of incense from the puja he performed that morning, as though offering our fates up to some higher power. i didn’t know if i believed in a higher power—if one existed, i had been damned for a long time. but he believed, so i closed my eyes and prayed, not for myself, but for him. 17 sins of daughters kira humes graphite on an illustration board in a crosshatch style; 15" x 20" 1717 what part of me will be born in you? my father’s nose sculpted like the statue of jupiter? or will your hummingbird flutters, summon a tornado of arms and legs, flipping like the gymnast i was? will my hazel eyes win out over your father’s brilliant blue? you rest, head down, tiny feet pressed in my ribs, the roo to my kanga, stealing my breath before you even arrive. a mother and daughter, tethered like hot air balloons by the strongest of cords, soon to be connected by only the genes we share. kim kile genetics 10 background noise takes center stage when it’s least desired. i think i’m hard of hearing (is it hereditary?) because i can’t hear myself think tonight. this cicada crowd is drowning out my words and silencing my memories. the din of dusk drones on and crescendos with my empathy. a swell of understanding, a glimpse of her world. i think i’m hard of hearing because i can barely hear you tonight. recollections of you in this house conflate into an amalgam of hushed tones just out of earshot. even my grief: it merely whispers here somehow. the cicadas are out tonight, grandma... please, come closer, speak louder. anna turgeon cicadas 98 i lie in a field of ivy, weary, thoughts drifting with the circling crows. things are easier this way. not like the shovel removing the snake’s head, or my broken wrists in autumn. more metal in the ear could fix me, or perhaps a river of ink. most efforts are in vain. screws jammed through my bones or thread pulling flesh like a refurbished doll could not stop my corrosion. do we glue the dead leaves to the winter tree and pretend they never died? raeya wilhelm refurbished doll 138138 in the sea of pouring rain beneath the sheet of clouds i reach for you, pray with no shame your absence plummets me further down please sense my desperation, marian to the heavens, i wish to the stars to the seas, i curse to the waves i crave the day you stand near and not afar the day you appear before my clouded gaze marian, please hear me cry for you marian, demand the seas to be merciful, marian eins, zwei, drei, vier, i count how i call you, marian the waters jolt and tug this ship i tumble and topple, waiting for you above the raging seas, you softly drift i am fearful, for my end is not yet due not without you, marian, cease these waters thalassa has gripped me, now oblivion below here my final breath before plunging into the ocean zieh mich aus dem meer du bist mein schutzengel, so schön ich liebe dich, marian marian, the sea extinguishes my essence, marian eins, zwei, drei, vier, i count how i call you, marian you deny the depths of my soul my altar, my saint, my grace from the waves my yearning has ended as our spirits are whole you liberate me from the grave marian, mein schutzengel, mein heiliger elena saorrono marian 76 digital photography lexia holmes the silent beast 5757 our daughters live in fear. freedoms our mothers earned, shredded like flesh glancing a coral reef in courtrooms, boardrooms, bedrooms. our bodies once revered, once worshipped, gutted like today’s fresh catch on the news, social media, the congressional floor. like an earthquake on the ocean floor, we shake the sediment, growing as a wave ever higher, ever stronger until we sweep out the status quo and return with a force so strong, we shape a new landscape, ripe for rebirth and a new generation. kim kile created equal 52 rings i had worn the same two rings since 2018: one will be my wedding ring and the other i will likely never see again. one, my granny’s wedding ring; the other, a cheap ring that my best friend in high school, myah, gifted me. my granny’s ring fits perfectly on my right ring finger; over the years creating a small bump on the inside of it, mutating over time to support the constant wear. a slight tan line can be seen upon the removal of the ring, but i only do so to shower or swim. it’s both silver and gold (14 karat, according to the inside of the band) with three small diamonds embedded into the two eye shapes, and one star shape in the middle. it is a simple band that my granny hated; her father-in-law purchased the cheapest rings he could find at a pawn shop (it was what one might call a shotgun wedding), and she had little to no say in it. today, she wears my grandpa’s version of the ring, and my grandpa doesn’t wear one. i’ve always told her that i love the ring, and her response is always the same; “well, i’m glad somebody does.” if i get married, i will use this ring. my other ring was a christmas gift from myah. christmas is her favorite holiday, and she never missed an opportunity to give thoughtful gifts to her friends. among a large basket filled with various yellow items (my favorite color) was a thin-wired, double-stoned ring from pura vida. the price tag on the back read $10. upon further research, i realized that the ring used to have a rose gold band. towards the end of its life, it turned silver with wear and morphed into some oblong shape. this ring used to sit on my right thumb. it served as a fidget toy of sorts for many years; i often would place the ring right at the knuckle, then bend my thumb hard until it eventually created two large grotesque calluses on this knuckle. they started small, but now when i show people the calluses, their reaction is always somewhere along the lines of, “ew, what happened?” i was raking leaves recently and the ring was lost among the damp clumps of warm-colored leaves; maybe on the ground, or maybe in a trash bag? i didn’t look for it; it could have been anywhere, and it was starting to rain. i replaced it with a similar ring for fidgeting, but it turns my thumb green and means nothing to me. kitchen table my kitchen table has been in my family for almost eight decades. my great-grandparents built a wooden kitchen table for their three-person family somewhere around the late 1940s/early 1950s. the table is small, only about four feet long and two feet wide with the leaf out. it’s a warm tan-ish color made of ayva edwards hoarder of memories 53 cherry wood. they used the table until my granny eventually moved out to live with my grandpa when she then acquired the table. in the heat of the late 70s, my grandpa covered the tabletop in a deep maroon color, keeping the legs the original wood. they used the table for many years, but after having three kids, they outgrew the table and had to replace it with a newer, larger version. knowing my grandma, i’m sure she wasn’t jumping at the idea of having to get something “new.” the now-old table sat in a corner and was used as a place to store junk for decades. she is a real hoarder (the kind that finds six dead cats in her house upon an attempt to clean the mountains of junk), so it would have easily been a victim of the house had it not meant so much to her. it was later passed down to my dad when he moved out of their home, and it became the table i used in my childhood, too. once the table came into my dad’s possession, he stripped the maroon paint from it, returning it to its original state. he painted the legs of the table an awful off-white cream color; almost restoring it to its former glory. when i was no more than 10, we painted little treasure chests for my american girl doll-themed birthday party. i chose hot pink and electric orange paint and my parents didn’t protect the table. now, i see it as a bit of a mistake on my parents’ part. the stains from the acrylic paint never came off. you don’t have to look close to see it, even today. it does bring back fond memories when i do see the stains, however stark they are against the original wood. when i grew up a bit, in middle school, my parents traded the small shaky table for a much more sturdy, darker wooden table that towered over the old one. i have always been quite sentimental with objects, so i made it clear that i did not support this choice. i said this until i realized how nice the new table was, and begrudgingly allowed the old one to be put in the crawlspace for the next foreseeable future. my dad dismantled the old table, wrapped it in thick heavy plastic, and hid it away. out of sight, out of mind. when i moved out after high school into my first apartment and was frantically searching for furniture, i inherited the table. in my entire 20 years of living at that house, i never even knew we had a crawl space until the table had to be excavated from under all of the dust. it still has the awful cream-colored legs on it, but i figure it’s my turn to make it the way i want it to be. once i figure out how to strip it, we’ll be in good shape until whoever i pass it down to makes a mess of it again. stains of pink and orange paint still scatter across it from the birthday party painting disaster. if you look close enough, you can even see the maroon still lingering in some of the wood grain, my dad likes to point out. i like the imperfectness of it, though. it holds the history in its grain, and i much prefer that to a shiny new table. cork board larger items i’ve collected over the years landed on my corkboard. at my high school graduation open house, i asked everyone to write a piece of advice or 54 hoarder of memories memory on a slip of paper for me to read throughout college. some examples of the wisdom provided were, “don’t be to stupid” (grammar was certainly not a strength for him), or “i will forever remember our blue slushie dates. also don’t overdose on something” or simply, “i am not one who should be giving advice”. although not very helpful, i love to look at them when i’m feeling down, for a good laugh and a rush of forgotten memories. along with those are various christmas cards from work, a few mini thinking of you cards mailed to me by my grandma in south carolina, valentine’s day cards, a ginkgo leaf (my favorite tree), a few fortunes from panda express, and the top of a donut box from when my current best friend, karina, revealed to me that she was pregnant; do-nut be mad, you’ll be a great auntie! (please don’t be mad). i wasn’t mad. there’s also a top of a box from when said best friend asked me to be her maid of honor, which my brother’s dog partially destroyed. accompanying these is an old license plate that says spread a little sunshine! with a smiling sun on one side, as well as a wonderful crochet piece that reads i <3 boobs purchased from the indy gay market. alongside these are 6 bumper stickers with various phrases like “propagate peace” and “well-behaved women seldom make history” and “don’t judge me because i sin differently than you.” looking at the board every day allows the nostalgia to flood back in, and excites me for the future and the new memories that will come with it. all of these things certainly make moving to a different living situation a major pain every time, but the memories are priceless, so i do it with happiness. card box i also collect cards from family and friends. they primarily consist of birthday, graduation, and christmas cards. for the most part, they are all generic cards that one could purchase at a cvs or walmart, but there are quite a few handmade ones as well. these are mostly created by my grandma, mommom, who is now enjoying her retirement in south carolina. some are simply printed onto a sheet of paper, others are drawn on, and others are so well-made that they appear to be purchased cards, but they have my name printed on them. going back to read the cards again has made me realize how many people that have gifted me the cards are now gone, passed away or otherwise out of my life. i can recognize the age of some of the givers of the cards because of the shaky, uneven way they write my name, then the cursive of their name below is perfect. every card has something special that shows the reason in which they are writing to me, or a signature unique to them. one from my step-grandpa writes, “in loving memory of grandma nelson.” my dad always writes something about him being “so proud” of me, while his brother and husband always sign, “love, your favorite uncles.” the ones from mommom are usually my favorite. if they aren’t made directly from her, she always writes a sweet inspirational note, or a corny joke like, “what did the green grape say to the purple one? breathe! breathe!” then follows it up with “i’m tellin’ ya – i’m funny city!” she always 55 ayva edwards signs the same way; xoxo with smiley faces in the o’s. ones from karina usually have some horrible stick figure drawing of us or my favorite band at the time within a cheesy card, with something like a frog in skydiving goggles with the phrase “dream it. do it. ribbit.” written on the outside. behind mommom, my work birthday cards are another solid favorite. the one i received for my 21st birthday has big and small cartoon mushrooms that originally said, “dad, you’re such a fungi!” but “dad” has been crossed out and replaced with my name. i can’t repeat a majority of the notes from my coworkers, but because this card was for my 21st birthday that i celebrated at the restaurant, most of them have something to do with “shots on me tonight!” (i got wasted off of three drinks and was home in bed by 9:00, so no shots were taken or purchased). when i see those cards, i can’t stop the memories from flooding back in; both from the event that the card was for, or the person who gifted it to me. thankfully, a majority of the people who have written to me are still here, but when they’re gone, i’ll always have something to remember them by. memory book i am a hoarder of memories. since i was 12, i have held on to every movie and concert ticket, polaroid, and park map from any point in my life that i felt was worth remembering. in middle school, my friend, maria, gifted me a 5x7 photo album to hold pictures. the outside cover is black with cheesy emboldened words like moments and laughter and family written in gaudy white script. she added in a few old photos of us at the beginning; the first being a photo of us holding hands and walking at the indianapolis zoo on the bouncy bridge while we were on a field trip for a biology class. the rest are random selfies of us from about 8th-9th grade. i have filled the rest over the years, only never with more 5x7 pictures. almost 10 years later, i finally filled it to its full capacity. my first one is full to the brim and it will not get even close to closing, so it usually lays flat on its back, pages fanning out unevenly. taller items such as playbills, park maps, and love letters from past relationships spill out of the top; bound by the plastic pages. they are accompanied by molded dried flowers, vending machine fortune cards, the clock out sheet from the first day of my first job, a tattoo stencil my artist drew after i told him i wanted “junkless angels’’ on my thighs and he drew a massive penis on it, old id’s, gum wrappers with little notes from my high school friends scribbled on them, my first (and only) lottery ticket, the teal good dye young box from the first time i dyed my hair, my cat’s umbilical cord (don’t ask), a signed sticker from a music artist that i don’t remember meeting, disney fast passes, balloons from the grateful dead shakedown street (need i say more?), photo booth strips, a broken reed from winning the state marching band champions, pamphlets of hateful propaganda dealt by christian protestors at pride, endless parking passes, and my first “i voted” sticker. most of the items are out of order and i don’t remember their significance, or when i came across them. i know that they were important to me at some point, so in the album they stay. i think i started the collection to remember the good and the bad times in my growing-up years, knowing that my 56 memory is shit from an early age. i greatly underestimated how difficult it would be to find a similar book that also serves the purpose that i require it to. i eventually found something similar on amazon, but it doesn’t quite feel like the last one. it’s a fake light wood cut into 5x7 squares and it flips open up and down, instead of like a book. it was the best i could do. the book itself holds no sentimental value, and it just doesn’t quite feel like the old one. one day, all of it will be considered “vintage.” maybe i could sell it. i could never. those memories are priceless. 80 better a lobotomy than one more minute of this migraine. take an ice pick to my skull, hit every pressure point. better yet, twist off my head like a lightbulb, grind the socket of my spine to ash. pop my barbie doll joints apart pop them like fireworks and shove them back into place. suck this ache from my marrow, take it into your bones. and know what i feel. take this, all sinew and stretch; tie the strands of my muscles to wicked steeds. tear me limb from limb. please. the ice pick didn’t work last time. ashley wilson incantation for the end of pain 158 i spent summer days floating, hidden in the neighbor’s in-ground pool, where i paddled with no noodle, my digits pruney with chlorine. dirt angels formed beside a baseball dugout, splayed arms and legs moved in unison, blue skies above the neighborhood. my nails bitten and full of earth. the library was five minutes by bike. sometimes i dozed in the periodical room among air-conditioned bookshelves or flipped through pages with chapped thumbs on command i was a: dolphin, pink power ranger, silent wallflower with a soccer ball pacing around the backyard. with tiny fists unafraid to meet rusted wire fence. must have gone through thousands of boxes of blueberry toaster strudel. i’d go out, with sticky hands, to knock on houses. and i’d wave with my innocent frosting fingers. ruthie barakat back when the world was within walking distance, 17 the summers blend together now. the years slip from memory. my mother hated bug spray. i remember that much. i’ll never forget the fan in my bedroom window. it didn’t help on humid nights. the breeze always failed to find the bottom bunk. but its hum held my secrets. and if i listened closely, i could hear the giggles of ghost stories and apologies from long, water-logged days. i told my cousin, sarah, there were eels in the lake that day. it was a harmless prank. but that fan huffed a pattern all night. a constant drone. sleep dodged me. the next night was cooler. or maybe it was the next summer. the fan masked the sound of my grandmother stumbling into my bedroom. sarah and i woke to the beacon of a flashlight. i was hit with a burst of chilly air as soon as i stood. she spoke of an intruder, a large spider on the center of her sofa bed in the living room. “have any clean sheets?” she asked. we quietly followed her and stood in horror at the sight of a doused sheet and a freshly used can of bug spray. it smelled as if someone mistook a can of deet for a can of room freshener. “i hope it won’t wake your mother.” grandma stated what we were all thinking. i glanced toward the sound of heavy snoring down the hall. i whispered, “stay here. i’ll get everything we need.” i meant it, too. the cabin had a soul of its own after dusk. and i knew every corner. i had extensive experience in undetected galivanting. i took the mission seriously. i returned with a fresh sheet and detergent. terror stole our breaths when the sounds of my snoring mother stopped for a moment, yielding to the faint sounds of the fan. we stood, frozen, until the snoring gradually continued. we laughed, small at first, but it spread like the water on the bedsheet as we washed it in the sink. we kept quiet as we snuck out to drape the sheet on the line to dry. we were hushed enough to hear that familiar hum from my window, barely audible under the cacophony of katydids. i came back into my room and stood in front of the fan, warm with stifled laughter. and then the blades lulled me to sleep. emily hostettler the fan 115 the thrum of my father’s old truck always had the knack for putting me to sleep. it was welcomed now. my dad has finally stopped going on about how proud of me he was. it was sweet when i first got my acceptance letter, but now that we were on the 16 hour drive up to my school, it was unneeded. as we pulled up to the table labeled according to our last name, i showed my new school id to the girl wearing the polo with our school’s name and khaki shorts. she smiled, asked for my name, and tried to ease any nerves that i might have. but i could only focus on her name tag. it said callie. i wish i could go back that spring. to my mother’s steady breathing lulling me into a deep sleep while i stayed attached to her back like a koala, feeling her warmth. the scent of her perfume and tide detergent lingered around me for the few days i went to school that year. i would struggle to rub off her revlon 535 stains on my forehead. my father would come home from work with some form of takeout and bags under his eyes. it was clear that he was hiding his pain within himself. even then, at the age of 11, i knew. no one could understand those quiet days. nothing and everything seemed to be happening around us all at once. all i can ever remember of my father of that time is the way his eyes could never quite reach any of us, just coasting through the house while mom and i made conversation about what show we were watching that day. i still remember how deafening the silence was when the nurse would leave for the day. my father eventually had to put his foot down and make me attend some school. i knew just from how everyone stared at me that the teacher talked to everyone. their gazes, full of unwanted pity, ran through my spine and made the hairs on my neck stand. i dropped my head to avoid any unwanted eye contact as i made my way to my desk. that day at recess a girl from my class came up to me. her name was callie. she told me that she was sorry that my mom was dying. i just said that i was too. still to this day, i think about callie and how most people would consider what she did rude, but to me, it was freeing. callie offered me a sort of liberation from the quiet whispers behind my back. she let me know that she knew what i was going through. i found myself gravitating towards callie after that. when i crawled into my mother’s bed after school that day, my mother brushed my hair from my face as i told her all about how callie and i played at recess. i told her that i hoped we would be great friends. i also told her how i was really going to miss her when she left. i told her how scared i was. she wiped my tears away from my cheek as she whispered that everything would be okay. that she would always be with me and in my heart. she told me that her love for me was so strong that it would not be possible for it to leave with her. haley merida spring 116 spring now instead of mourning the days that my father would force me to go to school, i would have a silent celebration within my spirit. i felt horrible about being excited to spend time with callie over my mother. with callie, death wasn’t hanging over us like the spanish moss in the willows of our backyard. i knew that i would always miss my mother dearly, but i couldn’t help but miss callie too. i would find myself wanting to talk about her to my parents constantly. this was something callie said today, callie would love that. callie has pretty blonde hair just like that character. i tried to hold myself back for my mother’s sake. even at eleven years old i still had the forethought to put my mother first. it drove her absolutely insane. one friday night my mother wanted me to invite callie over for a sleepover. my father was worried that all the medical equipment and the nurse would freak her out, but i assured my father that callie already knew that my mother was sick. “that doesn’t mean she really knows what that means, dear,” he told me. i couldn’t comprehend what he meant then. even though i should have. when callie came over with her father behind, i felt nothing like the butterflies i had felt then. i knew that this would be a memorable. i still remember the way that my mother’s candles reflected off of callie’s blonde braids. it felt so exhilarating to see her occupy the same space that i had been in my entire life. it was also a little unsettling to see her next to my mother’s plethora of pills. i could tell that callie’s father was off put by my mother’s headscarf. callie clearly did not tell him about her, probably because she didn’t see why she would have to. she was only there to play. my parents told me that i should show her to my game room, ushering us away while the adults got to talk. i didn’t mind, however, since i really wanted to show her my toys and games. while me and callie were in the midst of making ourselves in the sims, i heard my father scream my mom’s name. the image i saw as i ran down the stairs will forever be ingrained in my memory. there will never be a moment in my life where i wouldn’t have my father on the ground clutching my mother’s limp body at the back of my mind. it will always be on in a loop. i don’t really remember the car ride to the hospital that night. i just knew that it was silent. there must have been a vacuum that sucked the air out of the car at some point. i swore that i could hear my mother’s slowing heartbeat in the ambulance in front of us. i can faintly remember the way that callie clutched my hand, begging me not to follow my mother wherever she was going. after we got to the hospital, and saw my mother being ushered into intensive care, with a swarm of doctors, nurses, and cnas trying to protect their queen bee. my father called callie’s dad to come get her. “i’m so sorry for this, tim.” callie’s father told mine. i had to watch her disappear into the darkness past the sliding doors. for a split second, i no longer was thinking of my mother and whether or not she was going to be okay. i was thinking of myself and callie. after around 6 hours of endless waiting my father was told that my mother 117 haley merida was, for now, in a stable condition. the cancer was now in almost every single part of her body. her time was shortened in half overnight. this was the moment that i had my first panic attack. the spring was almost over and now i would have to face the summer without my mother. without our shows. without her voice shushing my cries away. i would never be able to see the way that my father tried to hide how much he loved her while she told him about her day at dinner. i would never wake up for school in the morning with her showing me what she painted for me the night prior. everything that i had known about the world was collapsing in on me, filling my lungs to where i could not possibly breathe. i came back to the hospital waiting room in my father’s arms. he was trying his best to comfort me the way he knew my mother would. i guess it’s hard to do while you’re sobbing just as hard. i don’t remember much from the weeks after that hospital visit. just a sense of quiet mourning that was rolling through the house in waves. my father had stopped making me go to school. there was no borrowed time anymore. my mother was put on hospice care, her only drugs now just consisted of easing her pain for the remainder of her time on earth. i cried more in the weeks before her death than i actually did when she died. even though she was still in the house living and breathing she was as good as dead. she had become what she dreaded the most. a walking corpse. my father and i tried to respect her wishes and to treat her as normally as we could. it was impossible to ignore the reality of the situation. everyone told me to remember her before she got sick and to try and see her as that. but i’ve only ever seen her bright eyes and flowing, thick hair in photos. i could never remember my mother before she was sick, she was sick for what felt like my entire life. my father knew this, he just told me to know that her suffering would end soon. in whatever afterlife was waiting for her, cancer would not follow, it was too deeply rooted within her body. the funeral is what i remember the most. my mom already took me to khols to get a dress for it. she wanted to make sure that i looked good and still felt pretty. it was her last act of being a mother. from the moment i got out of my father’s truck and entered the funeral home i told myself i wouldn’t cry. my whole family was expecting me to cry. i still have trouble crying about it. i always knew my mother was going to die sooner than other’s. a part of me that i tried to ignore and tried to throw away was happy that i didn’t have to worry about it happening anymore. i could finally rest at night not thinking about when she would die. me and my dad sat in the front row, right by the casket and the preacher. i tried not to react to the way the preacher’s false teeth flopped out of his mouth when he sang old mountain hymns based on some weird abstract bible verse my mother cared nothing about. it had to be my grandpa’s doing. no way dad would ask for that. my grandmother grabbed my right hand and rubbed what she must have thought to be comforting circles on the back of my hand. however, they didn’t seem so comforting with how she was shaking terribly while ice cold. i had the thought that my mom’s hands had to be warmer than grandma’s. i wanted 118 spring nothing more than to go up to my mother and crawl in the casket with her and drift away into our dreams together. she would always be protecting me then. after the songs and verses were finally finished, me, my father, and my grandparents stood in a line in front of my mom’s casket. i tried to stay glued to my dad for the remainder of the funeral. he was now my only anchor to the world. the only proof that i had that someone loved me. i listened to what everyone told us. how this would pass. how they were praying for us. my father would just do his best to nod along and not ignore them completely. he later told me that the whole time he was wondering how ridiculous my mother would find the whole thing. she knew that her and my father’s families would make it weird. the world got dark after. there were always remnants of my mother in our house. the plates we ate dinner on were hers from her first apartment. their bedroom still smelled like her perfume. her revlon 535 was still sitting on her dresser, waiting for her. just as me and my father were. i asked him to let me go to online school after. he had no choice but to let me. my dad was forever different after the death of my mom. if someone who barely knew him, like his coworker or something saw him, they wouldn’t see it. i knew that he didn’t laugh as much anymore. i knew that he stopped playing the guitar. i heard his muffled sobs come from their bedroom while he thought i was sleeping. i knew that the reason he didn’t clear her out of the house was because he didn’t want it to feel real. i didn’t either. it felt impossible to live with just my dad after my mom died. she was always the one to take care of me, to talk to me. living with a grieving parent who you never felt close to was excruciating at first. until i saw him one evening slumped on the kitchen table, with a bottle of whisky in hand. even at 12, i knew that this was his coping. knew it was the wrong way to cope. knew that my mother would hate it. that’s what i told him when i shook him awake. though i was afraid he would be angry, he wasn’t. he just laughed and said, “part of what hurts the most about losing her is that you are just like her. i hate that i hate it. i hate that just looking at you do your schoolwork sometimes makes me cry because i’m reminded of how your mom looked while painting. you both furrow your brows in the same exact way.” after the initial sting of what my father, my last parent, had just said to me, i sat down next to him. “sometimes i hate how when i’m looking for something that i lost i think to ask her if she saw it. i also hate how when you come home from work you sometimes call her name from instinct.” i said. this made him smile. he started laughing, and me with him. i really felt like my father’s daughter in that instant. we were both doing a terrible job at what my mom told us to do. i stopped laughing when i noticed that his laugh had turned into a sob. he hadn’t openly cried since the funeral 6 months prior. i barely heard him whisper, 119 haley merida “i’m sorry sam. i should have saved her. i could’ve noticed the symptoms sooner.” i immediately hugged him before he could say any more. i knew my mom was spinning in her grave. i knew that this had to stop immediately. i knew i had to save my father from himself. “dad, you know you have to stop this before mom starts haunting you. this is what she said not to do. you know she hates when people don’t listen.” my own voice sounded foreign to me as it was wet with tears. my father just nodded his head and hugged me back. i don’t remember how long we sat there like that. i just know that he started going to therapy after that. we moved away from my mother’s dream house a year after she died. both me and my dad decided that there was no point as it was always her house and there was nothing but ghosts there for us. i still think about that spring as the best of my life. sometimes if i think about it hard enough, i can go back there. those memories will forever be ingrained in my soul. i think that my mother gave me that spring to stay with her, that was what she meant when she said that her love for me was so strong that she would never leave. she would be in every spring. for holy and chloe. 139139 he is lost on lightless new moon nights. covertly stuck between zipper clasps and tight french braids. it is an illusion breaker. a great shattering– makes one wish glass turned back to sand when it broke, makes one wish to have been born different. preferably with an ass that looks impressive in spandex. or something of equivalence like breasts plump enough to fill a sweetheart neckline dress. isabella park nightly comparison january poem tara ventura 78 in my dreams i rip my heart out myself and offer it to you–still salvageable and everything– i am the sacrifice i never get used to it seeing it lie there screaming in front of you i put it all on the table and watched you walk in reality i do it alone they say it’s a two person job but that’s never stopped me before forget the rope or any of the toys for that matter. you won’t need them everything has become a hand wrapped around my neck, feeling for that tender bruise so easy spot and squeezing sort of exertion anyways and i am exhausted i can pretend to be the chinese takeout you shove into the back of your fridge and maybe, if i’m lucky, you’ll poke and prod around with chopsticks the next morning before you decide i’m just no good anymore and toss me out because better safe than sorry but why kid ourselves? i always was an eleven pm decision. not fucked up enough to forget me but not quite sober enough to want me the next morning either rub those circles in my back, connect every sun kissed freckle and mole i don’t want to hide them they’re proof i’ve lived without you i could be the perfect confidant unable to tell another soul 59 the land of faeries is not what you think. when you look through the outline of trees and see the sky blue, you two are there. when you pick and blow dandelions on the back porch with him, you two are there. you two are there when you blow whistles with crabgrass and hay and he writes songs. when you sway on swings with mulch chips in your nails, you two are there. you are there when your fingers bleed from short chalk ends on the sidewalk. you are there putting dirt and leaves in each other’s mouths and they were there the day he grew wings. and when it is dark outside and he is gone, don’t fret, they are still here, but until you grow your wings too, you are not welcome. trent platt my father grew wings 193193 wanted: lobotomist (one-time job, name your price)* autistic, genderqueer twenty-something seeks competent but morally dubious surgeon willing to perform a lobotomy on their father. official job title not required, but experience preferred. must provide your own tools. transorbital or prefrontal are both acceptable methods. the following behaviors and capabilities from my father must be semi-guaranteed post-operation: still able to drive, so he can take me to blockbuster (i do not care that the only one left is in oregon) and we can pick out a movie (it will be barbie related) and on the way back stop and buy a hershey’s cookies n’ cream bar to share. remembers how to swim, so we can spend summer days in the pool at the house we don’t live in anymore, dunking each other underwater and wasting water via attacks-by-garden-hose. sudden aversion to firearms, prompting him to sell his many guns and use the money to re-purchase all the toys he and my stepmother sold without my permission when i was 11. retains no memory of stepmother; will be compelled to sell her various minstrel memorabilia. hearing the words “maga,” “brandon,” or “donald trump” will cause him physical pain and/or intense panic (if you must pry his eyes open and torture him with fox news clockwork orange style, i will not question your methods). important: please have a similar vibe to herbert west. *please print the additional ad below until one of the two is answered. wanted: replacement father (full-time)* autistic, genderqueer twenty-something seeks replacement father for the hollowed out, still-warm crater the original left behind. must be physically strong but emotionally vulnerable, like spider-man, so you’re not afraid to hug me tight and cradle me in your arms. intense sense of justice required, like batman, but more open to killing fascists, like captain america. will smile at me and ruffle my hair and say it looks cute shaved short. would accompany me to a pride parade, while wearing a shirt proudly proclaiming your love for your little queer child. being gay is not required, but preferred, so i may have a chance at not one, but two replacement fathers. acceptable applicants, compiled from ages 10-now, include: danny tanner, doctor who (david tennant specifically), v (he had a vendetta), sasha nein, professor membrane, kiryu kazuma, stanford pines.** tegan blackburn (i) wanted (my d)ad 194 *if this ad is answered first, please remove the original and kindly print the following below. **if you are not any of these men but embody similar qualities, please respond. wanted: lobotomist (one-time job, name your price) autistic, genderqueer twenty-something seeks competent but morally dubious surgeon willing to give them a lobotomy. official job title not required, but experience preferred. must provide your own tools. please use whatever method will allow for more specific, minute changes. depending on how extensive you can be without causing unwanted damage, please remove as many memories as possible of my former father. all of them would be preferred, but a majority is acceptable. please leave any and all other memories and faculties in-tact. if the former becomes unlikely or impossible, pockets of amnesia can be forgiven. take care not to mistake memories with replacement father for former father. this part should not be difficult. important: please have a similar vibe to herbert west. 67 28” x 19” hardground etching with aquatint ginger miller act like a lady pattern v kyle battin digital, 7200x10800 pixels 51 155 glimmering scales of lapis lazuli he spits at me from under the moaning ice “and if i hooked your lip next?” he mocks his lustrous shine illuminates the depths of the lake or is it the northern lights? “i want to live,” i cry, yanking the rod swiftly circling the hole in the ice he is a blinding flash of light “and if i made you bleed?” he taunts ribbons of blood coil around him i pull him closer to the surface his light crackles static sparks sting my hands my hair fades my eyes cloud over my joints and bones resist me the line snaps the fish says: “would sleep be so bad after a time of unrest?” kayla mcveigh gives life 9 when day favors gloom both in the pallid tufts of condensed cloud and those gray tinted glasses which shroud my eyes, i close those eyes and walk away. i find my way to that sunlit room. its panoramic views of beryl-hued conifers soaked in buttery light, i go there. when day favors heat acrid iron is left in my mouth by a blistering sun and its sweltering heart is a constant clench at my throat, i part my mouth and breathe. i allow myself in that soothing space. cool water calms my face, with a winding current down my spine, a palate cleanse to this tender wound, i go there. when night favors snow a hard sting of falling flakes meets skin sharpened crystals bully the air out of my lungs, i cling to myself and thaw. until i find that warming refuge. smells of bleached tropical shores, lapping blue foam over briny grains, beading sweat that tastes like the sea, i go there. victoria bozinovski i go there 9 10 when night favors storms the wild drumming of overfed droplets on panes and a thunderous beating strains my ears, i let those sounds be drowned. i search for that hearty place. the crackle of book paper and the eager pop of the fireplace mingle and chatter like friends, i go there. 152 i had a dream about you the night before my birthday we were in my bed our legs were where our heads should’ve been i was on top of you your shirt was off i held you like a vice around your chest so tight i feared cracking your ribs we weren’t having sex that was never the intention we were talking whispering giggling i gave you kisses on your naked shoulder you were not something won or conquered you were camaraderie personified a person who i both saw myself in and admired with my whole being our hearts beat against one another each desperately hoping to break out of their respective cages to become a singular atom at once it was like what being in love is like it felt like being home it was over quick even for a dream, it was a quick and blurry flash still the brief vignette stuck in my head i told you about it the next morning the morning of my birthday i can’t remember what you said jared miller sign crushes motorist 47 candles: check. wine: check. flowers: check, and i know they’re his favorite because his grandma gave him a piece of her lilac bush before she died, and from what i could see from my binoculars it’s the best-kept thing in his front yard. “please, i have a family,” whimpers mr. galton. his gag must’ve slipped off. “please just untie me. i’m begging you.” “hush! you’re ruining the mood,” i say back. tonight, i confess the first degree murder of 26 people over the last 3 years. everything has to be perfect. after all, i hear lance coming now, recording equipment jangling on his backpack. i hope he thinks i’m pretty. did i remember lip gloss? what color, again? i thought i brought the pink but … wait. knife in hand, i approach mr. galton. i reach in his pocket and rummage for a second. there it is. “thanks for holding that for me,” i say. tears and snot are streaming down his face as i reapply the gloss and smack my lips. “step away from stephen galton,” says a calm, rumbling voice from behind me. i swoon as i turn around. i’ve admired those green eyes from his tv interviews forever, but this is the first time they’ve landed on me. google the love of my life. he’s on spotify, apple podcasts, audible, you name it. his show is called unmasked: the lady killer of evergreen city— and that, of course, is me. he’s an independent investigative journalist, and he’s been on my trail since the beginning. some people think he’s crazy, but i think he’s a visionary. and not bad on the eyes, either. “hi, lance,” i say. “sorry i set your grandma on fire.” he doesn’t bat an eye, but i know he remembers the picture of her i sent on valentine’s day, with the flesh melting off her bones like maple syrup on the side of a pancake. and the box of cherry truffles. he reaches in his pocket for his phone, but doesn’t pull it out. he’s started recording, then. maggie hoppel dear lance 48 dear lance “you need to untie stephen, and…” lance trails off. he wrinkles his nose. “is that wine?” “have some. i brought two glasses for a reason,” i say. lance opens his mouth to say no. he scans my display on the bridge: a little table with a red checkered tablecloth, the candles and flowers, the hysterical, middle aged father of 2 tied up on the railing. he’s computing. i see it written on his face. i want to kiss the tip of his nose and maybe stab him with a letter opener. “will you answer my questions if i drink with you?” he asks. i consider this. he knows my face now, of course, but the mystery of me is part of the reason he’s here right now. answers kill the magic. and i was rather hoping he’d visit me in jail. still, with the light of the candles reflecting off his eyes, and the stars and the river blurring the distant horizon, i find the ambiance of the night has an effect on me, too. i pour us each a glass. “you get three questions,” i say. “five,” he replies. “three.” “fine, but this better not be poisoned.” lance takes a drink. i gesture for him to sit at the table, but instead he leans over the railing and stares out into the water. thinking. breathing in the scent of the lilacs, his grandma’s favorite flower, and the scent of me. question one: “tell me about phillip bethany,” he says. technically not a question, but i’ll roll with it. phillip bethany was the first person i ever killed. he worked at the bank i used at the time, and had this basket of dum-dums he gave to little kids when they came in. why did i kill him? i don’t know. he was there, and i needed to cash a check, and suddenly it was like all the voices in the world were going to break my brain in two if i didn’t silence one. i had a dum-dum afterwards. a purple one. lance chews the inside of his cheek as i recount the story, interjecting with the occasional “mhmm.” “how does no one know anything about you?” he asks next. 49 maggie hoppel oh, this one’s easy. “like anything, covering up a murder is just a skill that you build over time,” i say. “i studied past killers and i know our police department like the back of my hand. i couldn’t afford to get caught, that would mean the end of your podcast. and i know how much you love your career.” “this is about me?” “was that your third question?” lance mulls it over. then he nods. this is it. in the whirlpool night, with the music of stephen galton’s soft sobs in the background and a bottle of wine in my hand, this is when i tell lance our love story for the very first time. we’ll have a scrapbook of this moment in twenty years. i have to think of how i want to phrase it. i’ll start with arlene, maybe. i set her on fire before i knew lance. she was the quintessential murder victim: old, rich, and lonely, with a grandson who lived out of state and funneled the family’s money into his lackluster podcasting career. i wish they bottled the smell of burning flesh like floral perfumes. i wouldn’t rub it on my wrists, but maybe it would be alright as one of those plug-in air fresheners. that murder set a grief-stricken lance about investigating me for the first time. i’d heard loads of other podcasts about myself. some suspected i was on the inside of the evergreen pd, others swore i was from out of town. but unmasked was the first to confirm i’m a woman. lance talked about me with such obsession in his tone. it was electric and safe and messy and obvious. he wanted me more than anyone ever had in my whole life. if i could do it over, i’d kill his grandma again and again to keep him here, next to me, just like this. lance didn’t do as well with this story. he kept drinking his wine. i liked the way it drew my eyes to his mouth, but he wasn’t listening so much. “don’t you understand, lance?” i say finally. “i love you. this is the end of the podcast. i can’t keep killing to help you with it anymore, because i want to be with you. galton got ordained for his best friend’s second wedding last year. after he marries us, he’ll be my final victim.” lance blinks. “so this is the end,” he says. he glances between galton and me. me, in the lbd i stole from my roommate. me, the who to his dunnit. me, who loves him more than anyone ever has in his whole life. 50 i wait. a pair of handcuffs bite my wrists, and an officer pulls me away from him. i hadn’t even heard his shoes on the metal walkway behind me. not like lance. when lance was next to me, he eclipsed the whole world. and he knew it. he knew all along. “i warned you,” lance mouths silently. his smile is intoxicating as they wrestle me into the squad car. he’ll publish this recording to the podcast later, and i’ll probably still listen to it. he’ll brag about how he kept me talking, wine in hand, as the police prowled the bridge all along. maybe he’ll be a witness in my trial. i was outfoxed. how dare he. how dare he throw away everything i have to offer like it’s nothing. i’ve killed three years’ worth of innocent people for him! what other woman would do that for the one she loves? spotify says i’m in the top 1% of listeners for his podcast! but, as soon as the anger wells up within me, it’s gone, and there’s something else in its place. heat in my cheeks. butterflies in my stomach. i was outfoxed. he beat me. it was almost better than being married by galton. he took my script and wadded it up and set it on fire just like i did his grandma. am i crazy, or is this kinda hot? i don’t listen to my miranda rights as the officer rattles them off. as the cop car pulls away, i lean my head against the window, smiling dreamily into the night. i’m already thinking of what kind of chocolates i’ll send him next valentine’s day, and what i’ll put in my love letter since he doesn’t have any more living family members. dear lance, i’ll say. maybe that’s it. maybe i’ll scrawl it all over the paper until it’s just a puddle of black pen ink. i hope they let me have a pen where i’m going. dear lance, i’ll write, love, the lady killer of evergreen city. 75 she looked me in the eyes and all of a sudden, i forgot who i was, and i was sticking my barren feet under the sheets, still cold from not having been used all day, to let the warmth build up around me under the covers. i felt her words cover my head and neck, bathing me, cleansing me, running cool from the tap until the water heater croaks to life and you hear whining in the pipes like the ringing of your ears, and of course, i didn’t hear what she said. then i dropped into the bed and saw the light around me grow dim, and instantly from day, it was—to night and the sheets were warm, and the water just right, and i closed my eyes; i hoped then, if i didn’t open them again, i wouldn’t see her leave. i tried to keep them closed, i tried, but my blood ran cold, and i awoke to a misplaced blanket that let all of the warm air out, and found her missing, gone, vanished, and thus another day i would collect all the fragments of my skull to piece them together after they had all fallen apart, my memories spilled against asphalt and who i was before her on a stretcher being carried away with each glance of where she used to sleep on my bed. i hate the way people stare into my eyes knowing the same person doesn’t don them anymore, but i hope at least i remind them less and less of her. christopher cassetty fragmentation 15 the sable ragged curtains hang onto the stained metal grommets obscuring the clear windowpane that breathes life into this somber room. slouched over on the crooked oak table like a dahlia shriveling as it weeps for water. his chin meets his breast as his cold eyes stare into the dark glass of liquor. with his callous hands tightly wrapped around, he taps the glass with his chewed and chipped fingernails. he straightens his bowed back and takes another swig and gulp until there is no more left of him. just like the dahlia that withered away as it wept for help so did he. tomislav kraljic the dahlia that withered away 16 18” x 24” ballpoint pen valerie snelwar dilapidated mountaineer’s cabinet 150150 i’m home on leave from the army and i open the door to my father’s book closet. the smell of musty textbooks, spiral bound notebooks, and old, yellowed books, is a physical presence so i hesitate, half expecting to be yelled at for entering his study without permission. i pick up a random notebook from a shelf and flip through it. *** as kids, my siblings and i would crowd around my father’s study, daring each other to enter to ask for television privileges. after a while of our not-so-quiet stage whispered arguments he would close the door and tell us to go play elsewhere. my father took classes at purdue and would take notes in various yellow legal notepads, spiral bound lab books, and leatherbound journals. his tiny handwriting was meticulous and any mistakes were annotated in the margins. later he would type them into his computer, print them out, and put them in big three-inch binders. his study was always off limits but if we were quiet, he would leave the door open and let us watch tv. *** i set the notebook back on another shelf. my father and i had a fight. this would be the last time i talk to him and don’t want a physical reminder. i grab a stack of my childhood books and go through the garage, to avoid meeting him and my stepmom. my younger brother is talking with them on the driveway, running interference as i make trip after trip, filling the back of the minivan with my book collection. *** after high school, i took a year of community college but couldn’t afford tuition for a second year, so i returned home to help my mother care for my fourteen, all biological, siblings. while in college, i enjoyed reading my papers to my mother who would correct my grammar or spelling mistakes. she would listen patiently as i read the rubrics to her, pondered over new material, or struggled to make friends with the wide variety of people and cultures i had never encountered before. amy schleppenbach along the perforations 151 when she died of cancer i needed to escape and made the decision to leave home, possibly forever. *** i joined the military and writing became an odd mix of perfunctory flowery language for awards, meticulous annotations for medical documents, dry reports, work emails, and supply logs. writing was no longer fun, it was routine and boring. it was a simple fill-inthe-blank. answer all five w’s, who, what, where, when, and why, then submit for review. the only somewhat exciting writing was practicing sworn statements that we were graded on after fast paced training events. this was a chance to tell a story i had witnessed. several of my military police buddies assured me they became stressful or boring to write after a few months. their accuracy for legal reasons had to be perfect, the events were either traumatizing to witness or very routine, thus the practice. one of my sergeants shouted for me to come into the platoon office. *** i’m trying not to cry as my second grade catholic teacher scolds me for writing a short story about aliens eating people. i ought to be ashamed, it is un-christian, unladylike, demonic, and i should be spanked. what would my parents say? *** i stammer to explain my actions were sanctioned by my sergeant first class, and my second lieutenant chuckles, asking what i was going on about. she just wanted me to help one of the sergeants proofread his college paper since i was good at reading and writing. i should finish getting my associate’s degree and become an officer, she says. you’d be good at it. *** my second grade teacher, who called my writing demonic, could not believe i was reading fiction years above my grade and believed me only after i told her the plot of jack london’s white fang, a book for seventh graders. she confirmed this with the librarian who had honestly wanted to see if i would read it when i finished my scholastic reading challenge early then had filled in more books on the back of the page, hoping for extra points for our class to win the pizza party. 152 the meeting with my parents and principal went much better than i expected as my principal expressed regret that there was not an advanced program i could be put into then expressed a desire to read any books i published in the future. i still got spanked for my aliens eating people story, which was taken down from the hallway display. our class did not win the pizza party, which i blamed myself for. i should have read more books. *** despite the mixed messages, i was destined for great things, a responsibility i didn’t want, and so scared by my second grade encounter, i wouldn’t write for fun again until high school. fanfiction became a safe anonymous way to write whatever i wanted. criticism from strangers online was easier to take than from those who loved you. then one of my teachers introduced my class to journaling. i poured my soul into works i swore i would never share after my classmates laughed at my open prompt story about a frightening event from my childhood. i even told my teacher not to read them, writing in big letters at the top of my submissions that they were now private. finally, after years of guilt, long after my grade school had been closed down and my encouraging principal had passed away, i rewrote my second grade alien story to redeem myself. the aliens were now vegetarians and ate carrots, not people. i should get an editor and publish children’s books, my english teacher remarked. this is very cute. *** i load my journals full of fanfiction into the van, say a stilted goodbye to my father, and leave. it was a quiet ride to my brother’s house and we reminisced about our mom. he grins at me and says he snagged her typewriter from the garage since our stepmom was throwing all of her old things away. teary eyed, i fish the heavy contraption from the backseat and hear her typewriter clacking away, as she meticulously pulls back the carriage bar as it dinged when it got to the edge of the paper. her braille typewriter only made raised dots on paper, each of the keys creating a raised dot in a six matrix cell that corresponded with the braille alphabet. the raised dots could be felt and read by our mother who was completely blind, 153 title of piece but i only ever learned to sight read them. the real reward was waiting to pull the feed edge off the stacks of thick stock paper when she was done with them. the typewriter still has motes of fine white dust and the wonderful smell of cardstock in it. we would be severely punished if we tore the perforations before she typed on them, since the feed edge was needed to keep her sheets aligned in the typewriter. i inhale deeply. *** i am a kindergartener, placing a barney sticker on the back of my mom’s typewriter, wanting to help her with her work. i was scolded severely. she doesn’t want the typewriter to be damaged but leaves the sticker on the back if i promise not to put more stickers on it. *** i start crying in the van. there is sticker residue where other stickers had been scraped off, since i quickly broke my little kid’s promise, but the faded barney one is still there. my brother punches my arm. he’s driving and can’t see the road through his tears. *** i’m in college, sitting at a computer and typing yet another paper, wondering if i will ever publish a book knowing those who encouraged me to have all passed. i struggle after years of being my own worst enemy to find my voice. do i really want to put such a hidden part of myself on paper and share the pain with strangers? i’m three years into my english major and still haven’t decided yet. 108108 summertime was always my favorite as a child, but i’m not a child anymore. during my childhood, my mother would drive my sister and i up to the beach house. we’d spend the summer hunting for seashells and skipping stones across the waves while mom would gather wood for us to roast the fish dad caught at work. it was perfect. it made leaving once labor day rolled around that much harder. for years, in the middle of summer when the nauseous heat clung to the undersides of our bones, our mother’s brother would come to visit. he’d arrive in the dead of night, the only time the heat was tempered by the promise of morning dew still smokey from the previous evening’s campfire. his bags were so heavy, the straps dug into his shoulders in such a painful manner. the long tubes of iron hidden within the zippers and pockets rattled against his femur with each uneven step he took. i always loved when he’d visit. as a small child, i’d run up to him and throw myself into his arms. there was something about his deep laugh that felt so comforting to me. maybe it was only mid-embrace when i heard him laugh like that. we’d spin around, and once he’d set me down, he’d wrap his tri-colored polyester around me. i’d wear it so proudly– running around the house with it waving like a flag behind me. he’d put his bags in the guest bedroom and give my mother an apple pie. it was cinnamony and sweet, but the doughy crust was salty. it flaked apart in my mouth and melted on my tongue. mom would scold my sister and me for sneaking pieces of it before dinner, but our uncle would just smile and slide us slivers under the table. he’d leave dirty finger prints on our mother’s white plates. he always smelled like charcoal and sulfur, and no matter how many times he said he’d washed and changed, the dark powder remained under his nails and behind his ears. today, my uncle wakes me from my uneasy sleep. seventeen years old, and i had long since outgrown the twin-sized mattress my mother bought for me the first summer we had the beach house. he beckons me to come hither, to follow him out to the beach. rubbing my face, i stumble behind him. the sand is cool from the morning dew beading on the few strands of grass out this close to the ocean. twilight still lingers, but the dawn is creeping up off of the horizon and elizabeth terhorst sammy 109 bringing the brilliant sun with her monstrous, muggy heat. he is sitting near the water, his legs and the waves all white with foam. i sit next to him, shivering until he strong arms me against him. my uncle points towards the sky where we can see birds fly across the dying dark blue –red cut through sky with white underbellies, chirping as they dance around each other’s beady hawk-eyes and eagle-like talons. his tight grasp is warm against the perilous winds rolling off of the waves, but it makes me think of when i would watch him and my sister huddled up on the shore all those summers ago. as a child, i watched him wake my sister from her slumber every july, and they’d sit with the sand sparkling around them with the first light of dawn. there are still divots from my eager fingernails in the wood panelling of my window from when i would watch. but, liberty left so long ago. now, it’s just uncle sammy and me underneath an endless skyway. up close, and with the morning fog lifting up towards the fading smoke, sammy doesn’t look how he did from my bedroom window all those golden years ago. his smile has hardened and his top hat has grown askew. even his apple pie recipe has changed, and the changes remain unpardoned. the iron barrels he keeps hidden under his bed no longer make my home feel as sweet, and the draft is to come sweeping through my house soon. i know sammy will take me away as coldly and swifty as he took all the other boys in our family. it will not be slow and searing like my sister’s departure. as children, he promised her and i that as long as we stood with god in our hearts and him in our hands, we’d never fall. but, i fear i cannot trust in our bond anymore; i don’t feel safe nor brave in his arms. yet, i long for the summers when i was a child with liberty by my side. it pains me to say i do not love summertime anymore. 95 leave home as soon as you graduate high school. underestimate how much money you’ll need to live in the city while attending college. meet an older man who tells you you’re too pretty to be a waitress or dishwasher. don’t trust him. follow him. this is how you become a 7th avenue girl. your name is not your own. work the graveyard shift— 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. schedule your classes for the afternoon. lie when classmates ask what you do for work. learn that you can function on four hours of sleep with the help of coffee and cocaine. be nice and listen to the veterans’ advice. these women will not only be your friends— your family— but also your mentors. they’ll be the ones that offer you a cigarette (it’ll help you calm down and get it over with). they’ll be the ones you go to when you don’t know how much to charge. they’ll be the ones who teach you to scream “fire!” not “help!” if someone tries to take advantage of you. run whenever you hear another girl shouting that. it will always be too late. after your first time, puke in an alleyway and sob. one of the older veterans— a woman called lola with fake chanel perfume and fiery, bright red hair— will hold your hair from your face and tell you it gets easier. she’s lying. hold onto its falsity for comfort. it will take months before you start to become numb to the nerves and nausea. the speech you recite as you walk up to a car, the positions and sounds, shoving crumpled bills into a black pouch— make it all blur into a robotic routine. by the end of your first year, have regulars. do your makeup to look even younger. pigtails are a hit on sundays. equate your worth to your body and how many men want a slice of it. dress enough to keep you warm in the midnight wind but not enough that it repels customers. buy fishnets in packs of five from the corner store. always carry a taser. a knife. pepper spray. an alarm. a pack of condoms. birth control. buy thick hangers from the corner store, too, while you’re at it. lola will instruct you over the phone how to use them. they will hurt. they will work. don’t talk to cops. a rookie made that mistake. find her body discarded behind a dumpster with her panties torn and a bullet in her throat. there will be no funeral, but you and some of the other girls will hold a moment of silence for her. pretend to not see one of the girls hop into the car of your professor’s husband. act surprised when she stops wearing her wedding ring to lectures. turn down the guy sitting next to you in biology. turn down your classmates’ offer to hang out after class. don’t turn down the cigarettes and needles. they will destroy you keep you going. accept the number lola gives you (my cousin is a therapist. promise me you’ll see her). go every thursday to the cozy little office with the yellow, plush couch. open your mouth— but not as a service. let the words flow out— even if eliza surdzial how to sell your body (and survive it) best of fiction 96 just a few. cut your working hours. create a resume. apply to four different unpaid internships. get rejected by the first three. get accepted by the fourth. break down and throw a stiletto at your mirror. realize that nothing will ever get rid of the years of invisible handprints and marks of repulsive lust. wash. scrub. scratch. tear. scream. repeat to yourself that virginity and body count are just concepts meant to belittle women’s sexuality. repeat to yourself that you are more than just your body. repeat to yourself that you are a person— not an object to be traded and bought and sold. whisper this over and over and over again until you finally start to believe it. set your last day of work on 7th avenue. you won’t walk those midnight streets again. it will have been five years. lola will hold you tight and with tears in her eyes tell you how proud she is of you. promise to visit her even when she tells you to move far, far away. use your internship to get a better job. use your better job to earn more money than you ever did on the street. use that money to buy clean needles, toiletries, and other basic care items for the remaining 7th avenue girls. do not leave this family behind. when you introduce yourself at your first aa meeting (it’s not just for alcoholics), take a deep breath and use your real name. 126126 i felt like i was getting him back but now i’m losing him all over again. daddy’s drinking vodka ‘cause he heard somewhere that momma couldn’t smell it on him, but the alcohol seeps from him—a stench you can’t shower off. he drinks himself a personable fool, friendly until the fuse sparks; then his anger manifests in fist-sized holes in the walls and broken televisions. i used to watch the images splinter as he stormed out of the room. one night, he backed my brother’s truck into the side of the house, drunk stupid. one day, he took a swig every time he passed the bourbon, running laps around the kitchen island for an excuse to circle back. i don’t know when i’ll have to say goodbye to him, but i hope it isn’t before he says goodbye to the bottle. dex fee what the bourbon does to him 184184 my quinceañera, 2019 pristine princess with a porcelain face dressed head to toe in rose and gold. curls coiled and still in place. our last waltz while the triumph trumpets of womanhood trumpets through the air like victory claimed, but the little girl inside me has died, the ashes disguised as shimmer embroidered on her skirt. i whisper my goodbyes in her ear as i hold her tight. i tell her she will sit in my bedroom and watch my converse change into flats and the sweatpants turn into skirts, and that some day we’ll both be punished by daggered eyes. i have now grown into my mother’s face and my father’s charm. i am at the cusp of adulthood yet i still remember her trim and lace swaying while her crown stayed in place. i am no longer the girl that held her but the woman that she helped raise. dayanara guzman muñeca 110 robert smith 40” x 60” oil on canvas totem for the working man 58 how am i to walk through the plots of those who will never break their silence? without kissing my knees to the grass without joining my hands—palms pressed and fingers laced how am i not to chip away at pieces of limestone? pocketing fragments of the infamous dillinger fame how am i not to pause at the strange exchanges of closed eyes and bowed heads? mouths bound and veiled in black fabric softly spoken metaphors—where you’ll find them now. the fluttering of monarch wings am i not to feed the dead? recipes etched into their gravestones ginger snap, crumble, and annie’s strudel how am i to add to the legacy of the children’s poet? place a coin among the small stacks of pennies, quarters, and giftings of evergreen wreaths a stone slab encircled by columns atop the highest hill how then am i to keep you? am i to strike a match and add a burning incense stick to the amber-colored jar? watch it trail off and hold the silence—smoke slips away am i not to help in keeping these practices, whatever they may be? until another match flickers and the next stick burns nag champa floating up into the air and over the graves kayla mcveigh keeping our practices: a walk through crown hill 34 tarantella siren hand the bartender swings the bottle over two glasses set on the altar of friday night. don't worry, you'll need this: this week has bitten you. poison in, poison out, love the communion rolls down my throat to a choke point— i brace for better against polished wood, ask for another, sweet lemon shot turning my mouth. shove a ten in the tip jar to a turned back, sway to crusted velvet couch that's probably cradled too many lovers— set seasick glasses on the low table. we punch this week in the face: to your health! one for the soul! i slam one glass, hold my second; sweet lemon shot turns my mouth again as i pass the liquor through a loose-lipped kiss to someone who hasn't legally seen god. we don't dance, we pulse we free-form flow into hours when only the divine would be awake, strobing: our shadows play on a gridded confessional wall, stained glass chandeliers paint us holy. brick grit and decay fills our lungs, the spirit reminding us of our dusty return. driving bass smothers creaking floorboards still saturated with tampa tobacco hand-rolled through the years 35 into gulf salt and sweat, sour carpets, stained shame of a thousand weekend escapes. we pulse: hear our prayer. hear our prayer. hear our prayer— have mercy on me. 142142 i follow dad across the road through the moonlit cold towards the neighbors’ house. all their lights are on. we go up the driveway, crunching leaves, and approach the front door. dad knocks on the door’s glass, then pulls it open. an alert system chirps. he pokes his head in, lowers his mask below his lip and yells out to make our presence known. a small reply from somewhere. “betty,” he says. “where you at?” “in here.” from the hall to the right. dad steps inside, so i step inside. he pulls his mask up and pinches it on the bridge of his nose. i have never been inside the neighbors’ house before, but i don’t take a look around. it is warm, bright. i follow dad. miss betty jumps as we appear in the hallway. she is a little old lady, with short dyed-dark hair and bright red lipstick. she looks at dad. she looks at me. then she cocks her head sideways and her eyebrows go up. “oh, hi,” she says to me. “hi,” i say, and i smile at her beneath my mask. i look past her, down the hallway. the lights are on in every room. there is a double-doored closet to the left with a towel draped over one of the doorknobs. below that there is a wet red splatter soaked thoroughly into the carpet. blood. i return my attention to miss betty. she’s smiling at me. “wow. it’s been awhile,” she says. “it’s been awhile,” i say, looking at the blood on the floor. “how’ve you been?” “i’ve been okay.” “betty,” dad says. “on the phone you said—” “oh. yes. john is sitting up now. he’s in there.” she gestures at the bathroom at the far end of the hallway. in the doorframe there are two pale bare knees peeking, and grunting and breathing emanating from inside. “you two sit in the living room while i put his pants on. i’ll call you when i need you.” sam pickett call us when you need us 143 “okay,” dad says. i follow dad to the living room. he sits on the couch, so i sit on the couch. i peel my shirt away from my back, and now i look for the thermostat. there are stacks of books lining the walls, and shelves above them displaying hundreds of little porcelain angels striking various poses. some pray. others weep. most are infantine. i look at myself and dad reflected in a big wall-mounted sony tv from the mid 2000s as miss betty says, “hold on, hold on, john,” and mr. john grunts and breathes. dad looks at the ceiling. he taps his feet and patters his fingers on his kneecaps. a holy bible sits on the coffee table in front of the couch, on a black hardcover book without a dust jacket. i slide it out and open it up down the middle. both pages are blank. i thumb through it a bit and discover that every page is blank, so then i turn it over and look at the title on the spine. reasons to vote for democrats: a comprehensive guide, by michael knowles. “okay. he’s ready.” miss betty’s voice. in the sony tv screen, i see her standing in the hallway, looking at me looking at her. dad stands up, so i stand up and place the book down. i follow dad to the hallway. i find the thermostat on the way. it reads eighty-two degrees and i believe it. we step over the blood on the floor. dad goes into the bathroom. i stand outside. miss betty is fitting slippers onto mr. john’s feet—they are all i can see of him in the doorway. “hey neighbor,” mr. john says from beyond the off-white wall. “hey neighbor,” dad says, his hands on his hips. “hear you might’ve taken a spill.” “heh. sure as hell did. i—” “he managed to crawl in here and pull himself up on the toilet,” miss betty cuts in. “i didn’t know if i should call but i saw your lights were on and the cars in the driveway and he didn’t want me to call an ambulance.” “because i’m not dying and old men fall all the time,” mr. john says. “i just need some help over to the couch. that’s all i need. no ambulance.” “no no,” dad says, looking at miss betty. “you call us whenever you need us.” then he extends his hand towards mr. john. 144 a frail hand reaches out and latches onto dad’s forearm. a bald head comes into frame. “get the other side of him,” dad says to me. i go inside the bathroom, and i get the other side of mr. john. i place a hand in his armpit and use my other as a guiding counterbalance. not that i need one. there is no weight to mr. john at all. i’ll pull his arm off if i walk too fast. he breathes and he grunts and he farts all the way down the hallway as dad and i lead him. “sorry fellahs,” mr. john says. “you’re alright,” dad says. “you’re alright.” we step over the blood on the floor. we cross the living room slowly, the porcelain angels clinking along with each one of our steps. then we lower mr. john onto the couch. he sinks in, grunting and disheveled, his gut hanging out the bottom of his t-shirt and his pants a little too low. miss betty brushes by. “thank you both so much.” she sits down and situates him. “absolutely, betty. we’re your neighbors,” dad says. “we’re sure about that ambulance?” “are you sure about that ambulance?” miss betty asks mr. john. “i’m sure about that goddamn ambulance,” mr. john says. “i’m not dying or anything like that. it’s the clot acting up. i got a little faint and fell, is all. old men fall all the time.” “he’s got a blood clot,” miss betty says to dad. “oh no,” dad says. “they say it’s because of the vaccine.” “they say that?” “they say it might be. i don’t know about you but we’re not going to get that booster. they might make us all get one. we’re going to refuse it if they do. they 145 title of piece haven’t done enough research.” dad nods at the floor. mr. john grunts. “well,” dad says. “i think research is good.” “i agree,” miss betty says. “and we need to kick that old guy out of the office.” dad chuckles. “i think there are a lot of old guys in office we should get rid of. unless we had john here at the helm.” “what?” mr john says. miss betty rubs his knee. “you’d get it all set straight, wouldn’t you?” she says to him. then mr. john lurches forward, coughing and gagging. miss betty pats his back. we all look at him. “what?” mr. john says. “i’m not dying.” “just making sure,” dad says. mr. john laughs. “yes sir. john would whip things into shape,” dad says. everybody agrees. “whelp,” dad says. “if you are positive about the ambulance, i think we’ll get going here if you two are situated.” he steps towards the door. i do too. miss betty gets up, and she follows us. the three of us stand by the door. “thank you both so much,” she says. “absolutely,” dad says. “we’re always able to count on you two. i miss that one being around to mow the lawn.” miss betty points at me. 146 “same here.” dad slaps my shoulder. “call us when you need us, betty.” “i will,” she says. “thank you.” “and you take care of yourself, john,” he talks past miss betty. “what?” mr. john’s voice from the living room. then dad opens the glass door, and i follow him back outside. the chilly night breeze is a relief. the door swings shut behind us, the hinges hissing. miss betty waves at us as we walk across the road towards our house. “they’re sort of weird,” i say to dad. “yeah. but they’re our neighbors,” he says. “yeah.” 6 a covid supermarket in indiana nathan marquam ginsberg! i have some bad news about the grocery store. it is bigger now and i don’t think anything of it. i wander the gleaming aisles steered by no one but myself, looking for chocolate hearts to gobble. i could say i bought it for a lover, but the lover is me. i’m not ashamed of being alone, nor of not being alone. ginsberg, i dated the grocery boy. he smelled like onions and rotten milk. i unbuckled his belt in the parking lot behind a flashing billboard and tried to feel nothing. i think of it now and shiver in the electronics aisle as i paw through a bargain bin of movies in search of an angry fix, a five-dollar distraction to pair with a six-dollar wine. but you’re not invited, ginsberg. not tonight. you’d want to probe and question, turn the shrink-wrapped cases in your large hands like you’re examining a steak. there’s nothing to do but fill myself with images—slick-muscled boys, girls of slender curves, some glorious in-between. i consume it all as i wobble across this endless off-white, a rotund and sexless creature fading to the edges of myself. ginsberg, the whole world is screen except me. i’m flesh and more flesh, rolls of it. every city i might have escaped to covers its windows and coughs as i pass. all day i sit around wishing i did not exist, or that i wasn’t scared to die, or that this landscape of screened faces would smile back at me. we mustn’t linger too long here. everything could kill you. hurry through this tundra of refrigeration and don’t stop to examine the cardboard pizzas in cardboard boxes, the pre-cut, pre-cooked frozen vegetables i have eaten hundreds of times without tasting. hurry through the checkout (you scan the vegetables twice, the pizza not at all, and don’t even wink). follow me out to the parking lot that refuses to darken and try not to breathe in the fluorescence that hangs in the air like mist, shrinks you down until i can carry you in my pocket, play you through earbuds. as sidewalk crumbles to road, i walk the concrete line between grass and traffic, between your world and mine. i almost go over the edge, but you are holding me steady—your voice at my command, our lips moving together, no difference between space and time. when i am home, i’ll let you speak the way you want to be heard, through the jumping static crackle of a five-dollar forty-five. i’ll set aside the movies, the pizza, the wine. tonight, i’ll watch you spin, allen ginsberg, and try to untangle my mind. 131 television spring break was always one of the best parts of any school year. i mean who wouldn’t love a week where they can kick it and sit back and be free of the annoyance of school and the crap that comes with it? seventh grade was a bit different in that regard. not only was i getting some time off from those dreaded high school applications, but i was going to spend a few days at my cousin’s house! coming from my dad’s side of the family, my cousins bill and kennedy were always around my grandmother’s house during the weekend. if i had time i would hang out with them and we’d have fun for hours on end. whether it was playing some board games or playing super mario bros on our nintendo ds’s, it was always a blast going hanging out and messing around with them. the one activity i always found us participating in the most above all else was watching television. tv was a great way to pass the time, especially when that tv belonged to my grandparents.with what felt like an infinite amount of channels available to us, we would always flip around and take a look at what we would watch. it could be the sports channel, cartoon network, or abc’s random game shows.we always would find something to watch and something to explore within the endless sea of content. naturally, the first big thing i did when i showed up to my cousins’ house on a glorious friday night was ask what they had on tv. in bill’s words, they had “everything you can think of.” if i’m being honest, i couldn’t think of any statement that would be any better than that. we spent hours in the basement just watching random stuff that came on the tv. in that time, we managed to find some absurd shows and channels that i still find myself looking at now. whether it was the three different versions of espn, or watching the absurdity that was ridiculousness, we laughed so much that day you would think we were at a circus. during our infinite surf the two of them had to take care of some chores assigned by my uncle. it had taken a while so i figured i would spend some time clicking through some channels while i waited for them to come back. while i kept flipping through i saw something that caught my eye on adult swim. i couldn’t tell what the deal was at first. perhaps it was the way the characters talked. maybe it was the presentation of animation. hell it could have just been the fact that this was the most amount of black characters i saw on an animated show. no matter what it was, i found myself glued to the screen. “oh shit that’s the boondocks!” bill said, seemingly hearing the tv as the two of them ran back down to the basement. “i can’t believe the show is on right now!” tyler butler being black 132 being black “you know this show?” i asked. “oh yeah we both watch it all the time” kennedy told me. “it’s one of my favorite shows!” i knew the two were brothers but i didn’t think both of them knew a show like this. kennedy is about my age whereas bill was in high school, so i was always thinking there were some things he knew more than us. this show was on adult swim after all, and most of the time i wouldn’t be awake to watch it. so to know about a show that kennedy and bill knew was a bit of a weird moment to process. i needed to know more so i asked the obvious question of “what’s the show about?” “oh it’s the most black show ever dude!” kennedy said quickly. “it’s really funny and talks a lot about black stuff!” “oh yeah it’s funny as hell,” bill replied. “we should check the schedule right quick. i bet it’s gonna be on for a while.” his guess was right. the show was gonna be on until about 3 am. i don’t know if it was a marathon or something of the sorts, but i wasn’t gonna turn this down. i wanted to be a part of the group and understand what was going on. so we watched some episodes, with some being simple while some being crazy. one minute i was seeing a chicken flu incident, and then the next the old man was coming back from the dead and possessing someone. it was a crazy show that i had so much fun experiencing for the first time, especially with all the nods to black culture. one episode that stuck out to me was an episode that focused on the nature of barack obama’s election. the episode was meant to be a commentary on the way black people approached the election. some of the cast found it as a means to promote products and become extremely popular. others assumed barack would be the end all solution to all the black issues. while it was funny there was a sense of reality that hit me during this time. being 2014, this was around the time barack was running for his second term, and i was forced to become a lot more aware of the politics around him. for every one moment that i laughed, another moment i had to really consider the circumstances of my status as a black man in the current society. “what did you think?” bill asked me, clearly excited to see my response. we had been watching hours of the show, so i needed to say something. “it’s unique.” i said while laughing. “i don’t think i’m supposed to watch this show right now.” “every black kid gotta watch boondocks at some point!” kennedy said. “it’s a show made for every black kid.” 133 tyler butler i thought about it for a second. then a few seconds. then almost a minute. i’ve seen many shows, but boondocks was a show that spoke to me and me alone. it wasn’t something i thought anyone could fully understand if they weren’t the same skin color as i. thankfully, i had two cousins right there who looked just like me. “is it airing tommo-i mean later tonight?” i asked. bill looked at the schedule for the night time program. “yep. a good few hours.” as i began to head upstairs to the sleeping couch i made sure to leave one last message: “let’s make sure to watch it again.” the two of them nodded in agreement, leaving me with only one thought in my mind after that. “i gotta see more.” winter 2008 another year, another time to set up the christmas tree. at least that’s what it should’ve been. i was young and silly and didn’t exactly have the most object permanence going on. what i did appreciate even back then was the beauty of music. if there was a song on the radio i loved, you bet your ass i was dancing and prancing around the room. it got so notable that my mom even went as far as to set up little dance parties before i went to school. from the classics like mozart, to the modern hits like maroon 5, i was always jumping and hopping around like a spring. however, something changed this year as we were waiting on the christmas tree to be delivered. as my mom was preparing the radio, she just simply asked if i had “ever heard of louis armstrong?” i had shaken my head no at the time cause well…i didn’t know. her eyebrows perked up a little, but she shook her head and said “you got a lot to learn about your history.” at this point i was still lost but intrigued by this unknown figure, and waited for my mother to put on a song. the song she put on was “what a wonderful world.” at first i couldn’t fully get what mom wanted me to see in it. then i listened for longer and longer. i wasn’t dancing or moving or jumping around the room like i normally would. i was silent and completely mesmerized by the sounds i was hearing. it felt like stepping into a different world for the first time. this was soul music, something which i didn’t realize i would love until now. “this music is so cool!” i told mom, my face brightening up like a lightbulb. “i wanna hear more!” my mom smiled and simply said, “now that’s what i wanted to hear.” she went through her phone and prepared to open up a new piece of music, this time 134 being black with michael jackson at the helm. this time she played the song “beat it,” which unlike the last song had me back to my old bouncing self. it was a different tone and structure, but still full of that life and soul that the past song had. i was still invigorated by the sounds and the way my body snaked around the room. i had danced before, but not to this degree, and it felt less wild than i did before. but would you believe that still wasn’t the end? my mom and i spent the 40 minutes playing all sorts of music from black history. one minute she was playing songs from tupac, then the next it was nwa. i was being exposed to not just music, but black music. but something that stuck out just as much as the music, was my mom. it had been the most amount of time me and my mom spent together, and the most i had ever seen her smile at that point in my life. she was never an unhappy person, but this moment was different. we weren’t thinking about the tree or any issues in life. all we were thinking about was how cool the music was at the moment. it was above all else pure bliss. me and mom always spent time together, and yet this time around it felt like we became closer than we ever were. eventually i needed to rest after all of that hopping and jumping around. while i laid there, relaxing and thinking about what i heard, my mom plopped right next to me with a wide grin on her face. “this music is your history, son,” she told me in a light tone. “i know you’ve listened to tons of music in the past, but this is a bit different from that. this music is you. and you have no idea how happy i am to see you appreciate it.” “thanks mom.” i said. simple response sure, but it’s one that i think was enough to get my love across. it seemed to work, as she hugged me shortly after the exchange. just in time for the tree to finally arrive. hair waking up from a long car ride is a relaxing if odd experience. my mom had just shaken me up to display to me the area she had been excited to show me the entire day. once my eyes adjusted to the concept of light i witnessed a glowing neon sign that simply read “hair salon.” just before i could answer even a simple question, my mom dropped me off and told me she’d be back in an hour. to say i was lost would be the understatement of the year. i walked in and noticed the smell of the room. the air had the scent of roses outside of a garden. it was shockingly clean to boot. for how wide and big the area was, there was practically no speck of hair or broken materials anywhere. it almost felt like i was being pranked. to drive about 20 minutes to get here could only mean that whatever this place was, mom must have loved to come here, at least i assume. “heyo, you must be tyler!” a voice said. breaking me out of my trance, i saw a man who looked like he had a malboros every day. his face looked like it would break if i hit him too hard. i didn’t want to be rude however, so i simply 135 tyler butler responded. “hey uh, who are you?” i asked. “oh, i’m yo barber pete. yo mom said you needed a fresh cut for picture day tomorrow!” i hadn’t really thought about it, but it was picture day tomorrow. i usually don’t really think about it too much and i just kinda get it over with. i guess since it was my freshman year of high school mom wanted me to actually have a proper picture. “so what are ya getting little man?” pete asked. “just do whatever. i’m not picky,” i told him. clearly that struck a chord, because right after that pete asked “you want a lining? how bout a solid fade? i could give you a shape up if that’s all you need.” i was lost. i’ll admit. the only term i fully knew was “lining,” as that’s what i would get if i wasn’t getting a cut. all i could say was “uuuuuhhhh” when he asked me those questions. pete simply laughed. “you gotta know your hairstyles, maaaan. it’s what makes the black man whole!” i gave a weird crooked smile and gave an honestly shit response. “well, i mean, it can’t be that important, it’s just some hair.” “aight, just hold on for a second.” pete told me. “i think i know what you need.” i found myself in the chair getting a cut, but something was different. it felt more natural, slow, and collected. in the past my haircuts tended to be fairly straightforward. about 20 minutes or so. this one took about 45 minutes, but each minute felt impactful. there was a purpose to the cuts. i almost fell asleep and let him take the wheel. despite his looks, he damn for sure knew what he was doing. “i’m done, little man. check it out,” pete told me. i grabbed the mirror and i gotta say, i damn for sure wasn’t ready for this. my afro, which was once unshaped and all over the place like a hedgehog’s spikes, felt contained proper. it had a real circular shape, big enough to be an afro but small enough to pick. i was so focused on the first real cut i received that i didn’t even notice mom walk into the shop. “he must like it,” she told pete, giving off a smile that almost seemed smug. 136 “yeah, i gave it some of the magic touch,” pete replied. “bet you he’ll take his hair seriously now.” “you like it?” my mom asked me. “it’s awesome,” i told her. “how do i keep this?” “it’s about effort, man,” pete told me. “black man’s hair ain’t like nothing else. you can’t just brush it and it looks good. you gotta put that soul into it.” i looked at myself in the mirror one more time before looking at pete. my eyes were as wide as the room itself, and before i could speak he simply asked, “you need my number? i can help you out, lil bro.” of course i said yes to that request. i had to learn more! as i left the shop, pete simply told me one more thing: “black hair is real hair!” 92 11” x 17” digitally illustrated posters unbridled rage abby franke 188 photograph eswar prabhath kamisetti duel at dawn 99 the first strands of grey were rooted just above my right temple. a gentleness that comes from the aging of dark hair to a softened grey. for the first time in three generations, fingertips traced lovingly from the scalp all the way down to the frayed split ends. taking notice without reaching for scissors or dye. daily surprises are offered within a lifetime. these strands are threaded through a lineage before me. a twist of silver now twirled through my own fingers. we don’t have to do anything more than observe. each life presents us with something familiar, but new. returned knowledge and deepened connections. it’s not just in our blood and our birth. it’s in our change and our marks of age. touch it if you can. feel it and be kind. your body is never static and still always exactly as it is meant to be. pain and all. the beauty of softening from dark to grey. kayla mcveigh grey hair 19 poppies christopher cassetty bloody constellations—and patterns— lay beneath my woeful nepenthe, strewn by fate across my bed, and floor, where they dry and wither, and turn brown, almost—almost as if to say no joy may last longer than it takes to feel satisfied, and i’m not satisfied. i watch these stars stir amidst the bleakness of dried tears, and virgin stars join, occasionally, as old ones are blown away like dust when they grow too old to keep themselves whole, and when will i join their fate? not long, not long, i watch her droop, as if there is no amount of love and care that could be given to force these dying cells awake—and i weep; i weep at my bedside while these stars burn my feet, and in some ebbing measure of hope—for the chance that a tear will bless this earth and heal my burns—i will not surcease. the curtains sough through open windows, and feels my grieving face the virility of spring—and i see through watery eyes my nepenthe drowned, and only then do i realize that it is possible to love something too—too much. 220 20” x 16.5” x 1.5” mixed media daylen byrd man with turquoise necklace 11 24” x 36” digital photography leah darden in the haze 38 12” x 24” oil paint monica cunningham art is having fun the clodhoppers of winter ron keedy “free at last!” shouted five left toes. “free at last!” shouted five right toes. “free at last,” wiggled all ten toes as they stuck out from under the old quilt, tasting the warm june air, knowing they would no longer be prisoners of the “clodhoppers of winter.” brogans, boots, clodhoppers, call them what you want, but this morning they get tossed to the deepest, backest, remotest corner of the closet, never, again, to surround these toes with the stiff leather trappings of winter snows and heavy rains. there’s a special season, known only to boys. it comes at the end of spring and the beginning of summer. it’s the season of barefoot. it’s the season of huckleberry suspendered pants, torn t-shirts and the magic of milligan park grass still cool and wet between your bare toes. it starts with a quick drink from the water fountain next to the old picket fence bandstand where you can stand under the roof and watch the whole park get washed clean by a warm summer shower and you never get wet. tearing down the hill to the playground you can make a high jump off the swings, tumble through the monkey bars and fly down the big slide at burn-your-butt speed, finally grabbing at the sky in higher and higher circles on the maypole and falling breathless, burying your toes in the warm sand while spilling squeals and giggles everywhere. next comes a quick cooling, minnow-nibbling wade in dry branch around past the miniature train and golf course and you come face-to-face with every milligan park kid’s rite of passage, the tunnel. a heart pounding crawl through total darkness while stranger-friends taunt you with spooky growls and groans and you pop out the other end squinting in the sun, heading for the trails. climbing to the top you get to dirt-pants slide down to dry branch and then do it all again while making tarzan calls to friends in pursuit. the huge covered grandstand bleachers of the old ball diamond are lonely and empty now. on hot summer days past, it sheltered sweaty, cheering baseball fans from the sun. like a giant noah’s ark, they sat two-by-two, feasting on hot dogs and warm cokes while hoping for a cool breeze to find them. if you listen, you can hear a million “sa-wing batta” taunts that have soaked into the nooks and crannies of the weathered boards. as the sun begins to wander into the west, a solitary home-run trip around the bases with the wonderful feeling of hot ball diamond dust all over your feet, and it’s time to head home. slamming screen doors brought together the neighborhood gang for a game of statues or hide-n-seek in the waning evening light. mothers calling everyone to wonderful small town suppers and finally the adults settling into the porch howdahs with the glow of pipes and cigars lighting up the night like so many red fireflies, ends a perfect june day. 79 feeling the good tired, i climb the stairs to our bedroom and spy a shoe box on my bed. mom has surprised me with a box of new adventures. nestled among the crisp tissue is a brand new pair of tennis shoes from miller’s shoes, downtown. tennis shoes that are full of summer magic. tennis shoes that can scorch sidewalks, jump over dry branch, flower beds and sleeping dogs. tennis shoes that won’t let you stand still; that have miles and miles of running stored up that steer you to the strand theatre, the skating rink and back and forth from the big dipper for ice cream. tennis shoes that let you pull the pig tails of street skating girls and disappear into a puff of summer dust. i knew, in my heart, that these brand new, super charged, wings for my feet would die next september and there would be a new pair of “the clodhoppers of winter,” but right now, the summer adventures begin. 80 74 the first time i learned what death was i saw body bags lined up roughly in the hallway of a mall there was nowhere else to put them soon enough, the bags ran out, and then it was just bodies bloodied and bruised and charred in weird ways there wasn’t enough press to cover every death so survivors wandered down the line, looking for someone they recognized a mother, a son, a brother for some, their face would turn suddenly and they’d throw themselves on a body, sobbing others just looked solemn and sat by their friends’ remains a week later, i went to an american funeral for the first time i was eight and just starting to understand what it meant to die i was scared because i didn’t want to see a family friend’s dad splayed and bloodied on the floor of our local shopping mall and when we walked into an empty church, i was shocked that all the windows were intact and only a shag carpet covered the floors there was only one body, adorned with flowers and candles in a large, ornate mahogany casket at the front of the hall and at my first funeral, i learned that things aren’t fair for people like me and i wondered where i’d go when i died with my people, blue and swollen, on a bloody linoleum floor or in an empty room, in an elaborate casket, alone selma adie i miss the homs shopping malls 140140 my heart sits in a cage of flesh and bone it sits enshrined in the center of my chest trapped within is both love and pain equally sown all i am is hidden under my dress to find me is a brutal affair a cruel act of carnage borne of care it is to ruin me beyond repair it is an irredeemable sin and a sacred prayer shatter my ribs rend my flesh rip my heart from my chest taste my heart with your teeth let my blood drip, drip down your face feel my entirety burst sticky and sweet in your jaws it is messy and unholy it is brutal and excruciating it is loving and devoted it is primal and it is divine to love is to be consumed to be loved is to consume we are an ouroboros loving flesh consuming loving flesh breaking free from that cage that sits in our chest eris hembree ribcage 154154 as the sun falls behind the yew tree, i watch you making your rounds, and i think to myself, when will my world end? will we be 90 and 93— next-door neighbors in assisted living? or will we be 25 and 28— will i die falling? as the sun sets behind the funeral home you hug your partner, brother of the deceased, and i see how grief—the sculptor—digs brute fingers and blunt nails into the faces of my loved ones, rearranging their features, carving bags under their eyes and frown lines where there should be dimples, and i understand his inability to write his brother’s obituary. i imagine the damnation of living with a sibling as a corpse, and my chest becomes so cold and hollow, i fear i mirror joshua. a grimace slashing a pale face, frozen on waxy lips, and i do not feel that mine would ever thaw. i avoid the once-warm man who laughed with his brother while i laughed with you. he had a gap between his front teeth. he had a full head of beautiful, brown curls that are now dull, and piled atop his concaved skull. your hair is curled, and i imagine you in the future, your wedding in sedona, hair flowing in front of red-rocked mountains, so vibrant and alive that staring into the sun would bring relief to my watering eyes. it is pitifully dim compared to you, but i have to thank it for being evan allee doomsday 155 the most appropriate thing to metaphorize you. on july 15th, you burst from the sun, a star in the shape of a big sister— too incandescent to be concealed by the casket i imagined you in, unbidden, when i finally took a look at joshua, and that body looked nothing like him. my life is spent preparing and i am sure you would be concerned, but when a happy man is scorned by death, it’s natural—taking shelter from the storm. but time is a dormant volcano— and is that an earthquake, or the cry of a newly-dead’s loved one? are you in your 60s—is it quick and painless? a heart attack? a car crash? homicide? type ii diabetes? chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? will you forget me years before time rips my soul from yours? have you been suffering—are we relieved your pain has an expiration? will we be 90 and 93—mercifully, next-door neighbors in assisted living? or 25 and 28—will one of us die falling? if mercy is not a privilege i am granted, i will spare a warning: if the world tried to take you, i would burn it to the ground. if it didn’t give you back, i would light up the ash, i would let flames swallow exorbitant wealth and drown the ocean in orange—global warming is a hoax; it’s just a person in mourning. i am warning the world for the horror i would become, i am no longer a pacifist; i am a liaison with a gun, shooting at the sun, and as sparks rain over the heads of the innocent, my hands 156 will stay cupped, outstretched in demand for the remnants of heaven to give what was once my sister back to me, even if she is one spark of debris. i will be the reason we are cloaked in darkness, i will be the heat that suffocates the stragglers. this will be of no concern to me; i would rather be damned than an only child. moral codes are inconsequential without you to love me; they’re no more than a conch shell reverberating vain blood back to me. the rain will make mud and your footsteps will be as permanent as the relentless shore of destin beach where i walked behind you, my little feet sinking into your steps— the waves ate the proof of our lives, yet we continued to feed it, but i will let my vengeance starve it without you to walk with. beaches we once loved will no longer exist for tiny feet to skip through; i will not watch children who are not our own crash through foamy waves and dig for seashells while i dig a grave. what a sick and twisted sculpture i could make … but who am i, really, compared to the center of the solar system? and what could i do the day the sun decides to collect you? what will i do the day my world ends? will i warm my hands to mold death’s grimace from your cold face? use leftover clay to stuff cracks in the atmosphere, and force the universe to share its last breath with you? no. i am a poet, but i am a coward at best, so i wash my hands and premeditate a nonfiction piece of a world so uninhabitable i will inherit the title “sculptor.” this is a universe crafted with words in the shape of you, in spirit or in chalk. i will try not to 157 title of piece balk when the stars blink at me like defibrillator machines. i stare back through the pitch black, wondering if this is a sign to warm my hands to write, wondering if grief will perform a mimicry of mercy in a dream— the conformation that i will write my best man speech before i write her obituary. 216216 an italian dessert born from sicily. derived from cannolulittle tube, stemmed from cannacane. spiced flour made soft by wine and glazed gold by oil. a barren valley blessed by the embrace of light, sweetened ricotta fills the crevices tight. adorned in lemon zest and bathed in chocolate. garnished with fruit, it fills the mouth with thick cream. sweet words press into my ear as the night rolls on. his hand on my cheek, my lips filling his, silence quailed by pleasure and warmth. honey and sugar, pet names drape the table. his hands coat mine, spooning the filling in. he rims the shell’s interior with a light jam, as cream reaches the cusp, sap seeps out the edge. a dash of cinnamon apples passes the nose as he places bits in my cannoli. he gorges on mine as i rest on his. the hard shell caresses my lips, sweet flavor bared in a smooth, thick cream that mixes apples and jam. my heart swells as he tilts my chin up, crumbs in beard. his chest on mine, he scoops in cream with his tongue and the rest pours into me. a succulent nectar, sweet, sour, and rich who knew cannolis were this good? chase benson cannoli best of poetry letter from the editors thank you for grabbing a copy of our spring 2025 issue of genesis. each year, we are amazed by the talent and creativity of the contributors who bare their souls through their writing and artwork. there is beauty in this form of expression, and we are honored to have a hand in amplifying the voices of those brave enough to share their strongest emotions. this issue especially embraces a sense of perseverance as the arts become more important than ever. we are grateful for all of our contributors and editors who emphasize this need for human expression and understanding. the writing and art found within these pages serves as a time capsule of modern existence. our student contributors highlight the overwhelming feelings that we sometimes don’t know how to explain, and through their complex narratives, we are able to feel a connection that goes beyond the everyday. within these pages, you will find shared sentiments regarding an everchanging world, and we hope you find kinship with those who allowed us a glimpse into their creative minds. we want to thank all of our readers, who have carried issues of genesis around campus in backpacks and tote bags or gifted copies to their friends and classmates. we would not be publishing our spring 2025 issue without your continuous support. we would also like to thank our remarkable staff of editors, our fantastic faculty advisor sarah layden, and every single contributor who braved the submission portal. thank you for loving genesis. we are honored to share this issue with you. bailey & eli managing editors the plaster tub kat scott "i’m collecting my strength; one day i shall manage without her, and she’ll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me.” -sylvia plath “in plaster” will i never get out? is there only one of me here? this outstretched pale body, it’s enough now. the alternate is certainly better, she is painted and clothed, primped and teetering up to gently brush cheeks. all day long i breathe through her noxious perfume, her wires compress and lift, an automaton. she is folded around me every morning, and i was defeated, because who doesn’t like a gift? i didn’t mind at first, the corners pressed and tucked away. taped closed with revlon and adorned with vanity, over a vanity. every morning she woke me, minutes before the sun, to reflect on my imperfections. what a keen eye, what artistry! she noted my stumbling speech with fond amusement, and prescribed me coffee and tequila _ my treatment. she made sure i was never without, and i appreciated her. i needed her. i wasn’t in any condition to dismiss that. her smiles opened doors, her words slicked chintzy palms while i became a receptacle for long nights gone awry. strays began showing up at our door: fed once, twice and she lapped up the milk i put out, along with them. her rough spined tongue stripped flesh from fingers not quite fleet enough, i had never felt so raw. she wanted me to embrace them: the ones who shriek and yowl from their trucks like they’re in heat, latching bitter eyes as they caress your ass. she thought we were a service. and secretly i began to hate what lay under, so docile and ghastly. the clamor of the bar became a call to arms, a gauntlet, thrown forth with blood and pus streaking stiletto soles. i couldn’t walk for a week: she was so fierce, the shoes so red. 76 77 but my knees are knolly hills now, they flow down to fingerlands and up an untamed valley. she wouldn’t like it there: too much squirrelly brush, too few scabs for our efforts. i had even forgotten how to breathe, always cut short my chest provides the rhythm, though it did all along. i sink down, until my nose crests the way an iceberg drifts— hinting at the beast below. from ray, with love roger terry to be rocketed from this world to a place so fantastic, yet so familiar that it steals your breath away, that is what it feels like to read ray bradbury. his words wrap around the reader, like a warm embrace from the world’s greatest lover. the flow of his prose engulfs one in a wave of pure poetic pleasure. it would be dishonest, though, to hide my fears in regard to his decline in readership. in a time where illiteracy and semi-literacy runs rampant, the world needs its papa ray now more than ever. words, stories can change lives, can change the world. with that in mind, let me tell you all a story about how ray changed the life of a disabled young man, and why he should be remembered into the future as one of the most important authors in history. from waukegan to walt disney world and beyond, ray left an indelible, crater-sized mark during his lifetime. the first time the martian maestro’s name met my ears was in 2010, during the fall semester of freshman english. my teacher, ms. schneider, assigned everyone to read fahrenheit 451. before that, i chatted during lunch with the shop teacher, mr. elliott, who encouraged me to read stephen king during the spring semester of my eighth-grade year. before picking up king’s dreamcatcher, it had been three years since my last book; had been a voracious booklover most of my young life, figured the gap from ages ten to thirteen would not make much difference in my reading speed, but discovered soon after that the act was more of a chore than it used to be. the brain is like any muscle, if not used... well, you get it. took me six months to read through six-hundred pages, put the book down twice. the third time, picked it back up from the shoals high school library and said to myself, “you are going to finish this goddamn book before summer break, and that’s that!” finished with two weeks to spare. as slow as my reading was, the seed of excitement within had sprouted, and my love for the written word began to blossom again. it was during this time, at the age of fourteen, that my creative tools would begin the process of sharpening themselves for the future. by the time ms. schneider’s class came around, my thumbs had turned well over one-hundred pages into my second king novel, under the dome. at the time, there was no interest to read anyone but king, so i didn’t. in class, all the students (those who didn’t try to get away with sleeping, that is) watched francois truffaut’s film adaptation, but even that did not secure my attention at that time. the “bonus features” interview with ray about the creation of fahrenheit did, though. a curiosity for the act of story-making had rooted itself after my bout against the shitweasels, and immediately found myself hooked on bradbury’s every word. by the end of our time with fahrenheit, though, the majority of the students came to dislike it. back then i was curious as to why, but shrugged it off and went back to under the dome. 82 83 soon after, the high school librarian, mrs. lanham, presented her students with a challenge: if enough were to read through the book of her choice, that she would go about bringing in the author of said book, to answer questions. this excited me, the chance to meet my first ever author, live and in the flesh, was an opportunity too good to pass up. so, i picked up the young adult novel she chose, and read it with intense vigor, until around page eighty or so. the book was dreadful. in the end i walked back into the library, tossed the book onto the counter, and said, “as much as i would love to meet the author, i can’t finish this book. it’s awful.” my eyes spied the tagline atop the cover of the book (#1 new york times bestseller) and thought to myself, “that story was that bad, yet it was a bestseller? heck, i can do better than that.” it was at that moment, at the age of fifteen, standing in front of the shoals high school library counter, that i chose to dedicate the rest of my life to the craft of writing, and have done so since. ray left my mind for a while after; his next appearance in my life came at a most somber time for the world. his passing on june 5, 2012, sucker punched me, my eyes locked on a computer screen in mr. dahlen’s media class. a tinge of sadness hit me at the realization that, after all this time, my eyes still had not grazed over his written word. at that moment, i promised myself not only to read his writing one day, but to acquire his works for my own private library. that same class period, my eyes and ears came across a video clip on youtube of ray in santa barbera, california, giving a speech to a bunch of would-be writers on the date of june 24, 2006: a speech that would change my life forever: “you are supposed to be having fun. you are supposed to be living your life! you are here on this world to enjoy yourselves, to be in love. and not to think about it, and not to worry, and not to be unhappy. if you are unhappy, get the hell out of writing then! go do something else. i have no time for you if you are going to be self-conscious. if you are going to ruin your life with thinking. i want you to make your life with feeling... with feeling, with loving. that’s what you’re here for. you’ve been put in the world to love the act of being alive.” those words have lived in my head since, and i’ve tried to live my life by them. i had been a bit unhappy for a time, though. outside of my health issues (which we will get to soon), my first two years of college were tough—the two consecutive rounds of summer school didn’t help, either. my biggest gripe was that it felt like i no longer had the time or energy to read what my mind desired. by the end of the courses, during my second summer in 2015, it left me with two weeks until the start of fall semester. what should i read from my library before the deadline? my question answered itself at the sight of a stack of paperbacks, two of which i’d purchased online before coming home from campus: zen in the art of writing and the october country. the collections mentioned previous have remained among the most influential throughout my life. the essays contained in zen came and went like a fever dream. it was what my inner muse had been salivating for since the beginning of my writing journey. my great ambition back then was to win the bram 83 stoker award for best first novel, and thus i became heavily interested in first projects and publications. so, the first short story picked out to read from the october country (many of which were published previously in a 1944 collection titled dark carnival) was “the lake,” ray’s first published tale that debuted in the may 1944 issue of weird tales. by the end, it felt as if my mind had been pulled fresh from the sea itself, my imagination gasped for air, and what rushed in was loaded thick with metaphor. the remaining stories were consumed two at a time, in a pleasure-fogged daze. after that summer, a main priority of mine became to seek out as many lectures and interviews with ray possible. upon listening to his loves, his passions, i discovered that we are kindred spirits in many ways. whenever he would project his love for libraries and movies, ancient egypt and outer space, dinosaurs and daydreaming, his words would rattle through me with the power to reduce the song of notre dame’s bells to a shameful jingle. the want (no, the need) to acquire his stories rose to an insatiable level. yet, with limited mobility and no internet at home, books that were not readily available at the campus “bookstore” or the usual summer yard sale became hard to obtain. being born with the rare disability adams-oliver syndrome, it has left me with a copious amount of health complications, mobility being one of them—though i can walk a little. which, to think back now, was probably the start of my turn toward literature. the loneliness, the lack of social stimulation. books and films rooted a love of storytelling within me years before the thought ever occurred of pursuing writing as a lifetime endeavor. it was near the end of my third and final year at vincennes university—spring semester, 2017—when a philosophy professor friend of mine, bruce buchanan, took me on a trip that would solidify my love for ray. it was on february 3rd that i pulled myself out of bed, strapped on my leg braces, slid into my wheelchair, and rode over the old brick walkways to the humanities building. a cool, sharp breeze at my back. my six-wheeled steed galloped through the double-doors, past my advisor dr. alderfer’s office, and screeched to a halt outside bruce’s office door that was tacked with numerous sayings from philosophers past. we made the plan to go from his office to bloomington, indiana, to spend the day. it was near the end of my time at vu, so he wanted to take me on an adventure, to a place of unknown pastures for my eyes to watch and wander. so, i parked my wheels inside his office, and off we went. bloomington, being the liberal hotspot in the cultural wasteland known as hoosierstan, was a breath of fresh air for a growing literate. we parked outside an old brick-and-mortar on 122 n. walnut street. in part due to my walking troubles, we kept the trek within a short distance. “take it slow,” bruce said, “we have all day.” after our seventy-four-mile drive, he recommended we stretch our legs a bit. our first stop would become my favorite bookstore. caveat emptor (latin for “let the buyer beware”) is one of the oldest bookstores in indiana and has called the hoosier state home since 1971. from ray, with love 84 85 roger terry upon entering, eons of history raced between my eyes and ears. my ears twitched, the words and wisdoms of people long dead shouted out from their spots on the light-caramel-colored shelves. the first thing we spotted, other than the few other patrons shuffling about, was an old wooden ladder leaning against the first bookcase to our left. not just any ladder, though, but one with its top and bottom connected to a track. a bookworm’s dream locomotive. we began our joyride at the start of the tracks, looped our way around the many bookcases, and touched the spines of every hardback and paperback possible. my fingers touched bindings coated with magic dust, some pages within as yellow and ancient as the blocks of the great pyramid of giza. everything bombarded my senses at once. i found my way to a section of smaller books, all carefully placed in zip lock bags like fine finger-sandwiches. william shakespeare serenaded me, called out to be read, so the first to be pulled from its purgatory was an 1893 copy of the bard’s the comedy of errors. next, my childhood called out to me, and i grabbed a pop-up book called return of the jedi: han solo’s rescue. after rounding the first corner we came to a door on the other side of the room—it stood ajar. “where does this go?” my young self inquired and was told from an aged voice behind me that that was where most of the genre books were kept. with saucer-wide eyes, i leapt into the room, bruce following behind. the walls of the small cubby were crowded thick with horror, science fiction, fantasy. atop the middle shelf, resting in its own little stand, was a coffee-table book titled bradbury: an illustrated life (a journey to far metaphor) by jerry weist. not a book of his stories, but a great start, and thus it was plucked free like a fresh fruit from its limb. after exiting the small space we moseyed to the middle of the room, almost bumped myself into a small, dark wooden case with glass sliding doors. “what’s in this?” the same aged voice as before replied, this time from the lips of an old man with a silver beard who sat behind the counter; his image resembled to me a tolkien-esque gatekeeper of the printed word. his name was john. he said that it contained books not only old, but valuable beyond what my mind (and disability check) could fathom. i shriveled away, defeated, wanting so badly to own something from such a treasure chest. instead, bruce and i walked up to the front counter. “is this everything?” john asked. i stared back at the ladder from the beginning. i noticed, then, that the whole shelf behind the ladder consisted of leather-bound books. “one second,” i said, then went to the ladder. a few rungs up out of reach, my eyes spotted a green monstrosity that seized my soul. being as careful as possible, my feet climbed up one rung, two, three. i reached up, pulled the book from its place, the lights from above reflected off the emerald tomb’s golden gilded edges, like something precious unveiled from the ark of the covenant or equal to. it was a 1980 franklin library first edition of the poetry of robert frost. 85 all of our finds were placed on the counter, paid for, then we put our books in the trunk of bruce’s car. after our sifting through caveat emptor, we decided to walk up the road to 211 n. walnut and rest our legs at an americana restaurant called the b’town diner. we feasted on hometown burgers, fries, but soon found that we could not finish. the kind, somewhat portly lady who served us let us store our leftovers in their fridge until we returned from our next destination. we thanked her, left, and walked to a small shop at the corner of 100 n. walnut. the small shop was called book corner, a bookstore opened in 1964 by james (jimmy) and barbera (bobbie) spannuth. with little money left, there was one goal firm in my mind: our last bookstore. need to find some bradbury. it was then my eyes steadied upon a massive one-hundred-story everyman’s library collection titled the stories of ray bradbury. jackpot. i purchased this copy for $34.24, elated, more than ready to dive in and read ray’s work. after chatting with bruce recently, and upon finding the original book corner receipt, all of these memories came rushing back—the receipt ink, like all things with time, has withered away to almost nothing. my hope is that this essay will help keep these memories alive long after the ink, and my memory, has faded away. we decided not to go back for our burgers (sorry, kind lady). instead, we walked back to caveat emptor, drove down to 322 e. kirkwood avenue, and hung out at a local joint called soma’s coffeehouse & juice bar. a hobbit-hole of a place where one can sit and enjoy the smells of various roasted beans and listen to the chatter of a few campus locals. to the left, upon entering, is a rack full of goodies and a chalkboard with a plethora of drinking options. never having been to a coffeehouse before, i tried to find something close to inexpensive—thus, ordering a double espresso for the first time, i expected to receive a full-sized coffee cup. when a small shot-glass paper cup was placed before me, i felt duped. “what’s this?” bruce smiled and said to drink it, so i did. we drank down our brews, thanked the staff, left, and headed back toward our own campus. upon exiting back out into the cool night air, the brew kicked in, and my body began to sweat out whatever it could. it was dark by the time bruce dropped me off at my dorm in vigo hall, not yet tired, the bitter brew still racing through my veins. ecstatic about the newest additions to my library, i cracked open the bradbury collection and read “the fog horn.” the story follows johnny, a three-month newbie, and the lighthouse keeper, mcdunn, who talks about the mysteries that lie beneath the great ocean depths and says that before johnny leaves tomorrow for solid land, that he has something to show him. “about this time of year... something comes to visit the lighthouse,” and if johnny thought him nuts after, he could leave. the further along in “the fog horn” i read, something from deep within my past began to knock at the back of my mind. from ray, with love 86 87 roger terry mcdunn keeps secret what is supposed to show up at the lighthouse, so they wait. but, not long after, something mimics the cry from the foghorn. then, a monster from some jurassic past rises up from the ocean depths. the monster calls out to the lighthouse, mocks the foghorn. upon finding out, in fact, that the noise is not coming from one of its own, the monster goes mad and begins to destroy the lighthouse. upon reading this, something in my brain clicked. after finishing the story, i pulled up netflix on my television. pokémon, my favorite childhood show, had just been added to their streaming library. my favorite episode as a youngster was, and still is, “mystery at the lighthouse.” the story is about a giant dragonite that rises up from the ocean depths at the sound of a recording of its own voice being played back to it. the dragonite, thinking the lighthouse was a pokémon like itself, greets it and finds out otherwise. it gets mad, destroys the lighthouse, and walks back into the watery depths while roaring out a heartbreaking, lonesome cry. this moment cemented ray bradbury to me as one of the greatest authors to ever live. he had influenced my life before i even knew who he was. ray loved animation, and inadvertently ended up becoming inspiration for one of the greatest episodes in animated television history. not only that, but the episode was also the thirteenth of the season, his favorite number. it goes to show that no matter in what form, great writing transcends all. from january 28th -30th of 2022, i devoured fahrenheit 451 in a single weekend. i loved every page of it. after all these years, why would one go back to a book that so many of my peers disliked all those years ago? because i came to understand that they forgot how it feels to love literature, if they ever felt that love at all. that is why everyone should read ray bradbury. he teaches you how to fall in love with the written word, that really great stories can do so much more than take up space on a page. stories can change lives, alter futures. if not for ray, this essay may not have been, but now it is. my only regret after all these years is that i never got to write ray a love letter; never once got to tell him just how much he meant to my life, whether i knew it at the time or not. even though, each piece of his work is a love letter of their own. with each turn of the page, one can feel ray smiling down from the cosmos. at the end of every story, poem, play, signed off by a well-known hand, our papa sends all his children his best regards and well-wishes with a few simple words, scrawled on a paper-dove’s wings from another world: “from ray, with love!” 87 61 i just now vacuumed up the lavender that fell from the bouquet of flowers i arranged for you so long ago. those tiny purple flakes sat and dried on my carpet for so long that—i think that spot may stay forever mauve, like aberrations in a moving, gloaming sky. i stare, cross-legged on the floor in front of my bed, at this sky, where light beiges mix so beautifully with the dappled singes of the dried lavender leaves, almost like birds amidst clouds between me and the foreboding and soon night. then these images take shape to me, and i see the birds fly away into seas of oranges and blues, and far away the palette blends into thunderous and dark blacks—and whites, and rains then pour from above me, and i look down to see suddenly sand beneath my legs, slowly turning piebald from the worsening summer rains, and i take the sand within my hands and watch it spill from between my webbed and pure fingers, and the clumps where the rain had touched fall out so—displeasingly— but i gaze back up to find the sun dip beneath tumultuous and restless seas, and i go to take my breath and stand before i’m confronted by death and gasp— i see the bouquet before me wherefrom those lavender petals had fallen to the floor, flowers hanging withered from a vase just filled with freshly reclaimed rainwater. christopher cassetty lavender 31 the dress rack stood reliably jam-packed at the very back of the store, past the rows and rows of all other kinds of clothing racks also stuffed to the point of bursting. their contents spilled out onto the white vinyl floor in puddles of cheap polyester and cotton that piqued my curiosity. the best pieces always came from the floor: vintage tripp nyc skirts, handmade velvet tops with dramatic trumpet sleeves any vampire would die again to own—things i encountered in my dreams, but rarely in my waking life. despite the temptation to stop and help the unhappy blue-shirted employees return the items to their respective racks, i headed straight to the dresses. any pitstops would throw my well-established goodwill routine off, and before i knew it the store would be closing, and i would have to drive home in the dark. i’d only stopped in to reawaken my creativity after a particularly mind-numbing day of shuffling around columns outlining the latest celebrity gossip in disturbing detail at work, and it wouldn’t be long before goodwill’s unique old-lady-mothball-perfume odor made my nose itch. that smell bothered me no matter how much time i spent in the store. thankfully, only a few other customers lingered around the store, which meant that i wouldn’t have to put up with people choosing to stand right next to me in an otherwise empty aisle. i stood in front of the disorganized dress display mindlessly flick, flick, flicking through florals and stripes and animal prints, until i came across the inevitable snagged hanger. its clear plastic arm poked out from between some disillusioned college girl’s old neon pink prom dress and a buttercup-yellow skirt suit jackie kennedy would have adored. the hook had caught on the prom dress’s sweetheart neckline before whatever garment the attached hanger held could tumble completely to the floor. snagged hangers had enraged me many times before, so rather than swiping right past it, i parted the prom dress and jackie’s suit to stick it back on the rack. the overworked, underpaid employees already put up with too much to deal with minor annoyances. i jumped back so quickly that my boots gave a high-pitched squeak. “oh my god!” i said. “help, help!” the small, brown-haired woman hanging in the snagged dress said. she was so short that her feet dangled above the ground even suspended from the prom dress rather than the rack, so the hanger crammed in between her shoulders and the dress pressed her chin flat against her chest. she flailed her arms and kicked her feet to no avail—somehow her frantic movements didn’t affect the dress she hung in or the ones around it. that woman did not belong with the dresses. ava russell lady in thread 32 lady in thread “oh my god,” i said again. “hang on—i mean, wait a second, i’ll find someone to help get you down gently.” i turned to yell for one of the employees scurrying around the store, but the woman hissed at me. “no! do you think i would be hanging here if those assholes could see me? you’re the only person who’s acknowledged me in the week i’ve been hanging here.” her voice sounded strained and strangled from the pressure of the hanger forcing her head down, like hands slightly compressed her throat. “what do you mean? of course i can see you—” “i’m dead, you idiot! and i’m stuck in this dress that smells like piss and clam chowder, so get me down quietly before someone sees you acting crazy,” the woman said. now, i believed in ghosts. i absolutely believed in ghosts, but i could not believe i’d found one at goodwill. maybe all those hours of watching cheesy ghost hunting shows and horror movies had finally gone to my head, and the woman would disappear if i closed my eyes for a moment. “hey, hippie girl, what the hell are you doing?” the woman said. well, she hadn’t disappeared. too bad. i assumed her calling me a hippie came from my waist length, blonde hair, or possibly the tiered dress i’d made myself from gray floral curtains. either way, it didn’t matter. i reached out to touch the woman’s arm, expecting my fingers to go right through her pale skin despite the fact that she appeared just as tangible as a living person. instead, she felt like an ice cube: cold, solid, and almost slimy with moisture. i shuddered and pulled back. what would happen if i just walked away? i could push the prom dress and skirt suit back together and leave, and the ghost woman would be someone else’s problem. but what kind of pathetic, weak person would ignore the pleas of someone who’d somehow ended up in goodwill purgatory? that woman didn’t seem very pleasant, but she’d been a living, breathing person before, and helping her would mean i’d taken initiative for once. “alright,” i said. “i’ll help, but beyond getting you down from that rack, i have no idea what i can do for you.” “hallelujah, i get to go home with a hippie,” she said. i’d been reaching out to grab her hanger, but stopped when her words landed. i could accept the presence of ghosts at goodwill, both in the form of otherworldly smells and of human souls. i could even accept that she’d called me a hippie, but bringing a ghost into my home would be an entirely different crisis. “go home with me?” “what, you’re just gonna leave me on the filthy floor? haven’t i suffered enough?” 33 ava russell “so, you want me to—” a disinterested employee wandered by; some greasy teenager fed up with his life. he didn’t look at me, but i shut up regardless. it seemed he really couldn’t see the woman dangling there, since he kept on his not-so-merry way with his head down and his feet shuffling. i continued, keeping my voice barely above a whisper: “you want me to take you home, and then what? hang you up in my closet?” “very funny. no, there’s got to be a way to get me out of this thing and into the great beyond, or down to hell, or wherever i’m going. let’s be honest, i’m probably going to hell, but it has to be better than this,” the woman said. she flailed around again, and i sighed. if a dead person could be so optimistic, then surely i could set my own cynicism aside. “okay. i’ll have to buy your dress to get you out of here. please don’t make me look any crazier than i already do,” i said. “by the way, do you have a name?” “unfortunately.” “well, what is it?” “linda. now, if you’re done flirting with me, i’d like to get out of here,” linda said. how asking for her name counted as flirting, i didn’t know. her attitude was starting to get on my nerves, so i didn’t argue. i grabbed the hanger with both hands to hoist linda down, which turned out to be unnecessary. much to my surprise, her presence in the dress didn’t add any weight to it, though her body moved and folded with it. the layers of pale blue and purple chiffon that made up its skirt swished delicately in my hands, and the diamond applique in the middle of its square neckline sparkled even under goodwill’s gray, fluorescent lighting. its rectangular straps were thick, but not in a clunky way, as was the pastel purple ribbon cinching in the waist. too bad i wouldn’t be able to squeeze that tiny thing on even if i sold my soul. it smelled absolutely rancid, anyway. clam chowder, just like linda had said. linda choked and wheezed all the way to the long, white counter full of registers at the front of the store, where i met the same drowsy-eyed teenager who’d trudged past me earlier. “hi, how’s it going?” i said, laying linda down on the counter as gently as i could. the kid’s shiny, plastic nametag proudly announced him as ‘rebel’ in between sharpied-on bats and spiderwebs. the red streaks dyed in his black hair clashed with the cobalt blue of his goodwill t-shirt. he reminded me of my teenage self—and my adult self, to be honest. 34 lady in thread “is this all for you, ma’am?” rebel asked quietly. he wasn’t disinterested, after all, just shy and timid. like i used to be, before i grew into my uncommon personality and style. my dark clothes and platform boots made me a target for snide comments all through school, but as an adult they drew people to me— outside of my stuffy, over-professional coworkers in graphic design, that was. my team handled the layout of a barely known tabloid magazine, so i didn’t understand why any of them believed they were so prestigious. oddly enough, teenagers seemed to compliment me the most. i prided myself on being a little bit of a fairy goth-mother to the kids who were too afraid to wear their souls on the outside like i did. i’d even taken on a mentor role for a bubbly girl who fawned over my handmade velvet capelet one frigid winter day. we’d become like sisters, the two of us. “sure is,” i said. the way linda’s being interacted with the dress continued to baffle me. if rebel laid the dress down flat, linda appeared to flatten out with it, except for her head and arms. if he folded the dress in half, linda folded in half. it was like crumpling and straightening an invincible piece of paper over and over again. if zak bagans could see that, he’d scream and run for real. rebel scanned linda’s tag, removed the hanger from her dress, and shook open a plastic bag to stuff her in. she grunted and whined while he folded her right in half across the waist and tucked her into the bag on her back. i couldn’t see her all squished up in there, but she probably didn’t look very happy. i handed rebel my goodwill rewards card—if i had to take linda home with me, i would certainly get my rewards points for it—but the machine made a loud, angry beep when he scanned it. “sorry, it’s only my second day,” rebel said. his voice trembled ever so slightly. “it’s okay, kiddo. take your time,” i said. “hurry up, hurry up!” linda hissed from inside the bag. i ignored her. “tell that little freak to move his ass!” “shut up, asshole!” i said. no way in hell would i let her talk about a harmless, insecure teenager like that, even if he couldn’t hear her. rebel froze with his hand hovering over the register screen, glancing up at me with black-rimmed owl eyes now screened by a wall of tears. poor kid probably thought i was about to make his life miserable. “sorry, that wasn’t about you. sometimes i think out loud.” rebel didn’t say another word to me. i left the store with linda in my hand and a heart full of guilt in my throat. i’d avoided doing so many things throughout my life for no reason other than fear and insecurity, and i hated that i might have driven that shy kid back into some reclusive pattern he’d just managed to break out of. i took linda out of the bag to place her in my car so she would be more comfortable—if she could even feel anything—but made no attempt to be 35 ava russell gentle when throwing her down across the backseat. she bounced and threw her arms up dramatically. “jesus christ on a cruise ship!” “sorry,” i said. not really. the atmosphere inside my little silver car felt heavy and awkward. thankfully, my house wasn’t far. should i talk to linda, or just let her stew in her own misery? my first impression of her as rude, pushy, and a bit of a bitch had turned out to be correct, and i usually tried to avoid people like her for my own sanity. silence it would be, at least if i could help it. it turned out the choice wouldn’t be mine. linda opened her big mouth to yap, yap, yap as soon as we came to a red light. “christ, your car is filthy,” she said. “maybe even worse than that dumpy store. i just don’t understand why anyone would ever choose to go in there—” “some people don’t have a choice. some people can only afford to shop secondhand, which you’ve clearly never had to do, linda. and some people just like helping the environment, or saving money, or whatever else.” “jesus, who put that stick up your ass?” “check your attitude, or i’ll turn this car around and donate you back to goodwill,” i said. that shut linda right up, and i thanked my lucky stars for it. elitist snobs had been the bane of my existence for as long as i could remember. from the prissy little rich kids of elementary school to the stuck-up sorority sisters of college, all the way to the professional women in their pencil skirts and ankle-breaking heels, there had always been someone snickering at my outdated, secondhand clothes. i never went hungry as a kid, but my family certainly wasn’t well-off. everything we owned came from garage sales and thrift stores, which i never minded. it taught me how to be resourceful and care for the few things i did own, but it didn’t stop the sting of side glances and cupped whispers from my peers. she’s a trashy hillbilly, they used to say. a freak, a weirdo. those whispers carried with them a hidden meaning: she’s not one of us. now that i had adult money of my own, i continued to shop secondhand partially as a silent middle-finger to everyone who’d ever looked down on me for it. apparently, going to thrift stores would only ever be trendy or cool if you had millions of followers to share your million-dollar hauls with. well, i didn’t have that. i never would have that, and i didn’t need that to enjoy paying a quarter of the original price for clothing that had only been worn a few times before finding its way to me. fast fashion would destroy us all. “my name is juliette, if you care,” i said as we approached the entrance to the small subdivision i lived in. 36 lady in thread “juliette. that’s the name i would have picked if i ever had a girl,” linda said. “really?” “no.” i rolled my eyes. why had i expected anything different from her? “you’re such a ray of sunshine, linda. i hope you stick around forever,” i said. “gee, thanks. i’d love to spend eternity with a lazy hippie like you.” i whipped my car into the driveway of my orange townhouse a little quicker than i usually did, nearly smashing into the bushes next to the path to my front door. linda slid from the backseat and hit the floor with a shout. “the hell is your problem, you little—” before she could hurl another insult at me, i slammed my door. apparently, she got the message, since she merely glared at me as i pinched the straps of her dress and pulled her off the floor. i dreaded bringing that awful woman into my home, but i could always throw her right back out if we couldn’t set her free. maybe she deserved a lifetime in goodwill purgatory, anyway. i brought linda into my cozily cramped sewing room and arranged her in my desk chair as close to a sitting position as i could manage, then took the chair at my sewing table against the other wall. the two chairs were the only surfaces not covered in unfinished projects, or heaps of scrap fabric that i could never bring myself to get rid of. linda couldn’t move beyond the confines of the dress, so her head and shoulders ended up hanging over the back of the chair. even stretched to her full height, she didn’t appear to be any taller than tiny icon danny devito, whose height i could reference thanks to the cardboard cutout of him standing in the corner of the room. the weirdest yet most touching birthday gift i’d ever gotten. it was no surprise that it had come from my mentee, who understood my appreciation for danny devito’s sense of humor and genuine kindness better than anyone else. we might have truly been sisters in another life. linda craned her neck to look around, her eyes glancing over my disorganized fabric stash, cluttered bookshelves, and sewing table. she landed on the shelf of trinkets next to said sewing table, all of it thrifted: little porcelain ladies trailing parasols and coy glances over their shoulders, rubber bats and plastic jack-o-lanterns, and plenty of books. anne rice would always be my favorite. “wow, you’re some collector. where’d you get all those neat little things?” linda said. “i can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic again or not.” “no, no, i mean it.” 37 ava russell “oh. well, i got most of it secondhand. just like i got the fabric this dress is made from secondhand, which you seem to hate,” i said, gesturing to the tiered, tank-style, calf-length dress i’d made myself, under which i wore a ribbed mockneck shirt. the idea for the dress’s design had occurred to me as soon as i saw the sheer gray floral curtains it was made from hanging with the rest of the goodwill linens. “i don’t hate it, it’s just not my style. as you can see, i prefer classy over trashy, but there’s nothing wrong with being the other way around. for you.” trashy. that word seemed to follow me everywhere, and hearing it from linda’s snobby ass gave it even more bite. at that point, i just wanted her out of my sanctuary. “to think i wasted ten dollars on you,” i said. that amount of money could have gotten me an entire stack of books, or sheets and curtains for upcycling. instead, it had gotten me a pig-nosed, obnoxious woman in a dress that smelled so offensively rotten i had to open the one window in the room, which my desk sat against. linda let her head fall back, and she stared at me while i looked out at the street. all those normal people going about their normal days. “are you photosynthesizing?” linda said. “no. why?” “because you’re a hippie. isn’t that how hippies eat?” “i don’t think so. either way, i’m not a hippie, so stop calling me that.” “with all that blonde hair? of course you are. maybe that’s why you can see me and no one else can.” “again, i’m not a hippie, but you might be onto something. i’ve seen ghosts before—at least, i think i have. nothing as solid as you, but maybe being open to the paranormal makes me more likely to experience it,” i said. “what do you think?” “i’m all out of sarcasm, scooby-doo. go ask shaggy.” rather than take linda’s bait, i walked over to my bookshelf to see if i happened to have any guides on banishing nasty jackasses from our realm laying around. no such luck. the closest thing i had was a rather tongue-in-cheek book on the paranormal for children, which, having laughed through it once or twice before, i knew did not contain any information even remotely relevant to my situation. “so. any ideas on how to get you out of that thing?” i said, turning back to linda. she still lay with her head over the back of the chair and her hands limp at her sides. 38 lady in thread “not a one. i’m pretty new to the whole being dead thing,” linda said. i hadn’t considered how she might have died yet. rescuing a ghost from goodwill apparently required my full attention, which i noted in case it ever happened again. if it did, though, i would probably just walk away like i should have done to linda. but how did she die? there might be clues as to how we could free her in that answer. “if you don’t mind me asking, how did you die? you can’t be any older than forty-five, and i don’t see any wounds on you,” i said. “wow, great eye. is it my turn to ask you personal questions now?” “no.” “fine. my idiot husband murdered me. he threw a big, romantic dinner for our twenty-fifth anniversary this year, and he put rat poison in my clam chowder. why would he want to kill someone as stunningly beautiful and intelligent as me? so he could go be with his hot, twenty-something mistress. i knew about her, because i know everything, and he knew i knew, so he killed me before i could kill him.” “were you really going to kill him?” “no. but i sure as hell would have taken everything he owned in the divorce.” “that’s really awful, linda. i’m sorry,” i said. despite my growing dislike for linda, i really did feel sorry. to think that she had slept next to the man who would eventually murder her for twenty-five years! still, my sympathy didn’t mean i was willing to put up with linda’s attitude any longer than i had to. she likely felt the same about me, since she’d called me trashy. with nowhere else to start, we tried several things i’d seen in movies or read in books: burying the dress, chanting bullshit incantations from the internet, lighting candles, even throwing salt at linda while yelling about god and the devil. linda screamed and cried through the last attempt, mostly for the sake of performance, but unfortunately remained bound to the dress. she and i both grew frustrated, and as we stewed in the growing heat of my shrinking sewing room, i had one last idea. “when i was a kid, i read a story about someone putting on a dead person’s necklace and somehow freeing their spirit. or getting possessed. i can’t really remember now, but it’s worth a shot,” i said. linda threw her arms straight up into the air from where she lay on the wood floor. “oh, wow! yes, what a great idea. squish yourself into this dress with me—if you can even fit—and carry me around like a little, pathetic baby—” “listen, you ungrateful bitch, i’m doing everything i can! you think i know 39 ava russell any more about this than you do? i hope you do go straight to hell,” i said. a heaviness shrouded the room, like humidity hanging in the air after rain. linda stared up at me with wide, unblinking blue eyes while i felt as though a crater had opened up in my stomach and sucked all my organs into it. what kind of miserable person would say such things, especially when a trip to hell could really be in the cards? “i’m sorry,” i said. “i shouldn’t have said that.” linda sighed. “but you should have. maybe i would have been a better person in my life if more people talked to me like you just did.” she rolled her head to the side and stared out the window. “truth be told, i was always one mean sonof-a-bitch, and i guess that made people afraid to put me in my place. if i could do it all over again—hell, listen to me. i’m being pathetic, but you know what i mean.” “i guess so.” “let’s try your idea,” linda said. “it really isn’t a bad one, i’m just an asshole.” i slipped my dress off, leaving on my mock-neck and the bicycle shorts i always wore underneath, and carefully grabbed linda by the straps of her dress. undoing the zipper in the back of the dress with one hand was quite the battle, but squeezing that teeny tiny thing on would be a full-on war. i stepped in, tightened my grip on the dress, and prepared myself to pull like linda’s afterlife depended on it. the dress didn’t budge with my first pull. it stuck around my lower thighs and choked linda hard, but she seemed to be pushed tighter up against the fabric than she had been before. my dumb idea might actually work. i squeezed my thighs together and pulled again. the dress gave a couple of inches, then a couple more, and finally i worked it up to the tops of my thighs. as i squeezed in, linda squeezed out, her facial features contorting and flattening as if being shoved up against a pane of glass. seams busted, my skin chafed against the dress, and no way in hell would this work— all at once, our images peeled apart, and linda tumbled forward onto the floor. she still wore a version of the same long, blue and purple dress stuck around my thighs, but now the skirt showed a ghostly green hue and floated slightly above the floor. her loose brown curls shone and swished with every movement she made. “holy shit, i’m a mermaid!” linda said. i nearly cried. “you really are the same height as danny devito,” was all i could think to say. 40 lady in thread linda tucked her knees up to her chest and pulled the world’s slowest backflip, floating through the air like water while i kicked off the physical version of her dress. “oh, i am gonna raise so much hell,” she said. “hey, i wonder if i can touch things now.” linda floated over to my bookshelf and swiped at my favorite porcelain lady; one hunched over a sewing machine, guiding a sheet of fabric under the needle like nothing else in the world mattered. linda’s hand went right through her. “try moving it with your mind,” i said. “sometimes movie ghosts can do that.” “even better.” linda aimed a determined glare at the little seamstress and pursed her lips while we waited in anticipatory silence. had there been any blood left in her, she would have burst a vessel from the intensity of her efforts. i watched the statue as intently as linda, and it began to shudder. the sound of porcelain rapidly clink, clink, clinking joined us in the room as the statue wobbled on its base. “don’t break her!” i said. the shuddering halted abruptly. linda whooped. “i’m a god! you know, juliette, i couldn’t have picked a better hippie to come home with.” “and i couldn’t have picked a better mean bitch to bring home.” “you flatter me. now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m gonna go haunt the shit out of my ex-husband.” you go girl, i thought. in spite of her many, many, many bad qualities, linda’s determination inspired me. she struck a superman pose and floated straight up through the ceiling. i sat down and started work on what would be the first original piece of clothing i ever attempted to sell the very next day. it turned out that freeing a ghost from eternity in a rotting dress could be quite motivating, and the success had been the push i needed to confront my own confinement. i worked a soulless desk job that barely allowed me to contribute anything of value to a dying magazine, surrounded by people who constantly let me know i didn’t belong with them, to avoid struggling the way my family had when i was a kid. for the time being, i needed to keep that miserable job to survive, but that didn’t mean i couldn’t get started on what i really lived for. i didn’t have a storefront to display my one-of-a-kind, handmade clothing in, but the internet could be one hell of a resource for attracting attention. i’d already finished the design sketch, and needed to draft a pattern to execute it. linda’s dress greeted me from the corner of my sewing room, and every discouraging, intrusive thought that had managed to regenerate during work that day melted away once again. a quick dry cleaning had fixed the rotten smell of 41 ava russell the dress, and a few stitches had fixed the busted seams. the dress now adorned an old sewing form standing proudly next to danny devito in the corner where i could constantly see them both. i would always remember the determined glint in linda’s eye as she floated through my ceiling to go wreak havoc, and i hoped to mirror it. something shiny and metallic glittered in the evening sunlight streaming onto the closed lid of my laptop—a beautiful silver necklace with a purple diamond winking in the center of its heart shaped charm. a handwritten note lay beside it: here you go, kid. this used to be mine, back when i had a body. figured i’d better bring you something nice to wear, since that old dress won’t fit you. it’s my way of thanking you for putting up with me, even for a short while, and for giving me the chance to keep ruining my bastard husband’s life from beyond the grave. boo, you old bitch! that’s what i would say to him if he could see me. i’ve already managed to scare his little mistress away, and i’m working on driving him totally bonkers. it’s the little things that count—slamming doors, dumping all of his tighty-not-so-whities out on the floor, turning the cold water on while he’s showering. i wish i could find a way to let him know it’s me. thanks, juliette. i mean it. the necklace would pair perfectly with my new design: a lace-up, off the shoulder gown with a bodice covered in jewels and a skirt drowning in layers and layers of pale blue and purple chiffon, lovingly called the linda. 161161 heard about your second life, found the writing on your facebook wall. a wall between us, where fissures hide behind lines of neat prose, typed above idyllic photos of you in some faraway fairyland, where money, your currency for love, buys you the life you always dreamed of. i cried when i read the status, not because you were no longer mine. i cried because you chose again to put us, your family, in second. were we another achievement? left behind and succeeded? replaced, not because we’re not enough, i know better, but because you “fell in love.” how much love does one person need? is love, like money, a kind of greed? you amount to more than money. we want you, we’re starving for someone who doesn’t exist. for someone who puts us first, the ones you pledged to provide. the ones who know you’re dying. time is finite, yours is ticking. your final breaths are all we want, your final words, hugs, and kisses. the last of your wasted minutes. so when our children ask, we can say, “gone is the man, but his love remains.” hayden garris second place 52 on plato and humanity payton foster i get caught in the throes of you so often that i forget what is me and what is you. blurring occurs beneath layers of linen and under the dense cover that is night that makes us indistinguishable. i long to stay with you forever this way, us two melding and becoming seamlessly one. like what the ancient greeks thought to be the first humans. i think the gods would be jealous enough to want to split us in the end too. which is maybe why even though we want to be one we will stay two. to respect the divinity that made us separate. always longing to be whole again. 147147 welcome, one and all, to the heart of ohio! where we have, or have had, every! conceivable! thing! we have been through hell and come out singing! welcome, travelers from distant lands, to the bleeding heart of ohio! where time spills out backwards and unravels in our revolving doors! in our vast showroom, world-class, unique, and labyrinthine, we have seen and will yet see every object of human manufacture, from the earliest mammoth-bone calendars to the exhausted machinations of the automated factories of this! poisoned! earth! we have your future at the heart of ohio! every paper shredded, every body burned, all these things—and more! half off at the heart of ohio! corlan mccollum heart of ohio 2828 lisa’s speech has slowed but her laugh is the exact same. imagine blowing bubbles and twirling with bare feet, grass between your toes, it smells like day. one floats to you, chooses you, caresses your palm and reflects colored light back to you—blues, purples, pink. you give this bubble more courtesy than a butterfly wing, you watch the bubble pop and the mist ghosts over your shins, tickles the baby hairs and seeps into your skin. the form of her joy may change, but it is a perfume you rub into your pulse points, keep it close to your collar, take a hit whenever you see a color. a stranger says, “something smells good,” and you say, “it is day.” lisa’s joy cannot be washed away, not even when her “invasive and mean and terrible” cancer eats away at her brain. in spite of this, her laugh is the exact same. lisa’s speech, as i’m used to, is quick; a lightning strike across the sunniest sky—and isn’t it just ironic that she is a cancer? she is a woman of the moon, and she would have had the hair to show for it. a woman who was excited to grow old, grow her hair down her back and watch it fade from black to gray. she was looking forward to a full head of silver one day. the chemo and radiation won’t steal her hair, but they will have to shave it anyway. she likes to light candles for people struggling. once, i lost my mother’s class ring. she told me she lit one for me after i came to work saying, “it was where i always kept it.” the day of her emergency brain surgery i lit one for her, not quite because i believe in that myself, but because she does, and she would have done it for anyone else. lisa found a pot shaped like a snail and thought of me. she jumped up and down like a child and hugged me. my friend recorded it. her laugh is the exact same. her mobility—well. evan allee from seeing lisa dying 29 so you wake up on a saturday and you can’t use your right hand. brows furrowed, writing scribbles, aiming for loopy handwriting, getting spiraled shells of gastropods. they glare up at you in pink gel ink. lisa called me tonight. she must have known i was worrying. i haven’t heard from her since mother’s day. she changed my name in her phone to my new name, and she couldn’t remember what she put me down under. she said she had lost me. “i’m so happy i found you,” she said when i called back. i missed her call by a minute and a half, but now i have her laugh preserved in a voicemail, if worse comes to worst. her speech is lagging near the end of it, but her laugh, the same. this high pitched, melodic thing, congruent to her maiden name, though she didn’t like to sing. “did you get my happy birthday text?” i asked. “yes!” she said. “i have been so bad…at answering. i lose words . . . so easily.” for a woman who has always been so full of them, this is jarring. this is a woman who wanted to be a grandmother more than anything. she tells her sons to hurry up and have grandbabies—she always talks about how much she wants grandbabies—because, “we’re not sure how much longer i’m going to be around.” this is a woman who wanted to have chickens again someday. a woman who wanted to have a vegetable garden again. a woman who taught me everything i know about plants; this five-foot encyclopedia of botanics. she won a competition for that, once. she answered all but one question correctly. she was so pissed. when people don’t believe my advice for why their peace lily is exsanguinated, it feels like a disrespect to a legacy i was bestowed. i no longer have the privilege of checking with my source. of calling her and asking, “what is this plant that came in today?” she would tell me, and she would say, “here is how you take care of it. send me pictures as it grows.” and of course i’m going overboard, i do that often. as you see, i’m already talking about her in past tense, as if she’s dead. i get ahead of myself. i think, “i haven’t written in a while. i should try to soon,” and the next day, lisa calls me, and her voice is slow like a tiny hole in a balloon. lisa laughs at her mistakes and finds ways to make people smile. she laughed at herself on the phone and she tried to laugh in person when she lost her words— 30 “it’s the … um . . . . . . . . . . . . the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oh, haha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . over on . . . the . . . . . . . . . . . . .the. . . uh . . . . . . . . . . . . you know?” and i say, “yeah, lisa, i know.” i blow air into a punctured balloon. my jokes fly over her head, screeching as they deflate. the balloon weighs nothing, but its carcass lands with a deafening quake. i don’t know if lisa believes in reincarnation or an afterlife, i don’t know what the fuck is real and what is fake, but she will find me again. under any name, in any life. as a mother or a stand-in when mine lives across the country. a woman i meet once and never see again, but if that’s how it has to be, then so be it, as long as i see her once. and if that were the case, i would probably think about her every now and again and wonder, “i wonder where she’s at today. i wonder if she remembers me. i wonder if she wonders if i remember her.” and will she remember me, when cancer invades the part of her brain i live in? at the very least, lisa, will you remember to haunt me? lisa likes ancient history and those videos of major home renovations; the estates. mapperton live, restoring ancestral homes and shit. the in-ground, 200 year old, algae infested pool becomes sparkling new— as sparkling as concrete can be. she pulls the video up on her ipad to show me. they added twelve plant islands to the pool and lisa teaches me about hydroponics. lisa tells me about this game she’s playing, and she’s the top player this week. and the next. she won a prize. it helped her collect the key to unlock the next room of grandma’s mansion. there are cracks in the tile, cobwebs and broken furniture, fucked up wallpaper, and work to do—at least there was something to do. her hospital room was barren. there’s a puny screen attached to her bed, with a knock-off bob ross painting a landscape on mute. “this is so stupid,” she laughed at the hospital. “this is so stupid,” as she’s sobbing in pain. “i love you so much,” smiling at the hospital. 31 title of piece “i love you so much,” crying at home. “this isn’t fair,” after six hours of her organs wringing themselves like wet rags. “this isn’t fair,” and, “why?” and, “why?” what i learned from seeing lisa dying is that death has no bias, and there is no fairness when you are tucked in its bed. there is no way to make this satire. there is no joke i can crack or information i can scour for, just some books at a resale store. i don’t know if she’s capable of reading anymore. which, it’s funny i focus on that, because she wanted to collect the first edition nancy drews. the grosset & dunlap issues, starting from the 1930s. she only got one. i have no idea if it’s a first edition. she mostly has editions from 1986 to present day. i have no idea if they are first editions. they were on a top shelf she could not reach. she asked me to put the books i bought her right on her tray table. will you remember to read them? will you remember it was me who got them for you? will you be able to see the words through the black and red pounding of your skull? fairy tale. the last apothecary. the unfamiliar garden. did i supply you with the last book you ever read? did you enjoy it? did you even have a chance to read it? were you even able to lift it? holding a cup of water, your hands shake like you have parkinson’s— jesus fuck, would i rather you had parkinson’s, and then i would not have to remember you. yet here i am, remembering you, and cursing dr. james parkinson for not coming to visit you. she is so slow and small and crying for relief she doesn’t get. she gets legal heroin in a dropper and it tastes like shit. it’s the last thing she will ever drink and it looks like tar, she says it tastes like it too. she is crying as i close the door and i am not real and she is horizontal and bedridden and staring at the white ceiling like it is the bright light before death, or the retina-scorching center of a candle flame, or whatever you believe in, lisa, 32 i don’t know, i don’t care as long as it helps with the pain. even though we know this is the last time, i say, “i’ll see you,” and she says, “i love you,” and we know it is the last time and she has said too many goodbyes and i say, “i’ll see you again.” so i will memorialize her in my neatest, handwritten ink, spray paint her on streets and become a knock-off banksy. but i’m not doing it for activism, it’s the link to a gofundme, as if funds will bring her back from the brink of an agonizing death. headaches and blown veins and heavy breathing and then none at all, holding air in lungs that stutter, waiting on the “okay” from a tumor that steals a life more violently than an armed robbery, swelling her brain, overtaking 35 years of marriage and knowledge and so many amazing things. she’s an expert of greenery and blooms and she knows it’s hard, but you absolutely have to smash the snail eggs in your tomato starts. “those fuckers are so invasive,” she says, “they can tear an entire ecosystem down.” how is it that her brain became the green tomato cursed to never ripen infested with pests that gorge themselves on the flesh of what she grew? and what is the purpose? what is the purpose then of all the knowledge, of all the dreams she possessed? silver hair and a vegetable garden and chickens and nancy drew and grandbabies. she does not ask for much, just to live. is this just another gluttonous purge of precious growth; another oasis burned to ashes and shards of bone to fill a silver and black urn? what i learned from seeing lisa dying is that death can be a paradox of damnation and salvation. lisa taught me this as she squeezed my hand and her pounding temple and pointed at five orange bottles with her eyes. she spoke very clearly. she said, “maybe it would be better if i just got it over with.” lisa, you died today so i watered my plant. 33 title of piece took the 10-inch philodendron outside and drowned it. stepped barefoot in the puddle it left and saw you standing with your face up to the rain, arms outstretched at your side, swaying. it was the philodendron xanadu, in the araceae family which has almost 4,000 species (you were thrilled to share this information with me). the xanadu. the one i’ve been neglecting since i got it. i think i got it to remember you. i visited you to remember you and when i came back i couldn’t look at it. i almost let it die, like all of the brown plants in your room. before i learned that you died today, i woke up sick. my chest has been heavy all week, i know why. i hoped it was the seasons changing but it was a dust storm migrating from arizona, carrying your name in scribbles. when i learned that you died today i was in the hot car after a hike. i don’t go on hikes. i was expecting it to be more like a trail, but it was a hike, and i was outside, your favorite. i was walking for a long time, swinging in trees and sprinting through creeks you would have loved to see. i was outside and it was green. there was a calm breeze, and you were dying, and i had a feeling. lisa, you died on a beautiful day. it was colored with your approval: green leaves, blue sky, pink and purple flowers, and the smell of the soil was so strong, and it all reminds me of you. the day did not blind me. it was perfect; bright enough for me to climb trees and a huge hill with spindly roots like stairs. i heard you saying, “oooh, you better be careful.” i heard you saying, “i lit a candle for you.” and i can write about grief until it stretches to your premature grave, i can extract every memory of you like sap from a maple tree, make them into a book. the spine will be blue cloth, the pages brown with age, but god dammit, you will know it is a first edition just by looking at it. you will open it to the middle, stick your face in and sniff the old book smell we love. you will know which tree i harvested the paper from. you will have carved your name into it with loopy handwriting. 189189 where did you get it? the one that reflected my rosewood lips, draped over my face like a rosary and slipped in my mouth like communion. does sativa still turn your cheeks red like the cherry burning in your bowl? does it remind you of mine after a hit or two? in the smoke, do you picture our faces? or has the haze swiped your mind. is that why you resurfaced on my phone? did the look in her eyes remind you of mine? responding to you now just feels like a waste for your absence has made my heart stronger. so, was the grass greener on her side? or is it fading like the ungodly olive colored bomber jacket i borrowed one night? is it wrong if you still linger in my mind? dayanara guzman gold cross chain 58 16” x 20” graphite pencil robert smith marina 30 modern medicine kayla mcveigh the room looks different this time. old frumpy furniture with threadbare cushions has been replaced with sleek modern benches that are resistant to wearing down. likewise, the staff seems to have been upgraded to young doctors and nurses with plastic skin. the room is still framed by three walls and a sliding glass door peeking from behind a curtain the doctor left pulled back slightly from earlier during his mandatory pop-in. the curtain is new and a different color from the one that was here when i first arrived. this medical curtain is so fresh it hangs with folded creases still visible from its days pressed and packaged tightly in a warehouse facility, waiting to be ordered. the tubes and equipment they inserted and hooked up to me smell sterile and of saline. a needle from my iv is pinching with a cold sensation where it is taped to the flesh of my arm and tethers me to the room through a bruised vein. the needle’s plastic wrapping still lingers on the speckled countertop, torn open but not yet discarded. a beeping monitor is watching my vitals. it rhythmically fills the room with an auditory reminder of my decline. the room not only looks new, but it also feels new, much like the crisp atmosphere of a model home. despite the efforts of baking sheets, the prospective homeowners see through the deceptively warm gooey cookies that are trying to feed them the lie of a home. convincing as chocolate chips might be, the buyers always know better. they see the space around them—it is lifeless, an artificial prop of the real thing. the screen facing me clicks black after a long period of inactivity. its shiny and metallic construction is fitting with the hospital’s emphasis on innovation. examining my reflection in the blackness of the screen, i can see one thing out of place in this room. he told me my kidneys are failing with the stench of coffee wafting off his breath. his story is that of 5:00 a.m. yoga and nonfat cappuccinos. my body, however, tells the story of illness and death. my ailment is the last archaic feature of this state-of-the-art room, nonresponsive to groundbreaking treatments in plastic packaging. when i finally give way, i will be a fossil that my doctor will raise his hands over, joined with his fellow johns hopkins graduates. they will celebrate one more step into the modern age as my body is wheeled away. the room will be prepared for a body more receptive and willing. they will praise the miracles of modern medicine. 106 the last time i saw you alive, death was creeping up your throat, taking you from the inside out. it didn’t steal you quietly in the night, but suffocated you slowly, taunting you, offering you peace for the briefest of seconds before tightening its grip around your throat, causing you to sit up and cry in pain. i saw the blackness in your mouth, death’s residue, inky as tar and engulfing your gasping breaths, leaving nothing for you, but your dying. you’re dying, and now, like a good daughter, i sit beside your bed and hold your bony hand still full of parental strength and power, and i give you permission to leave the torture, to surrender yourself, and melt into the dark, viscous pool, an offering to end your suffering by crossing the river styx. but you fight me, and you fight your dying like you have a choice, like the odds are in your favor, but death’s laugh lingers, rattling from your chest, contorting your face, so that the last time i saw you, your dying was your last victory. kim kile your dying 183183 hayden garris i am two voices alone in the night, a crescendo of whispers with a double entwined. one half my agent of despair and my other whose role is repair. identities only in name, evolving with the goal of keeping me sane. where is the other piece? my truest self to keep the one i crave. did it survive when i became a war of two halves never restrained? all of me wishes to unite the faces of a coin, the walls of a proud facade, crumbling beneath the weight a whole will never contain. duality 138 i remember my baby cradle it had white netting and white sheets and a white blanket to envelop me colorless and drab sometimes i would ask for color in the only way i knew how i would scream, and the world would only scream back when i grew older, they gave me two colors, as a reward i got blue, for being good and green, for staying quiet i got hungry, i got tired and i screamed at the world again it gave me colors to shut me up paints in purple and pink i couldn’t eat the colors couldn’t sleep on them, either and when i cried again, they took my green away i tried to hush myself and ask for food instead but they took the blue away, too to teach me not to complain as i became an adult learned to feed myself, clean myself paint my own way i learned all the different colors and their names and i knew when i saw pink again that it would hurt. that it would scream. i plastered my walls with it anyway can’t say i was surprised when the walls began to bleed. selma adie the cradle 6565 father, i confess to a faltering faith. for i’ve bore witness to your saint magdalene for sale on east 38th. money for pleasure, a biblical feint. the virgin mary carries latex love, a sanitized and sultry slut. there is no god in the blue above— but on her knees stays the beaten mutt. a pimped out sinner sold for an eighth, adorning only her habit of self attaint. choral hymns stink of catholic wraith, breath that reeks of poor self restraint. father, i confess to sins hereof. my act of contrition washed down with rotgut, deliver me absolution from the lord above, “go in peace, you heretic smut.” elise dobson in the shadow of magdalene 129 my father, regal as an obeah man sculpted out of wood from a scared tree of no name, no place, or origin stands before me. he says “uchi, bones of my bones, eat. your ebony cup half full. open wide– golden child of the sun. remember, you are the tongue of your ancestors. way back in africa, sap running dry. your belly ready to sail icy seas like a torn page from a book. eat.” our dutch oven clicks, sending a mountain to stir a pot of cane sugar, water, molasses, and snow peas. thick branches shake, falling into cherokee land and someplace else lost. all legends in night light. my father sweats in a world of corpses and the undertaker says no truth follows the negro. clogging up rivers, muffling jambalaya rhythms riding sweet bass strings, and i hear centuries carcasses of the dancing drums. saloni dixon no dinner 29 all i see is red anna corso oil paint, acrylic, and joint compound on wood; 22.5”x2.5”x24” 103 is a zombie. a grotesque corpse, brainless and feeding on what it lacks. its movements are rigid as rigor-mortis is battled by whatever bacteria, virus, parasite, poison, or personality that forces their inhuman form. little larvae are always attracted to them, the stench of decay follows dilapidated bone structures and liquified internal organs. a wiggling mass flocking like a cloud of crows coming to consume, reproducing solely sustained on rot. what goes first: the zombies head, heart, or humanness? the change is irreversible so it’s irresponsible to let them take any more of your precious air. it’s neither yours nor their fault they’re this way; why the sword ended with you on the hilt and them on the silver, shrieking. discarded and destitute, the undead wander without aim clawing each other for whatever scraps are found. the barricaded built starting with balsam, then brick. as more became infected, the protected passively grew from natural progression. now basalt separates the beasts from the boasts of normalcy. yes, a zombie is just a zombie; a grotesque corpse, brainless and feeding on what it lacks. clayton hunsader a zombie 11 she told everyone – whether they were listening or not – about how she couldn’t wait to get out of there. she had decided a while back that she would do more than dream about her new life that awaited her in the city. she would train, and she would escape. along her quiet country road, she’d kick up dust with the turning wheels of her more-rusty-than-red bicycle. everyday she would trek down the bumpy gravel driveway to become one with the long yellow dashes on the road. she would shoot at lightspeed towards the city, the dashes blending into one continuous line. her blue and yellow striped shirt whipped in the wind, clinging to her sweaty shoulders. she was sure she was moving so quickly, biking so fiercely, that her shirt must have looked green to the onlookers lounging on their porches. old mrs. thomas who brought her dinners, dr. greene who had explained what a period was, sheriff bill who brought daddy home sometimes and other times took him away. sometimes she could hear someone’s yell getting lost in the wind behind her. asking where the hell she was going in all that rush, or asking about daddy. she didn’t have time to answer any of them. she knew she would need to reach indianapolis before anyone could realize she was gone. breathing more deeply the more rapidly she turned the disintegrating pedals, focusing harder to ensure she would make it. a mere 32 miles stood between her hometown and the city where her aunt lived. every day she saw the same sights, timing the seconds between each one. she always held her breath biking past the cemetery and the peeling blue barn. it wasn’t quite haunted but she’d spent enough time disappearing there that it may as well have been. she went to that barn, climbed up to the loft where the windows were permanently open and would watch the sun finish setting. but that was only when daddy had a bad day, and he didn’t always have those. there were some nights when he plodded through the doorway merrily, leaning against the dark floral wallpaper, with rosy cheeks. he would grumble at her to make him a g&t while he made his way over to the record player mama had left behind. thumbing through a stack of vinyls, he shouted that it was time for her to rack up the goddamn pool table. and those were the good nights at home. she did worry though. about what daddy would do when he eventually smashed his last highball glass – daddy had an affinity for crushing objects against the basement’s peeling wood paneling, especially when he sunk the 8 ball in a pocket too soon. when that finally happened, she worried about the suddenly-shortened lifespan of the beautiful green-tinted juice glasses that were also left behind by mama. ruthie barakat miles per minute 12 miles per minute school was almost out and the pool would soon open up, transitioning the small town into another summer. it was almost june, and the summer solstice was to be the day. the longest day of the year. she would need every second of that day to get to the rest of her life. to her aunt in the city. she hadn’t seen her in a while – a long time it felt like – but she knew her aunt would be okay with her showing up. she had told her so the last time she came to visit. “you been doin’ okay, sweetie?” aunt emmy had asked, eyeballing daddy from across the room. he had been stumbling more than usual but cursing more quietly. she’d processed the question as she’d rushed over to pick up the newspaper that had fluttered to the ground, and responded habitually. “we’re all okay, he’s always like this.” her aunt had nodded her head with hesitation, as if she could really understand. “mmm,” she’d continued, “alright, honey. if you ever need anything you just call now. i can be here in no time. i know things have been different lately – hell, i’m not even sure what things were like before. but you’re not alone, hear me?” she had responded by giving her aunt a hug, thankful to have been so close to a warm, perfumed body. she’d wanted to say so, she wanted to thank her, but all she could do was cry into the hem of her aunt’s faux fur jacket which smelled a little bit like mama. she had figured her aunt just felt bad for her. aunt emmy’s sister was the one who left her daughter behind, dooming her to a life of loneliness in a loudness that always surrounded her. “reckon you oughta be headed back to all those lights now, huh emmy?” her father had spat the words out like venom. the slurring of his words had seemed to scatter their meaning. “why don’t you sit down, stu?” the way her aunt had challenged daddy made her tense up. did she not realize she couldn’t talk to daddy like that? mama had known. she had been reminded lotsa times. she had watched mama beg daddy to stop repeatedly, to put down the bottle, but he never would. she knew aunt emmy wasn’t prepared for his wrath, how could she be? aunt emmy didn’t know what she knew, what she’d seen. she’d pleaded with her aunt, for both of their sakes. “please, it’s fine. he don’t mean it, aunt emmy. he just gets this way sometimes.” she had glared at daddy with daggers while she’d spoke. 13 ruthie barakat “nobody should get this way, ever.” then daddy had gone ahead and proceeded to get that way. his voice had carried over the endless cornfields. the last surviving plates from the green-tinted set had met their untimely demise. mama’d only been gone a couple weeks and daddy had already finished off the salad bowls, too. she had always swept up the gleaming shards, watched daddy leave or pass out, then she would take off on two wheels that shook as she picked up speed. but that time daddy hadn’t passed out and instead of him leaving, sheriff bill had shown up. at the height of daddy’s hollering, aunt emmy had calmly walked to the kitchen and dialed the police. by the time he’d known she had done this, sheriff bill had already been knocking on the front door, interrupting daddy’s rage. they’d then stood and watched daddy do what he always did best: lie. aunt emmy had watched as daddy had assured the sheriff that, like she had told her aunt, everything was fine. as she biked down roads that only she knew about, she contemplated the idea that she was a liar just like her daddy. she should have said everything wasn’t okay, that aunt emmy could save her – had to save her – that sheriff bill should take her away from daddy. but she hadn’t. she was afraid. she was afraid of daddy and she was also afraid of leaving daddy. daddy, who mama had already left, who was still there for her. she remembered how mama had looked at her the night she crept past her bedroom to the front door. she had looked in at her wide-eyed child and shook her head with impending repentance. she had said goodbye, babygirl and told her to take care of herself and then added daddy, too. she wished every day she had asked to go with mama. but she hadn’t. so after sheriff bill’s cop car and aunt emmy’s buick had galumphed out of the gravel driveway, daddy had cut the phone line so nobody could call 911 anymore. eventually the days got warmer and she got stronger, angrier, fueled by the idea of burying her face into one of aunt emmy’s soft, flowy sundresses and inhaling deeply. she prepared herself for salvation every day, smelling the sweet country air mixed with the scent of diesel as she got closer and closer to the city. but each time the skyline was about to appear, she turned around, and headed back to daddy with lead legs. but not for much longer. this time she wouldn’t look back. she picked up her aluminum chariot from the overgrown grass in the front yard, hearing its pieces squeaking and rotating into place. gears, chains, handlebars. everything was set, her long awaited liberation finally underway. she gathered dust flying down the driveway, it followed her as she turned onto the infinitely stretching state road. the dust swirled around her as she blew past 14 forgotten stop signs, it provided her with a sooty cloak as she whizzed past the sheriff station. through the dust, she pictured the indianapolis skyline opening up for her. she imagined the magnificent cluster of skyscrapers welcoming her home. she could hear the gentleness of aunt emmy’s voice cradled between the hum of cars stuck in traffic and the ambience of the nightly talk radio. the sun was setting at her back, soft pinks and purples painting the sky overhead. for the past few hours there had been no noise. no sounds other than her steady breath and the soothing clank of her bike chains. slicing through her soundless bubble of triumph, on and immediately off, was the quick flip of a siren. sweating and breathing heavily, she pedaled faster. she pedaled faster than she ever had, fast enough to get clear across the country if she wanted. she was almost there. the car pulled up slowly next to her – not even breaking a sweat to match her fervid pace. “hey kiddo,” sheriff bill said, “i figured you’d be heading this way.” 141 she brushes through the knots in her hair, she opens the curtains and lets in the light, giving away all she has to spare, she bites her tongue in spite. the wolves rip and tear her apart, but she still finds herself going into the woods, holding onto everything in her pretty little heart, hoping to find something good. the monsters that once seemed so cruel now bring her to her knees. she feels like such a fool, hating herself for how much she pleas. another day, another month, another year, afraid that every great thing will disappear. she closes the curtains and turns off the light. she feels so uncertain, is this all worth the fight? the fires she lights start to burn, will she ever change, will she ever learn? she offers herself on a silver platter, will they even notice, will it even matter? she finds pieces of herself to carve, will i look prettier if i starve? she tells herself that this life is so sweet, feeling the faint way her heart beats, pretending that she does not lie down in defeat, her mother asks her when she will eat. she tells her mother she is fine. she will always deny. her mother tries not to cry. the cycle repeats. sarah seigel the process of healing 128128 1. ask yourself, “why is it called masturbation?” swallow that curiosity. you have lived many lives within one, so be mature. you cannot be stuttering and flushing over those four syllables when others require your utmost attention. you have healed enough to know it’s not so much the act itself. moreso the act of acknowledging how the weird feeling lives in the area of your body where desire should be. you try and try to exterminate it from that area, because you don’t think that normal people get those wires crossed. but in the same way termites are programmed to eat through the barriers of a shelter, you are the way that you are. you can’t let the weird feeling make a home there. it will eat right through the foundation. you’ll think about the word masturbation for a bit too long. you’ll think about it, and how it feels on your tongue, and how you’re more curious about it than interested in it. you want to study it. it is highly likely these thoughts will kill the precarious mood. don’t let it. you cannot let it. we all know what happens when curiosity gets the best of the cat, so let the cat get your tongue. you have things to do—not things to prove. and you need a place to work. 2. protect the purity of the stuffed animals. turn them around. hide them under the covers. you don’t want them to look at you differently after. you know they are not sentient, but you tense at the sense of any eyes on you. 3. cut the engine. kick it for good measure. this is an exchange between two rusty gears; can’t crank one out with the engine sputtering. if it’s smoking, kick it again. if it’s hissing, you’re as ready as you’ll ever be. do not overkick—i know it’s hard to hold back. there’s a lot of resentment there; the thing is a piece of shit. i know it’s only 23 years old and stunted in adolescence, but most of the time it gets you where you need to go. be thankevan allee an alleged asexual’s 20-step routine best of creative nonfiction 129 ful it hasn’t imploded yet. 4. think about how, if you were doing this with someone, you would need safe words. no crazy shit. really. nothing crazy. just the basic, spur of the moment, extemporaneous, yes i love this, no i’m not scared—green, wait, red. you can’t speak more than one syllable during sex, and your mouth refuses to form the word stop. 5. glasses off. you imagine too much with glasses on and nobody present to point them on. you need to be in your head enough to focus, but out of your head enough to enjoy it, without the worry that you won’t enjoy it alone or with another person, and what does that say about you? tuck that question away for later—remind yourself that you have nothing to prove. 6. imagine fantasy partner. fantasy partner needs no introduction. they know what to do. ease into it. work up to it. it’s not a race, but this time you’re winning. 7. do the thing. on your back—never from the back. no. nobody is there, of course. and yes, you’re ace, but you still need a face to fill your fantasies, so you have to pretend you’re looking at one. when you catch your mind wandering—like phantom hands or the cacophonous reverberations of ceramics and glass and precious artifacts shattering— fantasy partner would pause. they would push your glasses up your nose and ask, “alright?” and you’d nod, or negate, because now that you’ve admitted to a partner that you can barely do sex, and you’ve hypothetically found a partner who cares more about you than doing sex with you, you’re comfortable enough to tell the truth; you shake your head. (you have to think about having sex as doing sex because doing sex is an objectively silly way to say having sex, and you always make situations silly so you don’t do something incriminating, like cry, or freeze, or [flash back and] accidentally deck them. then you would cry, because the empathy was not stolen 130 from your body, and sometimes people love you, even when you pretend you do not love them too.) fantasy partner wouldn’t view this commonplace as a nuisance, because fantasy partner would give a fuck about you, and whether or not you’re stressed during sex— —hey. focus this is is a why does it feel like that fucking sensory ugh this is taking too long nightmare betterthings to do with mytime ohfuck i have homework whyisthis taking so ok focus much time and now i’m coldthisistaking too long nothingtoprove focus now i’m thinking about how i cold isntthissupposedtobe sexy whywould need to focus they call it masturbation such an unsexy word why do i feel scared all i’m thinking i’m have nothing to prove of the sudden thinking im thinking i’m thinking stop should i regard that imthinkingimthinkingim thinking what is the origin of the word masturbation why so cold nervous surelytheyknowithasthesameenergyasmoist is it honestly moist doesn’tbotherme as much nervous as other people imsurprisedabout that it’s fuckingfreezing but i can’t do this under the blanket becausetheniwon’tbeabletousetheblanketasablanketbecausetheblanketwillremindmeofthisandireallylikethisblanketbutwheni’mdonewiththiscannotthinkaboutthisbecausetheblanketisabayonettowieldwhenthat weird feeling comes after i do or don’t or might have or couldn’t— that feeling. that shameful . . . not–shame. that you should be able to enjoy your own pleasure shame. 131 title of piece that but it’s okay if you don’t shame. that you should bring that up in therapy shame. that get up and run shame. that if you don’t fight it you can still deny it it’s not like it’s violent shame. that “are you suuure?” shame. that stay still get through it shame. that oh. sandpaper shame. that you don’t need to feel ashamed shame. that it’s been eight years why are you still ashamed shame. that you need to give yourself a break shame. that why does it feel like it happened yesterday? shame. that why did i let that happen to me? shame. that do not think like that. shame. that do not think like that shame. that why are you blaming yourself? shame. that no—why are you blaming a fucking kid? shame. that you were just a kid shame. that you were just a fucking kid shame. 8. shame. it is buried under a plethora of names. it stems into branches of manageable feelings like guilt or embarrassment or rage or depression or anxiety or envy or burnout or fucking nothing at all, but at the end of the day, the tree is thriving and you water shame’s gnarly roots with the tears you refuse to shed—and you’ve had eight years to realize that removing the stump is not a one-man job. 132 do you realize that? can you please realize that? 9. rejoice. you did it. you got through it—you finished, one way or another. now, imagine someone there to take care of you after. they know what to do, because they asked, and they can read body language pretty well, and they listen to you. they treat your body like an altar, or some other cliché to convey that they respect you. but you’ve never been holy. you cursed the priest at your baptism. you were three. you were overwhelmed and overstimulated and he had to flick the holy water onto your face like you were the spawn of satan. you’ve been damned from the start. once, you were reading a book and the love interests talked about body worship and you know that you would fuckin’ croak if that was attempted. you can barely take a compliment—and not in the batting-eyelashes, hand waving, coy playing, oh no, stop, no way, way, but the, worship seems like a ploy for someone to get their way, way. someone who is not you. someone whose definition of worship is the reason you navigate a warship on what should be a calm sea under clear skies—yet there you are, hypothetically, safewording red during vanilla sex because the steering cable for the helm was snapped. [you are a kid again. it happened. and you’re smoking cigarette butts in the bathroom of the mother of the kid you’re babysitting, and the frogs are screaming in your place, and you catch your own eye in the mirror, and you say oh. and the mirror splits down the middle just as your smile cracks your face in half. shards clatter to the tile and expose the catastrophe behind the fourth wall. it is first dead you, in that pink knit sweater, locked in the script between pale lines nobody will read between, hurling a bottomless hoard of cherished objects and art and virginity and sentimentalities—things that shatter into sharp points—against a wall you thought was impenetrable. you know that rage cannot be sated, but first dead you is a stubborn, feral little fuck, foaming at the mouth. first dead you knows that—now that the wall has shattered—dead you two will move in soon. first dead you makes room. 133 title of piece they cannot wait to meet you, dead you two. oh, and you just have to laugh. it’s so funny that it happened, because it has to be. it’s so funny that you’re a statistic now, and you can’t stop laughing. you can’t let yourself stop laughing. so you laugh until tears sting your eyes, and it’s all just so fucking funny, and you cry tears of laughter and then eventually you’re just crying. and you make yourself look at yourself so you can really take it in, in this twisted way where you need to see what pain looks like on your face one last time before you lock it away. this is the first and last time you are allowed to feel sorry for yourself, and you savor this moment because you know that when you leave this purgatory, it will be official. you will have died again—and bitch, you are going to suck it up and pretend. the kid you’re babysitting wakes from their nap. they knock on the door, like the director yelling cut. you pretend to be an actor, wiping your face, smiling, laughing. you’re being praised for your ability to switch on and off so seamlessly. you stay humble about it, but you know you’re the best. a true professional, really. it’s like it never happened. because it was scripted. it isn’t real, and you brought the big breakdown scene to life, and nobody can do it like you. and later, you try to direct your own at–home exorcism, but your mouth doesn’t foam like it did—no, it overflows. cum. and you don’t try it again.] 10. get in the fucking shower. now. turning your skin into red leather has never worked; it never will. still, blood sprints to the surface of your skin and starts snapping like pigs in an overcrowded slaughterhouse, but a self-inflicted brand feels better than the memory of a hickey, so you turn the lever to the left. . . . but you’re probably in a better mood now. all those endorphins and shit. fantasy partner probably covered you up. carried you to the bathroom. set you on the counter while they got the water warm for you. they wait for you to calm down before pouring water over your head, and they tilt your head back so it doesn’t get in your eyes. they know you need to see, and that you’ve been on 134 naked and afraid one time too many. they would massage shampoo into your hair, unhurried. wash your body with the cleanest intentions and do everything to help you feel unsullied. they are very loving. very thorough—doing that body worship thing. have you gotten comfortable with them praising you out loud? do you believe their reassurance that your body is anything but a dueling ground? maybe they don’t need to speak. maybe they just clean and kiss your skin and that says more than enough. they know you cannot speak; that you are in some pleasant headspace, because they are fantasy partner and they treat you with reverence that is not considered high maintenance. they probably love your body because it is yours—not an asset of yours—but because it is you, even in instances where they drool and your fist cannot unfurl around the treat. they probably don’t see sex as a treat, because they don’t see it as something they can earn or win. it’s just one form of intimacy, and it is not everything. they would wipe their face and run laps until that energy is expelled. they would come back to you. you wouldn’t even have to call them. 11. dry off with the big towel, like you did as a kid. the fluffy one you wrap yourself in for comfort you refuse to need. it covers from shoulders to shins. you are safe again, hiding under a comforter to stop the bad guys from getting in. 12. glasses on. kick the engine until it’s running again. it could sound like a growl or a purr—it’s temperamental. you should know not to take it personal. 13. pretend that it’s fantasy partner dealing with everything—refilling your water, freshening the air. whether the room feels stale or not doesn’t matter. sometimes a room holds a convoluted feeling like lungs hold back the suffocating breath of a sob or a panic attack or how shredded arms hold the rest of the body together, tightly, desperately, because you can’t kill yourself or your sister will be sad, and sometimes, 135 title of piece after a bad time, rooms have that smell. incense and weed and silenced or stifled words. sometimes the room grips its own throat and grapples for a window— and the toys. fantasy partner would deal with the toys. they know you don’t like looking at them. 14. put on music. drown out the ringing in your ears with soft strings and cello or some other mellow playlist that you’ve curated. you don’t want to get spooked, so set your lights to a pretty tune. orange and pink for a sunset. blue and purple for a full moon. 15. sit on the edge of the bed and have towel time with the cat. pet him while he sits on your lap and purrs louder than the music. scratch between his ears, the base of his tail, he likes that. let him groom you. do not think about how his tongue feels like sandpaper. he would never harm you. catch him as he becomes so relaxed he starts to roll off of your lap. he will nip your hand because he thinks you pushed him. love him even in this dissociated state, when he feels movement and reacts before he realizes it is you he defends himself against. remember that he was a stray for his formative years—he grew up surviving. these instincts do not disappear overnight, if at all. love him with the knowledge that he might never grow out of this primal self-protection. love him for trying. love him for asserting his boundaries at all. love him for telling you what he needs, though he cannot speak. i don’t need a fantasy cat. he is perfect. 16. don the emotional support sweater and the specific boxers that fit just right. this is a reward for your hard work. wearing your ess and your sbtfjr gives you the same feeling of being wrapped in a bear hug. they are soft and warm and the ess is big enough that you aren’t squeezed and suffocating, but it will not tangle you in fabric when you are sleeping. this, you can control. this is predictable. you think this might be your favorite step of them all. 136 17. resituate the stuffed animals so no one feels left out. the weighted dragon goes on the right. weighted dinosaur on the left. they had to be switched recently. i am a right-side sleeper, and the dragon was not getting enough love. the squishmallows go against the wall, but the squid goes next to my head. i sling an arm over the other dragon, tuck them into the crook of my elbow, and hold the hoof of the triceratops. do not think about how it would feel to be held with this much consideration. 18. pull the covers up to your chin. try to fall asleep before the bad thoughts get in. sometimes getting off knocks you right out. sometimes, you lay down with your stuffed animals and your cat asleep on your foot, and your feelings, and you wonder if you would want it with the right person, or if you only crave this and synchronized breaths and your hearts kissing as they thump against one another when you lay chest-to-chest. you don’t know what you want. you haven’t since before. 19. ponder some more on that weird feeling and on asexuality and if you’ve always been asexual, or if it’s just him again, asking—kind of singing—teasing, “are you suuure?” 20. write about it. again. write about how you’re not so sure of anything. 202202 hand outstretched toward the doorbell, donnie tossed a nervous glance at me. “you’ll be good tonight, right?” i injected my glare with all the malice i could possibly aim at my boyfriend. “if you get off on treating me like a kid, you should’ve mentioned that sooner,” i said. “gross, joe,” donnie said and huffed out a breath, fingers twisting in his hair like he’d done the entire car ride here. he kept saying he was overdue for a haircut, but i liked him a little scruffy. “you know how important this is to me,” he added. “and that’s why you persuaded your mom to move your family’s thanksgiving to after the full moon,” i reminded him. “now it’s over. everything is going to go fine.” his lips twisted to one side. “could you at least lose the sunglasses?” “so they can see these?” i lifted my frat boy sunglasses to give him an unblocked view of my yellow eyes. i found it incredible how easy he forgot. “right, yeah,” donnie said, worrying the cuff of his sweater between his long fingers. “we can’t screw this up.” in that we, i heard a clear and obvious you. as if i was a mindless dog, not a grown man who could handle a stupid dinner party. “don’t worry your pretty little ass off. i’ll be your good fuckin’ boy,” i said, reaching across him to ring the doorbell and end the conversation. seconds later, a woman with a gaudy bedazzled turkey apron answered the door. her mousy black hair swayed around her pointed face as she looked at me. scratch that, not at me–over me, never meeting my eyes. “hi, mom,” donnie said, that lopsided smile i love brightening his face like a rebooted laptop. “happy turkey day!” she pursed her lips, eyes trained on the pins decorating my jean jacket. donnie made me take off the ones with nudity, violence, and profanities before driving over. “you’re two minutes later than you told me, sweetie,” his mom said, voice warm in a way that didn’t seep into her face. levi miller full moons are perfect for a werewolf to come out (as transgender) best of fiction 203 i squinted at donnie to see how he’d react to the snub, but his smile was superglued on. “i know. i’m sorry,” donnie said. he turned to me as if remembering i was there and slapped me on the back. “this is joseph ratley, my boyfriend.” i held out my hand to shake, ignoring the way it made me feel like i was selling something. “nice to meet you, mrs. zhang,” i said, cringing when my voice broke on the second syllable of “mrs.” my voice hadn’t cracked that bad in a while, now that i was close to being ten months on t, but sometimes the hrt gods still decided to strike down my ego. mrs. zhang stared at the tattoos on my hand, lingering on the word hell scrawled across my knuckles. the other hand read bent. if it had been a colder november night, i might have been able to cover the more raunchy ones with gloves, but no luck. i silently cursed climate change. staring somewhere between my eyebrows with a tense smile, she said, “call me violet.” donnie and i followed her inside the house, which was about ten degrees cooler than outside. all the fans were on full blast, the light whirring noise accompanied by warm chatter seeping from the dining room where a long table seated a group of people who looked at me with a variety of uncertain expressions. i took notice of an older woman with bubblegum pink cheeks who let out a little snort when i walked in and a chubby teenager wearing a cure hoodie who surreptitiously checked me out. i bared my teeth in what i hope looked like a smile and ignored the urge to adjust my shirt. an older man with thinning hair styled like an aging rockstar waved his arms out wide. “junior! good to see you,” he said to donnie, who returned his wave. i sat down in one of the empty seats, reflecting on this information. donnie never talked about his dad, who he was apparently named after, or his family for that matter. looking at the cheerful guy sitting across from me, i wondered why. “nice specs,” said a man who dressed like he thought cybertrucks were cool. i didn’t know why anyone would wear an untucked t-shirt over belted khakis, but i knew damn well those horn-rimmed glasses weren’t prescription. i raised my eyebrows at him, opting to keep my inside thoughts inside for once. “what’s up, old man?” donnie said as he took a seat next to me. “how’s tricks?” “old man,” the elder donovan chuckled. “things are great here. i was just 204 telling your mother she needs to take a break from the night shifts. now that you’re set up in your new practice, we’ll be millionaires by the end of the year!” “he’s a therapist, not a surgeon,” a woman on the other side of donnie said with a tightness to her voice that screamed i lived in a big city for at least a week. beside her, cybertruck guy hid a snort with a sip of iced tea. “a doctor is a doctor,” donovan said. he waved a hand at me. “plus, he’s got a hot brunette on his arm. you’re living the american dream, donnie.” before i could address being called eye candy, the old lady with a blush fetish did it for me. “i don’t know what america you’re living in,” she said like she was trying to be quiet. the goth teenager stiffened beside her, and city girl stared at her napkin like it was a mildly interesting twitter exchange. “food’s ready!” violet called out from the kitchen. the table let out a collective sigh. i followed the herd into the kitchen, snagging a finger in donnie’s belt loop to keep from being separated. “i can guess which ones are your parents, but who the hell are the rest of these people?” i hissed under my breath. his eyes flashed a warning at my language, but he pointed at the bitchy old woman and said, “that’s my grandmother richards, dad’s side.” next, he pointed out city lady and cybertruck man. “my sister alexa and her husband grant.” the goth teen. “their son parker.” i forgot half of their names immediately, but i nodded. “got it. thanks, baby.” he handed me a plate. “they don’t bite,” he said, then paused to consider before leaning closer. “unlike some people.” before i could reply, he moved to help his grandmother fix her plate. bastard, i thought with a smile. then, the smell of the food hit me. i wondered if violet was magic the way each aroma complemented the next, succulent steam rising from the feast like fog on a lake. i waited my turn behind grandmother stick-up-her-ass and filled my plate with heaps of turkey, ham, chicken, that hot dogs and beans dish, and a couple sticks of celery to balance it out. “guess not all libs are vegan,” grant said as i set my plate on the table, careful to not topple the pile of meat. 205 title of piece i shot him a look that sent him back to buttering his baked potato. truth is, i used to be vegan until recently. i changed my diet for a couple reasons. one, i got major protein cravings from the testosterone, and plant-based meat wasn’t doing it for me anymore. two, i got turned into a werewolf. i don’t have a cool story to back it up. if your life and body are going to be permanently altered by a supernatural monster, you should at least get an epic fight story to share. but no–a few months ago i fell asleep at the bus station after working a double at the supermarket and woke up to a snarling werewolf sinking its canines into my shoulder. it bolted when i cried out, and my bus arrived soon after. i staunched the gooey flow of blood with my jacket on the ride home and passed out the second i got in bed. when i woke up the next morning the wound felt slimy in an infected way, like the top layer of soup forgotten on a stove. my brain banged around inside my skull and my limbs weighed me down like full-to-bursting grocery sacks. i called donnie between bouts of puking my guts out, and he drove me to the hospital, running a hand through my hair when he wasn’t holding it away from my face as i hurled into a grocery bag. by the time he pulled into the emergency bay, i felt completely fine. hell, i felt better than i had before getting attacked. and i was starving. after the hospital’s infection tests showed up negative, i convinced him to drive to a crappy pizza place where i devoured a full meat lover’s pie under donnie’s concerned gaze, thinking it had just been a really short 24 hour flu. i didn’t realize anything was wrong with me until the next full moon. i mean, i ate twice as much as usual, gained enough weight in muscle to stretch out my clothes, and got significantly more hairy, but i chalked it all up to hrt doing a damn good job. the body contortions and blackouts during my first full moon clued me in. lucky for me, my boyfriend spent a majority of his childhood idolizing sam and dean winchester. we squeezed lycanthropy into our relationship like a third member. violet sat down next to me at the head of the table with a modest plate of greens. she cleared her throat, and the table quieted. “now that everyone’s settled, who wants to say grace?” i looked to donovan, but his eyes were on donnie. so were the eyes of everyone else. i held back a laugh, knowing damn well donnie hadn’t stepped inside a church since his eighteenth birthday. “i can do it,” donnie said, holding his hands out. surprised, i took one. violet took my other hand, her cold, soft fingers barely skimming my skin. i watched as everyone tilted their heads forward. 206 “bless us o lord,” donnie began, then everyone chanted with him. “and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty. through christ, our lord.” “amen,” donnie said, squeezing my hand before reaching for a spoon. i waited to make sure there were no more surprise rituals before grabbing my own cutlery. it didn’t sit right with me how easily donnie could switch it up and pretend to be catholic just to please his family. made me wonder what else he’d change for them. “who’s got bets on the bengals this afternoon?” donovan asked, breaking the cult-like spell that went over the family as quickly as it had come. grant stabbed a fork in the air in front of him. “you’re insane if you think they’ll beat the forty-niners.” “have some midwest pride,” alexa said, pouring herself a glass of wine. “pride,” granny rich muttered under her breath. i held mine, shoving meat into my mouth instead. at the taste, all thoughts of bitter old ladies fled my head. it was just the right combination of soft, juicy, and smoky. it was like licking the inside of a grill. my mouth watered, and i made plans to get seconds. “this is amazing, violet,” i said to donnie’s mom. she smiled weakly. “thanks. mrs. richards always said i had a knack for cooking,” violet said, nodding toward the grandmother, who focused on cutting up a bit of turkey on her plate. “she was right,” i said, darting my eyes to donnie to see if he noticed my ass-kissing. he was busy fending off an excited grant about some conspiracy theory the latter had discovered. a little pissed, i went back to eating. “so, where did you two meet?” donovan asked, eyes crinkling at the corners. “class,” donnie said at the same time i said, “bar.” donnie shot me a look. after dating for the past two years, i could read the subtext in his eyes proficiently. this time, his face said i swear to god if you tell them the first thing you said to me was that you could show me something better to do with my mouth than drink, you’re going to need a new ride home. “class,” i appended. “yeah? what class?” alexa asked, leaning forward on the vinyl tablecloth. 207 title of piece i let donnie answer. “poetry elective,” he said, nudging my shoulder with his. “he needed help interpreting keats.” “and you needed help writing metaphors,” i said with a sugary smile, knowing damn well donnie only knew the name john keats because of the quotes i scrawled on sticky notes on our bathroom mirror. “what did you study in college?” donovan asked, patting his mouth with a napkin. “art,” i said, sending a round of eye contact around the table. “that’s awesome,” parker said, finally looking up from where he’d been lining up the green beans on his plate. “what’s your favorite medium?” “mainly ink,” i answered, “but i mess around with graphite. pretty fond of spray paint, too.” i paused for another bite of chicken before asking, “you into art?” parker’s face lit up. “yeah, i started drawing a few years ago, and i really enjoy it. my main interest right now is watercolors.” i nodded, thinking about it. “good stuff, but i can never wait for the layers to dry.” “i just use a hair dryer,” parker said with a shrug. alexa swatted her son. “is that why my dyson supersonic keeps going missing?” parker turned back to his green beans. donnie cleared his throat. “joe’s working on a project for the library.” “that’s great,” donovan said. “what kind of project?” i nudged donnie’s foot with mine to say thanks. i knew he knew that i could talk about this project for hours. “they wanted a mural for the lounge of the new teen section, and i’m friends with one of the librarians. i’m going for abstract portraits of famous authors. y’know–dickenson. lorde.” i smirked at donnie. “keats.” in the spirit of gratefulness, i neglected to mention that the librarian friend offered me the mural over a bowl of weed. donnie, never passing up a chance to brag about me, said, “they’re adding 208 places for kids to get resources and hold club meetings. i think people have already started setting up an lgbtq club and a monthly horror movie night.” “that sounds nice,” violet said right as her mother-in-law loudly clucked her tongue. fueled by meat and already on edge, i narrowed my eyes at the grandmother. “do you have a problem with that?” i asked. donnie cleared his throat, eyes wide enough that i could see little red blood vessels. she kept her gaze on her corn as she gently sawed it off the cob. “in my opinion, children shouldn’t be exposed to that sort of thing,” she said. “you mean my sort of thing?” i said. “our sort of thing?” i waved my hand between donnie and me, ignoring his kick to my shin. the people around me took great interest in their food, silverware clinking out a chaotic pattern as alexa stirred up a conversation about gas prices. grandmother richards rose to her feet, slowly but full of livid energy. “don’t drag him into this. he’s completely normal.” i laughed. “your grandson’s fucking gay.” “joe!” donnie snapped. “what? you are,” i said. he shook his head, not in refutation of the fact but disappointment. grandmother richards raised a shaking finger at me. “at least he’s not a monster.” i shot up to my full five feet and nine-and-a-half inches across from her, curling my nails into the tablecloth. “monster, really? is it that fucking hard to just call me what i am?” she held her finger steady, then hissed, “werewolf.” everyone stared at me, food abandoned. i took off my sunglasses to see the unfiltered truth on my boyfriend’s face. “you told them i was a werewolf?” i asked, my voice surprisingly steady. donnie had the nerve to look uncomfortable as he shrank back. he spoke slowly, as if talking to a wild animal: “you said you’d rather me come out for you 209 title of piece than have to deal with it yourself.” please just sit back down, his eyes said. i exploded. “i meant about being fucking trans!” a few weeks ago, donnie and i watched a movie where some train operator messed up the railroad switch operation and ended up killing dozens of people– children, parents, bystanders crushed immediately by the metal beast. at the end, they showed a picture of the real people from the story, including the guy who caused all the damage. the look on his face was identical to donnie’s as he said, “oh.” the rest of the family, who had remained silent thus far, exploded into a flurry of sound. “you’re trans?” parker asked. “do you know kai? they’re my coworker’s nonbinary daughter,” donovan said. “i think they’re your age.” “a gay, transgendered werewolf,” grant said. “the left’s wet dream.” “when you two do it, is it technically bestiality?” alexa asked. i looked to donnie for backup, but his attention was back on his plate. i decided to answer the last one. “no. what the hell?” “what?” alexa shrugged, leaning back in her chair. “i’m curious. i’ve read some freaky books.” a loud thump sounded at the end of the table as grandmother richards knocked over her chair. she grabbed her butter knife and waved it in my face. “i will not have a creature of the night in my house, seducing the only son of my son!” she yelled. “that’s vampires, gran,” alexa muttered under her breath. “get out!” grandmother richards shrilled. the knife came dangerously close to my nose, and i hissed at the burning in my nostrils. “you like that?” she cried. “it’s silver!” before i could pounce on her ass, violet took my hand and yanked me into the living room. she closed the door, muffling the desperate voices. i took a minute to practice some of the meditative breathing donnie’s always begging me to try. funny enough, i stopped seeing red after a few breaths. 210 the living room was messy, lived in. there were photo albums stacked on the coffee table, which sagged under the weight. five-dollar knick-knack elephants littered every surface, including the top of a boxy television that looked half my age. the brown carpet crunched under my feet, stains of all colors surrounding me. a light fragrance of vanilla danced over everything. “better?” violet asked, still holding my hand. “yeah,” i said. “thanks.” violet led us to the couch, falling back into the pilling fabric and plethora of throw pillows. i sat on the far end, watching her fingers tap out a rhythm on her knees. “they get so loud,” violet said after a bit. i nodded. “they do.” “how are you feeling?” violet asked. “fine,” i said. “are you sure?” she asked in that warm voice. i felt my insides bubble, and words began flying out of my mouth. “i’m mostly pissed at donnie,” i said. “he didn’t back me up at all back there. i don’t know why he brought me here if he was just going to throw me to the wolves at the first sign of trouble.” i paused as my mind caught up to my mouth. “no offense.” violet remained silent, so i went on, voice rising as my anger reignited. “i know i’m messed up, but i thought he liked me that way. but no, now he wants me to tone myself down to fit into his perfect family, where he’s got this perfect house and a sister who bugs him and a mom and dad who care enough to ask–” “he doesn’t have a dad,” violet interrupted. i squinted at her. “then who the hell is donovan?” i asked. “you mean don? my husband. his stepdad,” she said. “donnie’s dad died twelve years ago.” “oh,” i said. 211 title of piece “it was a car accident. donnie didn’t come out of his room for weeks after. i had to call firefighters to break down his door to make sure he hadn’t killed himself,” violet said with the tone of someone reading a recipe. her fingers tapped faster. “so, we’re not a perfect family. you fit in fine. i’m sorry anyone made you feel you had to change.” “why wouldn’t he tell me?” i asked, quieter. violet shrugged. “he feels big feelings, but he doesn’t talk about them much. probably inherited it from me. i was shocked he decided to be a therapist.” i settled farther into the couch, which tugged at my body like quicksand as my mind wandered. last winter, i drove to virginia and back a lot to help a friend going through chemo. donnie didn’t say anything to stop me, but i could feel the anxiety radiating off of him. he’d attack me with hugs the second i stepped through the door. sweaty and tired from hours crammed in a small car, i resented it. and he didn’t cry when he drove me to the hospital when i got bitten. he shut down, treating it more like an errand than life or death. i was too sick to be bothered at the time. i remember how white his knuckles got on the steering wheel, though. and the first few months we lived together, i’d wake up sometimes to him pressing two fingers under my jaw. i thought it was a sex thing at the time, but i realized now that he might have been checking for a pulse. the door between the dining and living room opened, and i wondered briefly if my musings had summoned donnie. but it was just parker, hands stuffed into his hoodie pocket. he plopped onto the couch next to violet. “great-grandmother is still yelling,” parker reported. “loudly.” “reminds me of my mom,” i said with a laugh. “she wasn’t big on the werewolf thing either?” violet asked, eyes focused somewhere between my eyebrows. “not that,” i said. “she wasn’t a fan of the trans thing.” i’ll never forget how she reacted when i came out to her. she pursed her lips, grabbed my wrist, and said we were going bra shopping. i asked her if she’d heard what i said, and she tightened her grip and told me to shut the hell up. at thirteen, i did what she said. “oh,” violet said. “that sucks.” i laughed at her bluntness. “it does.” a thoughtful expression passed over her face before she said, “i think you’re 212 a fine young man, if that helps.” she raised her black eyes to mine, and my throat tightened. there was a hesitant sort of kindness in her gaze, one i hadn’t seen in years. if i squinted, i could pretend her hair was brown, longer and curly, her eyebrows thicker, and her eyes the same muddy green as mine used to be. “what helps is i haven’t seen her in half a decade,” i said, ignoring the twinge in my guts as the woman beside me morphed back into violet. “i can’t imagine that,” parker said. “losing contact with your mom.” “you get used to it,” i lied. violet patted my arm, and it was all i could do not to lean into it. she smelled like autumn, but more like apples and bonfires than pumpkin spice. “how did you choose your name?” parker asked after a while. i shrugged and said, “i was a big fan of joe mama jokes as a kid.” “bullshit,” violet said. her language jolted a squeak of laughter from my throat. “nope,” i said, recovering quickly. “i was the king of fifth grade.” that got a smile out of them both. the door to the dining room creaked open, and my hackles raised. but it wasn’t granny the werewolf slayer standing there, waving her cutlery. it was my boyfriend. donnie shut the door behind him, running over to me as his mouth overflowed with apologies. “i’m so sorry, joe–i didn’t mean to–i should have asked to clarify, and–” “it’s okay,” i said, mostly to shut him up. “he’s lying,” violet said. “you kind of shat the bed on this one, sweetie.” “mom,” donnie said, scandalized as he squeezed between me and the end of the couch. “they still gearing up to stake my heart?” i asked. donnie sighed in response and set his head on my shoulder. “that’s vampires again,” parker said. 213 title of piece “who’s the werewolf here?” i asked, softening my words with a wink. “don’s talking grandmother down as we speak,” donnie said. for a moment, i caught a glimpse of a younger version of him, curled up in his bed and staring at the walls, too tired to cry anymore. i kissed his forehead. “what was that for?” he asked, his smile reappearing like sunlight through the cracks of a dilapidated roof. “i thought you were mad at me.” “i am,” i said, holding him closer. he cuddled up into my side. parker made a surprisingly accurate gagging noise. “not the pda.” “i second that,” violet said. i could have sworn she smirked. donnie sighed dramatically as he disentangled himself from me. the door opened, and don poked his head into the living room. “so sorry about all that, joe. grandmother promised to keep quiet, if you want to come back in here.” just as don finished talking, grandmother richard’s voice peeled in from the dining room, sharp and sudden: “–am not going to play nice with the transsexual werewolf!” don grimaced. “we gave her plastic silverware, if that’s any consolation.” donnie looked up at me. we can leave, if you want, his face said. “well.” i slapped my thighs, preparing to stand. “let’s face the fuckin’ music.” *** a month later, the living room was covered in twinkling lights, wrapping paper, and hundreds of pine needles. don and grant were glued to the football game on television, and parker was eagerly inspecting the set of watercolor pencils i’d gotten him. alexa paused to ruffle his hair before turning back to her conversation with violet over a podcast she’d recommended. grandmother richards sat in a rocking chair in the corner, turning the pages of a yellowing book. i lounged on the couch, sipping eggnog from a smaller batch violet had made with less cinnamon to accommodate my easily irritated nose. 214 donnie leaned back from where he sat on the floor between my knees and handed me a package shoddily wrapped in gold paper. “this one’s for you,” he said. “who’s it from?” i asked, already unwrapping it. donnie shrugged. “didn’t say. does it say inside?” when i didn’t answer, he looked up at me. “what is it, baby?” i held up a shock collar the perfect size for a doberman or great dane. donnie’s face dropped. his head snapped to his sister. “alexa!” “wasn’t me,” she said, hands up. “it’s kind of funny, though,” she added with a giggle. “no, it’s not,” donnie said, sitting up. “who did this?” a sharp noise, like a polite throat-clearing taught to kids in the 1950’s, cut through the room. grandmother richards flipped a page in her book, unable to hide her smug smile. “grandmother, we talked about this,” donnie said, and it sounded like the start of a lecture. i shut him up with a nudge to the side and a look that said i got this. locking eyes with the grandmother, i put the collar on and grinned my sharp-toothed smile. “we’ll find a use for this,” i said, planting a sloppy kiss on my boyfriend’s lips. he smiled against my mouth, and i almost didn’t hear his grandmother’s scandalized gasp. 105105 if you are reading this letter, it means that my quarter-life crisis became an immediate end-of-life crisis. cause of death was accidental alongside some abysmal luck, so there is nothing that you, the will executor, or anyone else that could have done to stop such an untimely, but common, demise. there are a few key items of my “estate” that i have explicit instructions for in the event of my death. as a freshly deceased person, i have no use for any earthly items, but i ask that these instructions are followed best to your abilities, for future use and benefits for those who are capable of handling my possessions. my car, where the title of the vehicle is under my parents’ names, would obviously be returned to their possession. thanks for letting me loan it mom and dad. inside it, you will find some store returns, a cracked longboard, and fastfood napkins. just throw them out to the closest trash can, one that’s big enough where you can shut the lid easily, unless you want racoons ransacking old water bottles and expired kroger coupons. in my closet, you will find mountains of all the clothes that i either always, or never, wore. do not let anyone wear my clothes, even if they are still usable. even imagining now of a brother wearing my favorite american eagle jacket or someone reusing my old winter boots feels like a bodily invasion, even as a dead person. just get rid of them. for the green totes that hold baby clothes, old mexican blankets, and my birth mother’s polaroid picture, please keep them safe and tucked away. these things i know are tethered to my soul, wherever that is now. for my pitiful accumulated wealth, found in the physical safe in the basement with code 00000 and in my bank account, is to be given to my sister, for the expected rising costs of living and for her future (now past) wedding with her fiancé. sorry that i won’t be in attendance. and another sorry for the fact now that the money barely covers anything fun like cruises, anniversaries, or barely a decent target shopping spree. any furniture (bed, dressers, desks, chairs, etc.,) can either be given to my sister and her fiancé, or, if passed, to other people in the family household, or, if passed, are free to be thrown out. any other high-priced items remaining can be resold, with the money going towards my sister, assuming i never befriended a creditor and still maintain debt obligations. make sure it goes to her and her only. my parents have plenty of money and my brothers do not need it. do not spend money on funeral expenses. for best burial practices, keep it simple and cremate the body and throw the ashes out to the natural outdoors. do not keep the ashes (chronic fear of loose shelves), but discard them in a decent, xavier neier final affairs from a patient suffering a quarter-life crisis 106 outside place. being smushed into diamonds is not my thing, so anywhere outside that is not six feet in the ground is fine by me. cremation is the only way to prevent anyone reanimating my corpse. but if any of you feel inclined to go above and beyond, i would like to be returned to tijuana, mexico, and have my ashes scattered there. either the front of the hospital i was born at, in their nature reserves where i may finally contact the native land i never knew or whatever the appropriate area of ash scattering in tijuana is. do not give my ashes to my birth mother. do not return her baby boy in a jar in a plastic ziploc bag. if she is found, tell her any of the good things of american living that she was able to give to her child. if she is dead, and her grave or resting area is found, ask surviving relatives of the other family if her child can be held by her one last time and that i can rest beside her. 62 i should have slept, would have but had to fight the darkness, had to build a fire and bathe a man in flames. i will not shoot myself in the head, hang myself with a trash bag. black since birth, burnt by birth. yes, i may be at risk, but i promise you, i trust the maggots who live beneath the floorboards of my house to do what they must. charred, his flesh is bark. no sign of roots. i can’t leave him. this is limbo, life after death coming in hungry. saloni dixon the lynching 114 a maritime phrase for wishing farewell and a safe voyage if goodbyes bleed, so be it let them chum the waters calling wide-mouthed bullhead sharks circling blackened seas fins like sails cutting through the push and pull of tides let them feed tooth by tooth, scissoring through flesh let ships be called to the edge of the world sinking through deeper shades of navy they are returned within the depths that keep creatures with little use for eyes if goodbyes cry, have them sing out with shorebirds let them sound over waves crashing along coastal cliffs that hold speckled eggs glaucous-winged gulls flapping above choppy waters, flight caught in stirring winds and skies let us cry wing by wing, rising above currents let tides tumble along the stretches of shoreline crushing dark green glass, smoothing discarded heineken bottles in waves, all things exist somewhere between flotsam and found and goodbyes are just tradition for all that lives at sea kayla mcveigh fair winds and following seas bloody mary natalie starks oil on canvas; 18" x 24" 45 29 your word burned the rope from my throat, so, too, the cloaks of shadows past. your word held lips to my wrists where my teeth used to be, and held in my arms divinity. your hands placed on my feet her little feet, her hands clasped with mine – a flower divine – mornings of bouquets of kisses, amor you loved to breathe in my every exhale, and your hands on my back, tracing with nails soothing me coupled with rapture. “me gusta complacerte” – me encantó escucharte cantar, acariciarte y “por favor” despertarme bajo tus miles de besos sobre mi rostro – lagrimas compartidas, más que una, que dos… más que tres veces… calmaste mis penas y me partiste en dos. dios sabe lo que hizo, a escondidos exquisito tapándome los ojos a lo que tan claro sentí… si no jamás te hubiese dejado así – sin letra, sin voz estaría muriendo, cargando tormentas clavados en mi pecho con cada palabra no dicha – te lo diré… pues te digo que sí, que sí te mentí una y sólo una vez más por el miedo… la verdad es que sí… que sí… que sí fue por ti que me rasgué in two in two arrancando de mi corazón la rosa que entre lágrimas leíste … y que sí que sí que sí lo pensé… en un futuro los dos, el comenzar de un cuento, el cuento sin fin mario stone inspiró 45 we hold hands, never able to agree on a flavor, happy to not share. i want it sweet, so cold i can feel the nerves in my teeth, screaming through enamel you bite down, i tell you to go slowly – you’ll give yourself a bellyache. but you want more. i make requests. we ask for the whole pint, but i’d settle for a half. if they don’t have what we want we’ll take it to go, spoonfuls in the backseat. you open your mouth and i make that airplane sound, lovingly churned cream and sugar destined for your tongue we lay back, stomachs full, mouths sticky, sweet tooth still not satiated ruthie barakat dj khalid could never 111111 i gave up smoking this year. i am returning to purity, serenity, reborn as the final cigarette is engulfed, enraged, extinguished. no more for me the ashy asses, confetti sprinkles of white and gray onto the floor of my green corolla littered with empty red bull cans. wondering what to do on rainy days, when i run away and hide. blasting the smiths feels dull, and i find myself alone, never dry. missing that gross aftertaste while i console myself smokeless, hands searching for tangibility, eating mamba fruit chews and a slim jim. i still find brown, burnt butts on my floor, cloth seats covered in holes, stained by ash, when i’m crying and alone like a kid, needing semblance of something that lasts. two fingers feeling empty when i’m stressed, even worse when it all goes back to shit. no more for me the sad days, i say, with my clothes stinky, feeling like trash. i am returning to impurity, pollution, jaded and unforgiving, reborn as her kid, inner child anxious, agitated, aimless. and i see she’s a kid too, sitting in the garage with a cigarette. thomas mcneil marlboro reds 229229 where are you now that you are elsewhere? are you talking to a viking pirate or a catholic priest? are you rethinking a disagreement with an extremist from r/worldnews subreddit? have you found a tank to take over–are you shooting big missiles into empty fields of overgrown grass? are you working through complex equations or performing long division? are you coding a program to manage the burdens of feeling human? have you asked chat gpt about us? did you receive its advice like you would your father’s? what algorithm will show that i am beside you tonight? in your world, do the boundaries of me still render on screen? may i emulate how the moon is growing brightly into our room? do you miss touching soft skin? or do nude pixelated girls preform your wants with discretion? have you fallen down lines of javascript? can you climb up the blue light to exist with me for a stint? will you stay awhile before the servers spit you back out like a cannon? isabella park the computed image of us 108 i’m crouched by my locker to retrieve a fallen pencil when the boy who hisses and meows and breaks open pens in pre-algebra slips by and coughs out the word: faggot. he’s disappeared by the time i look up, the slur trailing behind, the ooze of a slug. i look from one end of the hallway to the other, searching for anyone else who fits that word. but there are only the red, faded lockers, lined up straight like boys in bootcamp, and the paper ghosts and spiders and skeletons, posed on the closed doors for halloween. no one else but me. the faggot. our middle school uniforms consist of polo shirts and khaki pants, our own orange jumpsuits before high school permits us our civilian clothes. i dress the same as my classmates, varied only by the color of the polos and whether the khakis are black or tan. yet i’m the only girl in my grade with hair this short. half a pixie cut, half a buzz, a cornfield only partially tilled. anyone who looks at my backpack can see the buttons peppering the sides, with their rainbow stripes and hearts, bought from dollar baskets at anime conventions. i speed through my essays and science worksheets, enough to maintain an a-b average, all so i can open a book where two girls during world war ii hold hands longer than they probably should, or pour over my sketchbook as two men with limbs too long and eyes too big press their lips together, born from my mechanical pencils. i catch their eyes around me, stuck on my hair, my buttons, my art, and hope they recognize what i’ve made obvious. i’m the gay kid and you can’t ignore it. but now someone has said it in their own words. the faggot. it’s something i never would have been called in earlier years. not even by the kids at summer camp who snorted at a 10 year old with a my little pony lunchbox, or classmates who would get up and find another seat when i sat by them at lunch. not me, the barbie princess on halloween with her purple tulle dress and long golden hair. the kid who woke up early to watch winx club, with its fashion and fairies and a boyfriend for every main character. who collected littlest pet shop toys, whose room was painted bubblegum pink, who once tried to wear light-up cinderella shoes to school. i won’t chop off that ass-length hair until age 12 (though not before getting a bob-cut that looks like johnny depp-willy wonka’s.) the same time i began to realize i watched winx club to look at the characters, boyfriends be damned, in their short skirts and gogo boots, their painted lips and flowing hair. the same reason i wanted to dress as every princess from every barbie movie, to capture the image of their beauty if only for a night. the same age when i tape a letter to the milk carton where my dad can’t miss it, telling him i think i might be gay. he says that he’ll accept me no matter what, until the next day, where he accuses me tegan blackburn not your kind of faggot best of creative nonfiction 109 of being brainwashed by porn. he can deny it all he wants, but i know it to be true. i know that i’m gay. but this is the first time i’ve thought of it through this word. the faggot. i find myself in that moment, still crouched over my pencil and staring down the vacant hallway, thinking that if this kid knew his slurs, he might have called me a dyke. that word spat at short haired girls, girls in flannels, girls with set jaws and chiseled faces, whether they have held another girl in their eyes or not. if he weren’t already gone, i might have yelled to correct him. not for the sake of a correctly gendered slur but because until that point, i figure it must be what i am. i’m a girl. i’m gay, and i want everyone to know it. if i make it known that i’m a dyke, any insult toward my sexuality is declawed. no word can be used to hurt me. but i sit with that word. i run it through my hands like i’m testing fabric. the faggot. i like how the word feels in my mouth. its two syllables, the way both of them have a bite when you speak. not toward anyone else. never toward anyone else, because if any one queer person squeezed the word like clay, their handprints would all come away different, if they were comfortable holding it at all. bigots clutch it all the same, i think. a blunt force weapon, a baseball bat, a crowbar to strike across the skull of anyone who ever dared to walk a way they didn’t like, who had a haircut they deemed weird, who dressed too colorful or too mismatched or too different from their own clothes, who found joy in their gender and what that gender meant to them, who assign traits to loving another or loving oneself, the kind of love they don’t comprehend, what they decree must be bludgeoned. they can’t comprehend the way i hold that word. the faggot. i’m a baby gay. i’ve yet to watch the rocky horror picture show. i’ve been to one pride festival, and i caught heatstroke and forgot most of it. i won’t kiss a girl until freshman year, when ryann murray kisses me on the lips unprompted during a field trip, and i spend the next three days convinced her boyfriend will find out and kick my ass. i don’t know if the heart of that word is whole just yet, but i’ve felt it beating. in clips i’ve seen of john waters films, where divine turns a red dress fished from the trash into the red carpet, a hand on her hip and a gun in the other, face as much makeup as it is skin. in the penultimate scene of my latest book, in the cold of night, the brush of near death, when one girl screams to another kiss me, hardy, kiss me quick! in the swirling neon tunnel of a haunted carnival at halloween, when a girl in killer clown makeup and a poofy skirt jumped out in front of me and ran a finger down my cheek. in the furrowed brows and tilted heads of confused kids asking teachers or parents if i’m a boy or a girl. when my fingers 110 first ran along the fresh shave of my hair. when i booted up my brother’s fighting games just to turn the camera around all the pretty girls. when i looked at a list of gender-neutral baby names and christened myself new, because looking at it felt like coming home. i don’t say anything. i let it roll off my back when i get to my feet, pencil in hand, to walk back to class. people like that would never understand they weren’t even saying the same word anyway. not to me. not to the faggot. 185 18” x 24” graphite pencil robert smith annie 196196 we linger in the air above the dirty laundry and the stripped mattress. my lips are still burning from where you kissed me, my cheek still stinging from the slap that came before. my chin is raw from your stubble and stings as i cry salty tears that bead and slip, bead and slip, bead and slip. there are traces of you in my hair, sticky on the back of my neck. i’m not a person, and neither are you. we are vapor, gasps of hot air and choked curses. we are sweat, sticky and cooling on clammy skin. we are knots, tangling in our bellies. strands of my hair are loose from where you pulled my ponytail until i fell for you. now, the whisps snake around my neck like a collar. your hand finds its way to my throat and slams me down, spitting in my face and growling don’t you ever do that again. i’ve disobeyed you, a cardinal sin. an egg is cracked over the top of my head, cold wobbly yolk running over my hot brain and down my back. your teeth are gnashing and my spit is flying as white-hot confusion takes over the wheel. like a fox in a trap, i beg. i gnaw at the frail tendons in my leg, i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry. i am stupid. i am ugly. i deserve this. please, please, let me make it up to you. i’m sorry. i’m nothing. finally, you let go of my neck. you morph from a monster back into a man, leaving me bent over the mattress and shaking as i come back to myself. i stare at the ceiling while you put your shirt back on and try not to think about how my body feels like a live wire in the snow. my mouth tastes like a battery, sour and metallic. i close my eyes and take three deep breaths, hoping i come back to myself before you start crying like a child who’s broken his favorite toy. i slip off the bed and onto the floor, rooting around the filthy carpet for my socks. selfishly, i hope you keep me under your bed with the rest of your dirty laundry. i hope you hang me in the closet with the rest of your skeletons. i hope you never display me like the other notches in your bedpost. i hope this makes me special. maura weber the vapor 42 22” x 30” copper plate triptychs etching printed on paper emile tipton the human heart hasn’t changed 5959 “it is literally impossible to be a woman. you are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.” – gloria (from greta gerwig’s barbie) 1. at maybe five or six years old, i met a new girl named laura that had recently moved in across the street from my grandmother’s house on barbie court. while grandma and the mother chatted in our front yard, i was spraying the hose to water her prized hydrangeas. she was shy, around a year younger than me, and had straight blonde hair compared to my frizzy ball of curls. we were playing around when i squeezed the nozzle on the hose just a little, enough to let a shower of tiny droplets down upon laura on accident. the water quickly transformed into her tears as she complained of being wet just as quickly as i’d turned it on and off again. my grandma harshly yanked the hose away from me and sprayed a cold, hard stream of water directly in my face. perhaps a punishment that was soft to what she experienced growing up in a post-wwii world, lacking a thin switch or whooping belt to the backside. “how do you like that, huh? don’t do that again! get inside!” this time, it was my cue to cry. dripping with water, i squeaked out an apology before running into the house to hide beneath the kitchen table. i was angry, apologetic, and scared of my grandma’s outburst. “i was playing. i didn’t mean to be mean,” i chanted to myself in consolation. when she stormed back into the house she continued her reprimand, “don’t you ever do that again, you hear me? did you like getting sprayed? no?” between sobs i was able to utter, “i—i—i i was just playiiiing. i-i— didn’t mean it.” “quit your crying or i’ll give you a reason to cry, you baby. you’re fine. you have no reason to act like that.” at the age of 32, i still think about this moment and what i learned: it’s not ashley noelle bertram the modern woman 60 okay to feel how i feel—or at least, it’s not okay to let others see it. this is one of many examples of how the women in my family are taught to tiptoe around on eggshells and turn the other cheek, condemning all those who don’t. my grandma grew up experiencing prejudice for being the darker skinned child of welsh and indigenous parents who were not taught that children had feelings. she was tough as nails because she had to be, especially when she entered relationships with men battling demons of alcoholism, infidelity, and indifference. as i’ve grown older, i’ve learned that it is not just our family, rather there is something at large within modern society. our men hide their poor behavior behind women’s fear of ridicule because they can, but more importantly, our women bury their feelings because they must—and the message continues that we all must. in greta gerwig’s 2023 film, barbie, actress america ferrera plays a single mom, gloria, raising a young girl in a world that is constantly at odds with what it means to be a woman. gloria shares a bold monologue about the societal expectations against women, including this line: “you have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.” i wonder if anyone in my grandmother’s life ever told her it was okay to be angry or to make a mistake, or even get out of line a little bit. 2. i sat in the sterile patient room at barrington health center for my one-week post-partum checkup at the age of 20. my body was uncomfortable—exhausted from sporadic sleep and my feeble attempts to get back to a “normal” schedule with a working partner and a newborn. my emergency c-section had been successful, but what i wasn’t prepared for was the aftermath. “hi ashley, how have you been feeling this last week? and let’s look at those stitches,” my obgy-n said with a cheerful tone. “oh, uh, i’m okay. my body’s kinda having a hard time recovering but i guess it all looks okay. he’s doing great too.” i’d already relayed all this to the nurse, but by then i’d become accustomed to the two-step process of explaining to the nurse who greeted me before the doctor. i pulled my loose-fitting shirt up and yoga pants down a little to expose the 6” horizontal wound, whose stitches hardly had enough time to begin dissolving into the skin—another scarlet letter of my new life. “those look great! just keep checking them each day and be sure to give us a call if they start to ooze or become infected, okay? now, mentally, emotionally how are you feeling?” “uh, i don’t know. i’m out of the medicine from the hospital and i’m just 61 title of piece sitting around the house all day, i don’t really get to do much. no one really calls to check on me.” i answered quickly, but it felt like a loaded question. internally i thought, what can i say doc, everything has changed. i love my baby but it all feels so overwhelming. what if i can’t do it? we continued through the list of standard questions before she determined that zoloft would be a good fit for me. it had never occurred to me that i would ever need an anti-depressant, let alone that i could be experiencing post-partum depression just a week after birth. in 2024, it feels much more acceptable to discuss the reality of motherhood across all platforms, but being the first mother in my friend group, aged 19-21 in 2013, it felt unnatural and taboo. it was uncomfortable to have my entire life centered around this sweet little baby while everyone around me—if they even tried to be around at all—was still partying on the weekends. the most interesting thing in my life had become engrained in motherhood, which i was expected to succeed in without a real support system, just a little pill to fix the chemical imbalance. gloria puts to words the way i was beginning to feel, “you’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.” but it wasn’t just my friends, the women in my family were also distant, despite being mothers themselves. there would be long stretches of time between hearing from my grandma or mother, causing an even deeper divide between my life before motherhood and after. but my entire life was now about taking care of my child, having no hobbies and limited social interactions, so what else was there to talk about? 3. as a child, i longed to be a graceful and skilled dancer. if it weren’t for my parents’ low-income, i thought, i could have put in the hard work that was necessary to achieve this goal. one warm, summer day in the early 2000s, i rode shotgun with grandma in her blue chevy van, travelling around the city of franklin, in running her errands. “i want to be a ballerina; i want to dance around the stage!” i said wistfully, having recently watched performances like cats and riverdance. “well, i don’t think that’s going to work. you’re just too big and too short to be a ballerina. plus, those dancers start so young, you’d never catch up. i used to be thin like you and even then i couldn’t have been one.” “oh, but maybe i could start the classes?” “yeah,” she scoffed, “like your mom is ever going to have the money for that. she can hardly cover the stuff you do need.” her criticisms of my mom, my 62 dreams, and any other woman were always just that, an immediate condemnation. to be fair, it was the early 2000s. the ‘grunge-heroin chic’ look of the 90s turned into america’s next top model anorexia but were really just later offspring of the ‘50s housewife aesthetic’ my grandmother grew up in. after little comments about my eating habits or how my clothes fit from grandma and the other women in my family, i would spend hours watching thin models on tv, exercising incessantly, then binging hours later because i’d never be able to look like what i saw on tv. the voice that rang around in my head would say, to be thin was to be beautiful, and to be fat was to be a failure. it wouldn’t be until i was nearly 30 years old that i learned that plenty of other millennial women had felt the same way, or that my grandma, in all her anger, felt it too. we weren’t good enough in our own skin. there is always someone, somewhere (even within our own homes) who has something negative to say about the way our clothes fit, the way we walk, talk and cry. seemingly in response to the ‘millennial diet culture,’ gloria goes on to say, “you have to be thin, but not too thin.” the pressure to be just enough has always weighed heavily on me, in part because of the way the women in my family taught me about what the “right” body looked like. i look back at photos of the young girl i used to be and waves of sadness wash over me because the girl in those photos was certain she wasn’t thin enough or pretty enough; the girl i see when i look at them now is thin, at times too thin, but beautiful, nonetheless. i wonder why no one ever told me it was okay to be okay in my own skin, no matter what it looked like. 4. we sat in her kitchen, me on one side of the counter and her on the other, as she floured the surface to begin rolling out dough for our sweet bread. we spent many hours during my adolescent years doing just this. she would show me the proper way to prepare dough or how to can vegetables for the winter, hoping that i would take note, but the desire to be a ‘kitchen woman’ never really stuck—just the stories i would hear in between. “well, your no good grandfather slipped out on me during our honeymoon, drinking it up! let alone, took off with some floozy after your uncle was born and then said it was my fault. leaving me to raise two kids on my own. anyway, here look at this, see how i’m doing it?” my grandma, never a gentle woman when recounting the disparaging behavior of men after being scorned twice, had shared about my maternal grandfather before but not to this degree. the older i got, the more i learned about the misdeeds of men in my family and the toll it took. nearly a decade later, gloria 63 title of piece would boldly proclaim, “you have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining,” and answer for it my grandmother did. as a teen in the early 2010s, i wasn’t equipped with the tools to offer any sort of condolences other than a feeble, “oh, i’m sorry. that is terrible.” to this day, little snippets into her past come out in casual conversation, seemingly out of nowhere, and switch topics just as swiftly. from everything to the alcoholic and cheating behavior of her second husband, my uncle’s duis, the “loser men” my mother has dated, and of course, the misdeeds of my son’s father. i find that there is a stark difference between her experience as a young single mother and mine, shown primarily in the subtle shifts that have been happening between how we reflect on our experiences—not to mention i am still single, while by my age she’d already remarried. this new generation of women are starting to complain justly about the men that come into women’s lives no longer answering for their bad behavior—something my great-grandmother would never have done out loud; something my grandmother had to experience heartache to be able to speak out loud; something i am still fumbling my way through to understand. 5. gloria finishes her speech to a room full of barbies with, “i’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. and if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then i don’t even know.” this was the mic-drop moment heard ‘round the world in 2023. i sat watching it months after its release in theatres, long after the discussion had already begun about what gerwig had meant by it all. countless reviews criticized the movie, though plenty heralded the thought experiment that it produced. regardless of which side of the fence viewers were on, barbie ignited a flame within me. if i have been so deeply affected by the “expectations of society,” then how could i have expected anything more from my grandmother and others of her generation? therapy and self-help books can now be found abundantly compared to the 1970s when she was in her 30s, teaching people of all kinds how to extend grace to themselves and how to stop tying themselves into knots to meet other people’s expectations. i have shelves filled with books on healthy relationships, self-acceptance, parenting, shame and family dysfunction. my grandma, as much as i love her and as much as she’s loosened her grip on anger, has none. i spent years fearful that i would end up as bitter as she was, but now i am starting to suspect i have all that i need to start living apart from fear. what i find gerwig’s greatest gift to her viewers was that we can break free from the mold and from the weight of expectations—from our expectations, not society’s. countless memories highlight how our adolescence—and for some, 64 much of our adulthood—is dictated by thoughts like, “if i looked like this” or “if i behaved like that” then i would be lovable, then i would be enough. however, the older i get, the more i have started to ask what i really want, allowing that to be enough. 166166 1934 ellis covett has always been a sleepwalker. he assumes it’s because of his overactive imagination. he has so many words that it is overwhelming attempting to find somewhere to put them. he’s almost glad that he runs on such little sleep. when he gets a full night, his imagination thrives like moisture feeding a fungus. imagination is a blessing and a curse, if ellis believed in blessings. somehow, ma still did, making wishes on stars and eyelashes, even if they were fished from her eye. she argued that they counted anyway, and she and ellis needed all the luck they could get. she tries finding purpose in everything in a desperate manner. she has a mantra: “expectin’ the worst, hopin’ for the best.” ellis doesn’t have a mantra. ellis has school and a journal and somehow, he still has time to think up a universe that only he has access to. he loses hours to paper and pen, writing faster than he can think. he starts new projects before finishing the multiples prior, hunched over his desk until his back ached. he writes until the sun goes down, or until his father gets home, and then he would lie in bed and think of stories to write until he falls asleep. ellis often wished that his father had died in the war. then it would be him and ma and he wouldn’t have to hear crashes or see ma pretending like she hadn’t been crying, and he wouldn’t have to live with the stomach-curdling guilt of knowing he can’t do anything but make it worse. instead, ellis goes away. he goes away when the world is too loud, when it’s too quiet, crowded, stifling, when he wants to be anywhere but where his physical body currently is. sometimes he can’t figure out if he’s awake or if he’s sleepwalking, and he doesn’t hate the feeling. *** ellis wakes on christmas day, shivering. the mountains are frozen over and evan allee the sleepwriter 167 capped in white and the cold seeps through the window like smoke. he bundles up and pads to the living room, where ma is stoking the fire. she’s wrapped in fabric, and when she turns, she smiles a quirked, lopsided twist. ma’s smiles are rare, and ellis thinks they’re as bright as the center of a flame. “c’mere,” she says. she walks on her knees to the center of their sad excuse of a rug, where a lump sits, hidden under a blanket. ellis goes. he sits cross-legged next to the thing and waits with his hands in his lap. “open ‘er up,” ma says. “what’s it?” ellis asks. he lifts the very corner of the blanket and finds a hard, black case. “open ‘er up,” she repeats. she’s almost grinning. the skin on her nose wrinkles. he opens ‘er up. the thing is a latched case with a leather handle. it’s an odd square shape and a bit clunky, but it would be useful when he could go back to school in person. ellis thinks he should be more outwardly excited, but excitement is a foreign feeling. he isn’t sure how to show it on his face. more than anything, ellis is confused. he hasn’t done anything to deserve this, and the depression wiped the school out months ago. he thinks about asking why she’s giving this to him, but he doesn’t know if that would seem ungrateful, so he decides not to. “thanks, ma,” he said quietly. he pets the dust from the sides of it. it takes him a few more swipes before he realizes she hasn’t responded. when he finally looks at her, she’s hiding her mouth behind a fist. ellis frowns, because he knows he’s not funny. “what?” she nods towards the case. “open it.” ellis pops the latch and lifts the lid. he immediately slams the case closed again when he sees circular keys. denial is the safest and easiest option for them both, so ellis pulls the blanket back over the typewriter and pushes it over to ma. after three or four tries, ellis is able to choke, “no.” 168 ma waves a hand like it’s unimportant, leaving ellis at a loss for words despite the number of notebooks he’s filled. “ma,” ellis repeated, more urgently. he glances down and finds he had subconsciously tucked the blanket around the typewriter like he was putting it to bed. when he blinks, he sees “remington” branded onto the back of his eyelids. “this is—ma, what’d this cost? it’s too—we’re not…doin’ good.” he cast a quick look over his shoulder, as if mentioning his father would summon him. “pa’s fixin’ to flatten us—” “nope,” ma said firmly, “he won’t. we ain’t gonna say nothin’ to him.” withholding information from his father was an unspoken safety precaution. never once had they spent money on unnecessary purchases, and ellis can’t imagine his mother doing such a thing. she struggles enough to find food to put on the table. not to mention his father would notice the money missing, and the consequences of that are too dire to be worth any happiness. “i’m…mighty grateful for this, ma.” ellis’s voice cracks, as it’s been doing recently. he swallows the burning coal of righteousness, “but we can’t be throwin’ money at that.” “darlin’, it ain’t cost nothin’,” ma says. “rich folks’ll toss out just ‘bout anything.” ellis blinks. he waits for more stipulations, but pa’s ignorance to the typewriter seemed to be the only one. he doesn’t quite know what to do. he’s never received a gift. pa says that how hard he works to provide for them is a gift enough. he said that people get gifts if they earn them, but that ellis hasn’t done anything worthy of one. ma said every day was a gift, but every day ellis wakes and can’t find it in himself to be grateful for receiving it. ellis opens the case and frowns at the typewriter, a gift, and he still doesn’t understand what he did to earn it. “why?” he asks. ma’s face seems to melt, almost curling in on itself. ellis wishes he could shove the word back in his mouth or take the typewriter and run so he didn’t have to look at sadness he’d put on her face. 169 title of piece “cuz you’re a good boy, ellis.” “thank ya,” he says. he avoids her eyes and hopes she moves on, even if ellis’s confusion hasn’t been cleared. she doesn’t seem assuaged. if anything, she looks conflicted. ellis doesn’t know how to handle soft feelings, but ma does. she caresses his face like she might cry, and the sentimentality makes him very desperately wish he could hide. “i wan’cha to be happy. be some’un’s and make ‘em happy,” she says. she takes a sad little breath. “wan’cha to be a good man.” they were more than aware of his father’s negative traits, but they were never discussed. ma’s implication feels almost illegal. she lets it simmer for a moment, but it quickly boils over. she withdraws her hand, and ellis’s face burns when he registers what else she’d said. his stomach turns when imagining himself as “someone’s.” he’s never liked the idea of going with someone, even when he sees beth from school looking at him, and he sees the way the other boys look at her. he doesn’t think he feels those things for people. his mother mentioning this makes him wonder if she somehow knows that his romantic feelers are broken, and his cheeks hurt from the heat. on top of this, if his ma and pa are an example of what it is to “be someone’s,” that is the last thing ellis wants. “do anythin’ for ya. ya know?” she whispers, bringing ellis back to the present. “anythin’.” he hates himself for his immediate bitterness. he nods anyways, rolls a shoulder and stretches his neck and notes where bitterness and shame feel in his body for when he needs to write about it next. shame, right there in his trachea. bitterness, in his cheeks and his clenched teeth. and that other lingering feeling, that nauseous dread in his stomach when he thinks about being someone’s. but he needs to look excited. and grateful—and he is, he really is, but there is such an overwhelming mixture of surprise and confusion and anger and discomfort that he ends up unfocusing his eyes in the way he does when he needs to power through something. he says, “i know, ma.” she tugs at the blanket under his knee, teasing him. “i’d even pick through some’uns trash.” 170 he snorts so he can hurtle the emotional moment back to lightheartedness and tries not to focus on how tired ma sounds when she tries not to sound tired. “can’t wait to see what’cha come up with,” ma says. ellis knows what a conclusion sounds like, and he nearly vibrates with the anticipation of being alone with the typewriter. she closes the case, latches it, and waves him off. “go, go. best get started now.” ellis got started then. he sets the case on his desk with the softness one would handle a newborn baby with and pops the latch, which he wouldn’t do with a baby. the typewriter is made of a sturdy metal, painted a glossy black with a red trademark sticker on the top left of the cover. the typebars are a bit crooked, and when he presses a key, they show themselves and disappear again like groundhogs. “remington portable” is in gold lettering, impossible to miss over the black. ellis rips a blank page from one of his notebooks and fiddles with loading it until he figures it out. he scans the keyboard for the letters he wants, running his fingers along each key and memorizing the order they’re in, testing them, feeling the steel that he swears will never be cold again, and ellis writes. ellis sleepwalks less and writes more. 1938 ellis dreamed that one day, he would be a writer talented enough for he and ma to have a house that she chose, with her own car, and a larger garden where she had the freedom to grow more than vegetables. he didn’t expect that his first publication would be ma’s obituary. the sheridan post arrives in what is now his front yard, and ellis unfolds it to find his mother’s face on page two. her smile is posed. it is not the smile with the wrinkled nose or the lopsided quirk. he starts to read, but he doesn’t need to. he’d toiled over it up until the day the funeral home needed it. it is not his best work, and he hates that. just to torture himself, ellis scans it. he gets as far as: dorothy a. covett (preston), 39, died at her home on thursday, october 20th 171 title of piece before he curses at it, drops the paper on the kitchen counter, and retreats to the typewriter. he makes himself think of new stories he can write instead of how sick he feels, and how the house still smells like cleaning supplies, and how lucky he is that her blood blends in with the red bricks of the hearth. ellis knows he isn’t funny, but he jokes to himself. at least pa’s dead too. i can write whenever i want now. 1940 ellis works enough to keep himself afloat and writes when he’s not working. writing brings in very little income, but it keeps him sane, and ellis thinks that has to count for something. 1942 when ellis checks the mailbox, he’s hoping for a congratulatory letter from one of the seventeen magazines he submitted his story to. instead, it is an order to report for induction. *** ellis says goodbye to his mother in may. the sun is still bleary-eyed in the early hours of dawn, and ellis needs to head towards the train station. he’d learned young that dwelling on the carelessness of the hand he was dealt was a futile thing. fairness is an unfamiliar concept; one he seldom knows or understands. waiting on fairness to show its cowardly face is an otiose endeavor. though he’d attempted for years to rationalize this, ellis still can’t help but dwell on how unfair it is that ma is buried next to the man that killed her. *** ellis doesn’t want to make friends, but gabriel cassidy is quietly adamant and talks mostly about his family. ellis thinks he might just need someone to talk about them with. gabriel has six siblings. he’d hoped that he and his brothers would be stationed together, but one was assigned to the air force and the other was already dead. 172 “what about you?” gabriel asks. “only child,” ellis says. gabriel doesn’t push. ellis thinks that if he has to have a friend, he’ll keep gabriel. “what are you always writing about?” ellis passes over his small notebook. gabriel scans the framework for a scene he wants to write for a story he hasn’t fully fleshed out yet. he nods, passing the notebook back to ellis. ellis scans it himself, trying to read it from the eyes of someone who’s reading it for the first time. “nice,” gabriel says. “so he goes back in time and, what, like, fucks around with things that have happened already?” “i think so,” ellis says. he scratches the stubble on his jaw. “dunno how, though.” “well, i’d read it,” gabriel says. “write me when it’s done, yeah? or mail me a copy?” “will do.” 1943 ellis watches the other men write letters to their loved ones. he taps the back of his pen on a piece of paper and tries to think of ideas for a story. his imagination has subdued with age, but it is still there. gabriel asks him, “you don’t have anyone at home?” ellis shakes his head and writes a new idea instead of verbally answering. writes in dead loved one’s voice, sends to no one, returns to sender, reads them as if received from loved one. “cuz he don’t talk to anyone,” johnston says. his words are spoken towards his lap, where he scribbles chicken scratch onto a piece of paper. his words are obscured through the pen cap between his lips. “hard to talk to someone who only knows two words: his first and last name.” “man, why do you always have to be a dick?” gabriel asks. 173 title of piece “cuz i know you’ll always defend him,” johnson laughs. “y’all fags or what? acting like a fuckin’ knight in shining armor over here.” a few other men snicker. ellis hears someone else say something, but he doesn’t bother listening. lieutenant mccavy says, “enough.” gabriel shoots ellis a look, but ellis keeps his eyes on his paper. they finish writing in silence. ellis thinks he feels lt. mccavy looking at him, but he doesn’t turn his head to check. *** “shit,” lt. mccavy says. he crouches at the entrance of the foxhole, looking back and forth between ellis and gabriel. “thought this one was mine.” “s’alright, sir,” ellis says. gabriel mumbles something and rubs his eyes. while ellis is sat up, he fixes the blanket barrier between him and gabriel and tucks gabriel’s arm back under it. lt. mccavy looks ellis up and down, then leaves without another word. ellis thinks of stories to write until he falls asleep. 1944 gabriel is killed in ireland. ellis knew the army would inform his family, but he still wrote to them. *** ellis doesn’t have any ideas for stories that don’t have to do with death. he lets his letter for gabriel’s family be the last story he writes. *** ellis goes away while it happens. he sees his lieutenant and he sees the barrel of a pistol and he closes his eyes and goes away until it’s over. it hurts. he’s had worse. mccavy breathes down his neck and then the moisture there is cooling and he can breathe again. he doesn’t want to. breathing means he’s alive which means it’s real. the zip of mccacvy’s pants sounds to ellis like a gunshot. he 174 throws ellis’s blanket back over him, says something, and climbs out of ellis’s foxhole. he wants to shoot mccavy and then himself. he wants to scream, even though he isn’t sure his voice is capable of it. he wants to tear into the soil with his bare hands and only speak with his fists from now on. he wants to shroud himself with his genetics and become someone he swore he’d never be; a shellshocked caricature of a person so irate that they send him away for the safety of others. he wants to terrorize, like a rabid dog until someone has mercy on him and puts him down. ellis does none of those things. he lies unblinking in the pitch black until he needs to get up and pretend like he doesn’t wish a shell had been dropped on him in the night. *** ellis’s unit is deployed to germany. he bumps into a german soldier. he looks probably about as shocked as ellis feels, but ellis’s shock resides in the fact that he thinks, for a moment, that this man is his father. they look unsettlingly similar. he freezes, like he used to when his father pinned him with the same look this man is. muscle memory forces ellis from inaction as the soldier raises his gun. ellis checks the soldier’s pockets after he’s killed him. there’s a picture of a woman and a little girl in his lapel pocket. ellis flips the photo and tucks it back in with their faces pressed against the man’s heart. *** ellis gets deployed to belgium. 1945 he’s moving through the woods and from the corner of his eye, a tree bursts. ellis drops to the ground, and an artillery shell explodes in the branches above him. he’s not fast enough to tuck his legs away before hot steel is flying towards him, slashing into his lower half. he doesn’t know if the pain forces him into silence or if the explosion has deafened him. he doesn’t look down when a medic wraps his legs in splints. they pull open his shirt and something pokes and prods him and he realizes that his torso was hit 175 title of piece as well. in the medical tent, they try to put a mask over his face, and he recoils from it. “it’s going to hurt, and we need you to be still,” a medic says. she tries to wrangle the anesthetic mask back over his head, and he jerks away from it. “i’ll be still,” ellis says. he fears he won’t have a choice on his consciousness anyway. he wants the choice. he wants to be awake when they touch him. the loss of blood is making his lips and face tingle. the vicious battering of his heart against his ribs makes his vision swim. the mask goes over his face. two minutes or two days could have passed by the time ellis opens his eyes next. he’s at a real hospital. the doctors have british accents. one pries his eyes open, shining a light into them. ellis feels his chest vibrate with what he assumes is a growl. his hearing has returned. it is a dog-whistle shoved into his ear canal, and he would choke out as many medical professionals as needed if it meant they would stop touching him. “get off,” he thinks he says. “we can’t do that,” someone says. they pull the splint off. the blood that glued his wound to the fabric comes off as well. ellis makes a noise that sounds more animal than human and lunges for their hands. more hands. they grab his wrists and hold him down at his chest and his shoulders. they cut his pants from his legs. they rub his shoulders and it feels worse than the shrapnel did. they try to squeeze his hand, so he tucks his hands under his thighs. the surgeons prod at his legs and turn them this way and that and look through the holes that should not be there. his legs look like they’ve been butchered. one looks purple. he tries to swing them over the bed to stand, but they don’t move. he knows he can’t walk. he doesn’t know why he’s not able to stand. a cool hand rubs over the back of his neck. he feels the coldness of a gun and hands on his bare legs and hips. he leans over the side of the cot and vomits. more voices. they say, “we’re just changing the dressings.” they say, “it’s okay, it’s okay,” when ellis’s growls turn to puffs of panicked breaths. they speak in soothing tones, like mothers do to their children. ellis feels like a little boy, running to ma with a skinned knee or a busted lip. he doesn’t think he’s cried since he was that little, but something is coming from him and it sounds like a sob. they say, “just hold on. just a little longer. you’re so brave.” 176 the surgeon says, “the leg has to go before the gangrene spreads.” ellis says, “i don’t care, i don’t care. i don’t fucking care—get off of me. get off.” he does not have time to think of anything before his mouth is covered and the room turns hazy. ellis hopes he dies. *** ellis learns that the sleepwalking has resumed when he wakes, sprawled on the floor of his hospital room. pain flares and pulses from his torso and both legs, but when ellis looks down, there is only one. it ends under the knee. the nurses hurry in and he doesn’t know why he asks, but he doesn’t think it’d hurt. “can i have my leg back?” the nurses look at him very sadly. ellis takes that as a no. *** ellis is discharged. he thinks he should probably sell the house. just the thought of how much effort that will take exhausts him, so he avoids his parents’ bedroom at the end of the hallway and does not use the fireplace. 1946 he can’t always remember his dreams, but he can piece them together by where he wakes up. he wakes up at the hearth, clutching the wheels of his chair. he assumes he dreamed about holding ma’s cracked head together. he is squeezing the wheels of his chair, and his hands ache. he wakes up at the backdoor his father killed himself outside of. *** he doesn’t always wake up where he’s sleepwalked to. sometimes he wakes up in his bed. he knows he’d sleepwalked because his crutches are somewhere 177 title of piece he didn’t leave them. sometimes he wakes up with his prosthetic carelessly donned and his stump aches. sometimes ellis dwells on the hand he was dealt, and he decides that an amputated limb is not his most painful loss. *** ellis woke up at his desk. he’d dug the typewriter from the closet in his sleep. it glares up at him. his fingers are poised to type. he puts it away. he has nothing to write about, and the things that will come out of him are nothing he wants to see in words. *** ellis starts working at hoover’s clock repair. he finds that he likes fixing things that are fixable. his co-workers are nice, even on days where he can’t speak or days when his stump feels like ice and fire at the same time, or on days that he wishes he didn’t wake up. 1947 ellis has been out of combat for two years, but he’s spent the better half of this year battling with the sleepwalking and the typewriter. his subconscious wants him to fix something that cannot be fixed. he does not have it in him to try. he doesn’t want to. *** when he wakes up at the typewriter again, he sees that he’d loaded it with paper. packing it up and putting it away sounds like climbing a mountain, so ellis leaves it and hops back into bed. 1948 ellis works and goes to his doctors appointments and physical therapy and finally sells the house. in his apartment, he reads books that have nothing to do with the military or any wars. he tries reading romance novels, because perhaps this broken part of him is fixable. perhaps it is true that he hasn’t met “the right person” yet. 178 he finishes a few, but he finds them very boring. he has never felt any of these feelings. he thinks he would be perfectly content living with a friend for the rest of his life. he wonders if that friend could have been gabriel. *** ellis hates romance books because he hates what they make him dream about. now that he’s read what romance feels like to other people, his subconscious has taken those constructions of feelings and crafted them into recurring dreams where he enjoys the attack. after he wakes, he thinks about when mccavy will die and feels relieved. he assumes he wouldn’t feel relieved if he had enjoyed it. he returns all of the romance novels to the library. he prefers horror. 1949 ellis’s dreams become more vivid. they force memories to the surface of his mind. even in his sleep, he does not know what to do with them. sleepwalking feels like a physical escape attempt. in dreams where he wishes he could run or hide or fight, he wakes up somewhere he did not fall asleep. the typewriter mocks him. he wakes in front of it and thinks, i could write about it, but his thoughts become so jumbled and desperate for release that he can’t sort out one sentence at a time. *** he dreams about finding ma dead. he wakes at the typewriter. in his sleep, he has written. she still smells like vanilla extract. i wrap my hands around her skull and hold it together. this feels like the right thing to do. the bones scrape together. it feels like potsherds. it’s not too different from terra cotta. i want to throw up. i don’t. i am worried whatever is left of her brain will fall out if i move. i want to salvage what i can. 179 title of piece in his sleep he had written the dream out, word for word. there are some details that ellis hadn’t remembered until now, down to the forgotten words mccavy spoke as he snuck from ellis’s foxhole. “there are so many odds stacked against you, covett. remember that.” ellis shoves the paper deep into the desk drawer and goes back to bed. *** ellis shoots awake at the ringing of a gunshot in his ears. he dreamt that he made too much noise. mccavy shot him and said ellis had killed himself. he is dripping with sweat, and it feels like blood pissing from a bullet hole, and he thinks, okay. ellis has heard people say that they wouldn’t take back the things that have happened to them, and he wants to laugh at the idea of someone not taking their chance to make their life easier. gabriel’s voice comes to him. “so he goes back in time and, what, like, fucks around with things that have happened already?” ellis thinks, wouldn’t that be nice. he doesn’t know what it says about him that he would rather the man that hurt him be dead than the woman who would have died for him to be alive. he wonders if she’d still be alive today. he wonders how she would have fared, living alone, not knowing if ellis was going to live or die. for a moment, ellis feels relieved that she didn’t have to experience that, and that he didn’t add to her burden, and that he doesn’t have to pretend to be coping better than he is around her. then he feels horribly guilty. 1950 for some reason, i am watching this dream in third person. 180 my foxhole is there. mccavy is getting closer to it. he is not walking away from it. i see that i am still sleeping, bundled up, and on my side. i am not face down, half naked, covered by a thin blanket. i want him to change course. good, yes. go through the trees. away from me. keep walking. keep walking. away from the camp. someone is calling after him. make him wave them off. keep walking. walk him until he’s far away from where i’m sleeping. far enough away that i will get a good night’s sleep, and not even his death will disturb me. get the pistol out. push it hard against his temple. yes. hold it there. let him struggle for a moment, just until his confusion is replaced with horror. he won’t scream for help, but wrangle his mouth shut anyways, just because i can. let his life memories begin to flash through his mind. let him realize that he will lose against some invisible force. let him beg for his body to cooperate. good. let him offer desperate prayers to a god he’ll never meet. pull the trigger. *** ellis reads this with a frown. this is much to process first thing in the morning. lt. mccavy’s death is something that he hasn’t thought about in years. the confusion surrounding why he had committed suicide weighed heavily on ellis for a few months after it happened, but truthfully, he hasn’t thought about lt. mccavy much in the last few years. he doesn’t know why this is coming up now. he plugs the context clues of what he’s written into the mystery of lt. mccavy’s death and doesn’t like what his mind comes up with. ellis digs through his desk drawer of papers. some of them are unintelligible messes of ink. some are limp with how beaten they are, covered in ink like ellis had pushed the carriage back again, again, again, then flipped the paper and repeated. some are neatly typed, legible entries. some have only a few sentences. some have only a few words. ellis scans one from last september; an assault, word for word, in excruciating detail. 181 title of piece i thought he was gabriel, but then i thought that gabriel would never touch me like this, and then i remembered gabriel is dead. i assumed i’d suffered an injury of the sort. it was the logical explanation to why my lower half was exposed. when i turn, i see the barrel of a gun. mccavy says, “shut up.” i shut up. ellis drops the stack into the drawer and slams it shut. he feels—as a distant memory, as a nightmare—hot breath and invasive pain and words that break his already feeble heart, and his stomach twists at how vivid it is. ellis remembers, “so he goes back in time and, what, like, fucks around with things that have happened already?” ellis thinks, that’s impossible. ellis remembers, “write me when it’s done, yeah? or mail me a copy?” and, “can’t wait to see what’cha come up with.” ellis doesn’t know what to do with the things he thinks he’s learned, so he lets the ideas for the story he’d abandoned years ago come back to him. he remembers ma and gabriel and thinks, what if the protagonist could bring people back from the dead, too? ellis loads a blank sheet of paper and writes. and writes. and writes. 120 be born in tijuana; have a mexican background, but be adopted by two hoosiers; don’t worry, you’ll know what a hoosier is later; don’t memorize your mother’s face, you’ll have a picture of her later; don’t remember all the details of the process, you’ll have the adoption explained to you by your new parents. they aren’t new, they have always been your parents. go to indiana, settle down in a quiet town like new pal, a sleepy town, frozen in time. on the high shelf, your only form of contact to the other world sits high above your head: rough, itchy blankets, a pair of miniature dolls with their black suit and white and red dress, a baby’s straw sombrero—aren’t they nice mantel pieces? don’t open the navy-blue tote yet, let it sit in the closet under the folded lego boxes. pay attention to the two beanie babies on the dresser, one red with the mexican flag on its chest and the other splashed with red, white, and blue, undoubtedly the american one. get a younger sister; be mistaken as the younger brother because you’re less responsible. be seen at church; get mistaken as her boyfriend by the other kids. her blue eyes and your brown eyes don’t match. it’s okay, they didn’t know you were adopted. take a look in the tote, even if you’re not bothered by the adoption yet. go to the county fairgrounds, be approached by fellow hispanics—after all, you’re one of them, right? ¿dónde están los baños? listen as they speak too fast; say you don’t speak spanish but in english of course; let their daughter translate the message, she understands two languages. why not you? get exposed as a fraud; take spanish classes throughout high school; then take more classes at college; great, now you can read at a second-grade level; join the school’s latino club, you’ll fit right in, right? go watch their dramatic movies, see their tarot cards, and taste inoffensive flavors of catered qdoba. realize something is off, you’re not connecting, like an observer but not part of the whole. you’re not picking up their de’s or los’s or keeping up with their language, or your language? it’s becoming a whole cultural class, and you’re already taking too many classes. get overwhelmed with school and stop going to the club. great, you didn’t plan for this extended spring-break; leave the school, just for a minute, online work is better anyways; pause, open your blue tote now, just once more; some other blankets, dried palm leaves; look, her photo; that’s your mom, or your real mom, or your birth parent? she could not have been taller than 5’ 4”, given how the kitchen cabinets towered over her. read her face, her tiny, brown eyes, the thin strands of hair framing her face. nothing, there is nothing to read from her distant face. imagine her voice, what she must have said to you before handing you off; be careful putting the photo back in the box, or you’ll ruin the memory; you are a hoosier, an american. go ahead, take more classes, do more tutoring sessions, connect to other hispanic clubs; do these things, even when you don’t fit in; you may never become fully mexican, but you are still mexican, and hey, being bilingual is a worthy skill. you could travel back to tijuana, talk to your xavier neier how to be a mexican american in indiana 121 second mother, hear her voice again for the first time. have you thought about what you want to say to her? you’ll figure it out as the years go by. 104 12” x 18” mixed media collage ellie bevan masque of the red death 123 gravel crunched and popped as he rolled from the cul-de-sac onto cedar bend court. peter made this trip daily now. his “a little bit each day” attitude kept him optimistic about moving his dad out as that time grew closer. his dad wasn’t the typical hoarder though. peter’s childhood home was housing his dad’s great archive. it wasn’t as straightforward as medicine, but peter understood his dad’s work helped people. growing up his dad always talked about the responsibility of collecting ethnographies. there was always his dad’s anxiety that if the archive disappeared, those voices might disappear. the curation of such an archive was just as sensitive. “don’t let those bastards pick apart-” it had been over six months since his dad had last talked with him like that. since then, norman’s worsening health had progressed. their lives moved more quickly. in that disorienting movement, things that were once focused were now blurred. many things were forgotten. climbing the porch steps, peter kept his arms tucked against his sides. he knew better than to grab onto the shaky railing. it had always been more of a hazard than a help. he still had a scar etched lightly on his chin to prove it. work from earlier that morning was still cutting away at him. replaying the morning wasn’t helping much to smooth out those edges. he needed a distraction to get his mind off it. his keys rattled. this gently called for his attention as he snaked them out of his pocket. when he stepped into the mudroom the house overtook him. visually the clutter was always overwhelming, but it also smelled intensely of patchouli. smoke pooled in the mudroom from incense burning somewhere deeper in the home. peter went to sit down, but the entryway bench was no longer visible under the immense piles. he stepped off his shoes, scuffing the backs in the process. small shavings of faux leather fell to the floor. then he carefully moved around the stacks of papers. the piles were stacked so high they leaned like jenga blocks. pages hung down sweeping the floor—the newest addition to norm’s creeping archive. he followed the spread back to its source in the sitting room. peter could see his dad had been pulling box after box of his old research from the attic. calling out to him, peter said, “damn it, dad. what did i say about the stairs?” despite peter’s voice, the lap-sided house with green walls and a forgotten carpet held great silence. the patchouli seemed to fill the space when sound didn’t. it made peter’s eyes water. norman was resting in the well-lit sitting room in one of the two burnt orange armchairs just below the skylight. everything was incredibly still. this made the rhythmic rising and sinking of their chests seem pronounced and unnatural. only the soft hissing of air sneaking in and out of their lungs could be heard. kayla mcveigh before we forget 124 before we forget across the sitting room and up the wall stood the mounds of clip-bound manuscripts. they ascended in a multi-tiered formation from several years of stacking and useless sorting. peter thought if he could only take a few days off work, he could get the house under control. he looked at the deep lines that ran vertically from the corners of norman’s mouth. time was only ever going to work against them. he put this thought down to focus on sorting. the forever creeping archive was a beast that pulled and crawled its spiral-bound body across the floor. heading for the light switch, peter hopped around the wandering branches of root-bound pathos plants. they exploded out of their ceramic planters and their vines wandered over old piles of once-sorted papers. peter’s face scrunched up at the sight of his lost progress. he had hours of work at his feet, at least half that work would be redoing everything he had accomplished yesterday. norman wheezed from across the room while trying to shift his weight onto his left side in the cushioned chair. peter continued to sift through the piles of papers until a strange article fixed his attention. “crows?” he mumbled. the article was titled, the curious crow funerals: a murder in mourning. peter’s mom had loved birds. he thought about how his dad would annoy him by talking about the significance of birds in other cultures. his mom always held a warm smile to remind peter to listen. “dad just doesn’t understand what i want to do. he thinks all doctors are unethical or something.” peter had said over the phone once. he had been in his twenties and was still in school. his mom called to invite him over for dinner. even while in college, all his life he had never lived more than fifteen minutes from them. “besides i don’t know about culture and religion. what am i supposed to say when he talks about that?” “just listen to him, peanut. that’s all you have to do.” it wasn’t that peter and norman fought, but from the time he moved out for college and went into medicine, he and his dad had grown apart. his mom was always good at bridging that. earlier that morning, before arriving at his dad’s, peter had scheduled a few hours to work in the lab. he could then head over to the house for a few hours and make it back to the hospital for a one-on-one with one of his patients. he worked these shifts more often given his dad’s needs. peter had arrived at the lab at 8:15. his thoughts were ahead of him. he was already planning out what he could get done at the house. he was still unaware of the disaster at work. the sharp point he would soon find himself stuck on all day. his desk had always been near the tanks of rats in the control group so he could tune out the soft clicking from their glass water bottles. the rodents guzzled down droplets of water for hours on end. a very distinctive clatter. this and the humming of fluorescent lights were so constant they were practically inaudible to him. inaudible most days, but not this morning. 125 kayla mcveigh his colleagues were quiet. the research assistant seemed nervous. their eyes dropped to the floor. the flick of a tongue nervously wetting a tensed lower lip, queued him in on the news. for the first time in years, he could hear the chatter of the lab again. it was practically deafening. it seemed cruel that his longest and most promising trial was ruined, but the lab could be unchanged. his desk was just as he had left it. a mug with an assortment of pens and his notebook sat in the right-hand corner. above them clung a few pink post-it notes with the contact information for assisted living facilities. these were peeling off the wall. in the middle of his desk sat two sample designs for the experimental drug’s potential packaging. a game changer for families battling alongside a loved one with an aggressive and often terminal form of leukemia. when he finally approached the tank, he lowered his hand into the cage as though needing to touch what his sight struggled to make sense of. “what happened, star?” peter said as his fingers met with the stiff body. last week the whole team celebrated this rodent with hard nips of respectably aged scotch. like the other lab rats, star had white fur with standard ears and amber eyes. some of the rats had their tails marked with a black sharpie to make identifying them easier, but star could be easily recognized by his one bad eye. it was an old injury, but a miraculous recovery. an overlooked wire from the mesh covering on the tank had stabbed into his left eye socket. for a while, the blackened eye oozed an unpromising amount of puss. it was surprising when the eye crusted over, and the swelling went down. that was star though, a fighter. he showed all the signs of a medical breakthrough. peter even decided that after this trial he would retire the rat into the care of his youngest. she was a senior in high school with a 17-year-old grudge built up from never having had a pet. peter thought about what this meant for his patients, and he thought about what this meant for their families. he’d watched mothers throw themselves to the floor and patients fade away. don’t forget them, he thought. running the water and the bathroom fan, peter tried to hide for a moment before going back out to face the team. his face was red, and his eyes were puffy. he had never cried over any of the rats before, but he had never named any of them before. nichole, one of the research assistants removed star from the other rats who had been grooming the body. she popped the small corpse into the freezer and said something about an article she had seen. something about how the pack will bury their dead within 48 hours. the team knew from experience that the other rats would produce unreliable data for the next few days. their behavior already masking any meaningful response to the drug in development. the experimental group would likely refuse food, move slower, and sleep for much longer than usual. none of this behavior would be useable. “what do you want for dinner, dad?” peter called out from the kitchen. norman’s face abruptly twisted up in distress and his eyes searched around the room as if looking for something familiar he could ground himself in. peter kept his distance waiting under the arched doorway so he wouldn’t add to this stress. nor126 before we forget man looked at peter occasionally, but it was clear he wasn’t finding the security that he needed. peter lightly tapped his thumb against his thigh five times before responding. “what’s wrong, dad?” he asked gently. norman gasped as he tried to speak. even his words thrashed about wildly like something feral backed into a corner. “i just don’t know why you keep calling me that. who are you to call me that?” his speech was rapid, and his wheezing grew louder. peter tensed. he cleared his throat as it had choked up slightly. taking his time, he carefully said, “that’s all right, norman. you’re okay. you’re safe with me. you’re safe, you know that. i’ll call you norm. is that better?” it was something peter had read and now it was something he practiced. there was a chickadee whistling near the window by the armchairs. this must have been enough because norman trailed off repeating to himself softly, “that would be better, that would be better, that would be better.” a sufficient mantra for a slipping mind. norman repeated things to himself more often over the past few months. sometimes verbally, it started with dates, then names which he told himself not to forget, and eventually just an utterance don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget he repeated these reminders until the syllables seemed to come loose and the entire string of words ultimately lost meaning. eventually, they became hand-printed on notepads only to fade from him as soon as the words hit the paper. norman would ask peter to decipher his notes, but peter noticed they had become less legible. norman reached to his left side for some photographs that were stacked on the round side table. this calmed him. he began flipping through the stack. norman looked up at peter and their eyes met for a moment as norman flashed peter a lighthearted smile. following this small grin, he said, “this was me.” peter caught himself searching for his dad in those brief seconds of eye contact and thought to himself that he should know better by now. the two armchairs were angled toward each other. norman always sat in his chair and peter found himself sitting in the one that had been his mom’s. she would spend hours watching the cardinals and chickadees that flitted around the feeder that hung in the window. peter sunk into her neighboring armchair and tilted his head over to quickly reference which of the washed-out pictures norman was talking about today. “what’s that m?” norman asked. 127 kayla mcveigh “university of michigan,” peter said. “i went there?” “no, you taught there. anthropology.” looking at the mess of papers and books peter was already prepared for what norman would say next. “we can’t let the knowledge be forgotten. we can’t.” norman cried out with a weakness in his voice that reflected the helplessness in his situation. peter thought about the comfort his dad had given him at his mom’s funeral. norman’s words still echoed. peter had tried to study his mom’s many details— the things he could collect her in. things like a few of her illustrations or her guide to the birds of the north. he looked for her in some of his own features. the small things like her widow’s peak. it dipped down from her dark hair and framed her forehead. it reflected the one shaping peter’s own hairline. he hadn’t always noticed this. peter collected these details and his dad burned incense. he thought about this when he had stood over his mom a few years back. she was several feet under, somewhere closer to the bedrock than the topsoil. he remembered how norman had taken him by the shoulder, softly reassured him, and in a steady voice said, “it’s okay to feel hopeless. this is hopeless. just don’t confuse it for being pointless.” “i know, dad. no, norman, i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i know.” peter said pulling himself to his feet. he needed to head home but would try to come back earlier tomorrow for a better start on the archive. when peter got to work, he was at least fifteen minutes late. it wasn’t like peter, he was almost always on time, but he was finding it harder to go through the motions of his day. his body felt heavier, and his thoughts moved slower. dr. khan had been waiting for him at his desk. he wasn’t exactly a supervisor, but he was someone peter reported to and someone he owed an explanation to. “look, dr. weber,” dr. khan said meeting peter’s eyes with concern. “we were all thrown off by yesterday, but you dipped out of here and missed an appointment with one of your patients.” “i know.” the space between peter’s eyebrows matted up and the tensing of his jaw was straining his neck. dr. khan looked at the post-it notes and the pamphlets on peter’s desk titled, pivot test, preventing the next fall ages 80 and older, and a flyer titled memory care: three ways to help when they forget. “does he know who you are still?” 128 peter looked up and said, “not exactly. some days yes, but more like, familiar.” “so, what are you going to do?” it came off as abrupt, but peter knew khan was just trying to help. people were always trying to help. “what i can, i guess. what more can i do?” he said more out of habit like a call-and-response sort of exchange. peter had gotten used to these conversations but as his own words reached his ears he paused for a moment. with a deep breath, he held that thought, then, following his exhale he said, “i’ve got to put that rat in the ground.” at the end of his shift, he packed up star in a brown paper lunch sack. he had a quiet drive over to the house on cedar bend court. norman stopped him at the front door refusing to let him. he wouldn’t budge until peter felt familiar again. peter was someone safe. peter always helped with the archive. regaining norman’s trust, he was able to help him into the backyard one unsteady step at a time. peter got norman settled in. sitting in a metal folding chair, norman was calm in the warm sun. spring had worked hard to melt away the lingering chills of winter. peter shoveled heaps of earth from the unkept flower bed making a hole. he placed star about two feet into the ground just below the thickets of thorn-laced stems and full bunches of pink petals. newly bloomed petals with deep red creases in their folds. “your mom loved those roses,” norman said looking right at peter. peter’s eyes met his dad’s. they held that silence for a lingering minute or two. the drifting clouds exposed beams of light shifting warm rays onto peter’s face. it felt good. the warmth of the sun pressed his skin as the glow accentuated the amber tones in his dark brown hair. norman was smiling and peter noticed that his dad looked radiant. with folded skin and an inward collapsing frame, his lungs held air and his skin caught sunlight. he was radiant. 190190 a wild dog’s devotion you domesticate, and do not reciprocate. i. gifting a carcass; a hound’s loudest love language shamed, diminutive ii. whining for hours, your dead silence. it’s deadly; the love you bury iii. waiting by the door hoping for one scratch between these perked ears. please. touch. iv. your fierce protector. they tell you, “call off your dog.” you say, “sit. stay. bad.” v. desperate for your time pawing, whining, crying, bite— flinch. cower. shake. sleep. neglection is watery devotion is thick i dredge through the mud of it. evan allee love languages 148 149 traditional wood joinery cherry wood with danish oil finish joe chimenti chair 01 130 although i am russian, i am not really russian. i am not the essence of beauty wrapped in a kokoshnik that’s dazzled and draped by the porcelain rose tinted cheeks. i am not the luxuriant judder of incomprehensible language that flatters the most eager and soft of ears. nor am i the purity of stainless snow baptist robes be to law, rather by the crimson blood that cleaned me clear. i also am not the vodka that stings and burns, but am the pelmeni of hospitality and heart that pours so smoothly into bowls of art and wooden splinters. i am not the composition of art— encased and displayed, framed in golden petals that are only seen in my strands of blonde. i am not the embellishment of a sarafan, but am the masquerader drowned beneath. although i am russian, i am not really russian because the american aroma has dissolved me. alexandra kluger identity crisis 5555 i’m tired of having a teenager for a mother. when i was young and squishy, i giggled when you’d squeeze with your hands. chipped paint and nails, strands falling out of your too loose hair tie. the bags under your eyes grew into your favorite shade of purple. your squeeze molded my hands thin and long, “perfect for piano” but, you’d cry when i tried to sing– that was your talent anyway. compression moved up my arms and around my chest– you gripped my throat. i still remember standing a whole ten years tall and your crowned canines looked sharp enough to tear out my jugular. i didn’t ask you to help me with my math homework again. you weren’t that good at it when you were in school anyway. i filed my teeth to points with your clippers i stole from your bathroom when you were still at work. i stole more than that, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. elizabeth terhorst teenagers 56 by seventeen, i was ready to give you bite marks to match the ones you left on me. but, you still hadn’t unhinged your jaw. it’s hard to bite when you’re still being bitten. eighteen, my bruises had started to fade, and the scratches i left on your face hid behind new freckles. i think we forgot that teen girls don’t get along especially when you force a wolf into bo peep’s clothing. nineteen, almost twenty. i’m left with bleeding nubs, broken gums and eyebags your favorite color. you even got me to dye my hair the same violent red. you’re ready to go another round, but i’m tired. i don’t have the same energy a teenager does. i’m tired of having a teenager for a mother. i just can’t keep up with your youthful angst. 141 24” x 24” oil on panel robert smith pride and joy 93 the lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous. – proverbs 15:29 god forbid my little thighs be exposed in the presence of all those devout lutheran men. i would pick the dried dribbles of candle wax from the pew till my fingers turned raw, anything to distract from the drone of a sermon not meant for me. we perched there, perfect rows of deep blue polos and pressed khakis. i would have worn a skirt, but my legs were too long and skirts too short. quiet down, like a lady, don’t waste your breath. you know your voice isn’t wanted here. press your tense little shoulders against these too-straight pews. get down on your wobbly knees, fold your trembling hands and close your eyes. thou shalt pray into the blackness to be saved by a god who doesn’t care to answer. come, little children– stand in uniform columns. file through the chapel. come, dip your fingers into the trickling baptismal font. drag the cross on your forehead, feel it sink into your skin as the holy water makes contact. if you are good, you will take the weight of righteousness. on your naked shoulders. i know the weight of your righteousness is one i will never bear. ashley wilson the righteous 3535 after eduardo c. corral peace trickles down the stream after a roaring waterfall. placing its fingers on ivory keys, peace plays chopin’s nocturnes. in the fermata of the tune, peace finds tranquility. peace floats inside my body, like swans on a lake. on a winter morning, peace sits on my window shaped like a snowflake. a flame kissing a cigarette after a party ignites a long-awaited peaceful drag. simmering water on a stove has felt peace turn up the heat. at sunrise, peace savors café con leche. “paz,” peace says in spanish after a week of chaos. peace counts glowing stars over my bed. in the bristles of my hairbrush, peace smuggles its way onto my scalp. after jumping off a swing, peace brushes the dirt off my knees. biting into caramel drizzled apples, peace rushes to my cheeks. i have found it in the world around me. dayanara guzman threads of peace 192192 this is the way it was night reflecting up from the shimmering asphalt firing glints of embers back into crystal clear windows in the passenger’s eyes, all was calm driving through the terror was a different story “no harm will come your way” no harm does not make the driver any calmer white knuckles gripping the wheel, steering the two into the dreary, drenched oblivion with no qualms other than why “any time, just raise your arms above the flood” in reference to the raging storm? who knew perhaps she sensed the desperation brewing beside her the road, her road, moves like a drunkard’s hallway like the sea the ocean before them brings on its waves it echoes with a million voices calling their names one distorted, one clearer than yesterday’s skies driving on through the floodland, into the sea off the great white pier standing amidst oblivion this is the way it was never to wake up from this land this fragmented, endless dream on loop this is the way it is driving through the floodland comatose for however long too much, but never enough having everything within one’s reach just to tear it up and watch it fall and let death will you away elena saorrono floodland 7575 fade in: int. blake’s room in her apartment — after midnight blake dean (23 years old, cynical journalist bent on finding truth over sensation, and facts over superstition) wakes up in her bed, a sleeping bag on an air mattress. the rest of the room is just as bare-bones, with a few scattered papers and books. there’s screaming from the next room. she scrambles out of bed and barges into the other room. cut to: int. melissa’s room in the same apartment — after midnight at a card table used as a makeshift desk, wrapped in fuzzy blankets sits melissa dean (15 years old, typical chronically-online emo kid with big emotions; she works out by obsessing over her favorite bands, younger sister, and legal dependent of blake). she sobs, scrolling on her rickety laptop through a series of headlines about musician shawn ellis dying of a heart attack at 43. blake missy? what’s wrong? are you okay? melissa (sobbing) he’s dead! oh my god, he’s dead! blake who? who’s dead? melissa shawn ellis! blake crouches next to melissa and rubs her back. blake jesus, is that someone at your school? levi miller punk was dead 76 melissa he’s — he’s the drummer from good horror! blake visibly relaxes and drops her hand. blake god, not that stupid band again. melissa (angry) it’s not stupid! melissa (cont’d) blake good horror was instrumental yeah, yeah, to the pop-punk to the pop-punk and emo sound and emo sound of the early of the early 2010s — 2000s — melissa (cont’d) early 2010s, blake. blake thanks, wikipedia. can you explain why you were screaming in the middle of the night over some celebrity? melissa shawn’s my favorite member of good horror, and i never got to meet him! blake you don’t even know him. melissa shawn was born in the suburbs surrounding chicago on may 6th, 1979, which is also the name of his third favorite song. he has three kids, aged three, six, and eight. he’s been married to jeanne ellis né kennedy for the past ten years and — blake okay. okay. borderline stalking, but i get it. melissa you don’t. blake reaches out to set her hand on melissa’s shoulder. 77 title of piece blake listen, missy— melissa jerks away from blake. melissa don’t call me that. blake melissa. i’ve been trying to make all this easier for you. (more) blake (cont’d) i know you didn’t want to live with me, but it wasn’t safe for you there. mom — she’s not right in the head. melissa stares at her laptop, not scrolling or reading, just sitting. blake (cont’d) i’m trying. but you have to try, too. you can’t wake me up like this on a work night every time one of your middle-aged obsessions kicks it. melissa you’re such a bitch! blake hey! melissa how can you be so casual about it? shawn is dead! blake (yelling) i don’t have time to care about him! melissa shrinks back. blake collects herself. blake (cont’d) you don’t remember what it was like. you were mom’s favorite. i got the worst of her. melissa maybe you should have left me there! 78 blake steps toward the door, hurt but trying to hide it. blake just keep the music down. blake shuts the door. melissa huffs, then turns up the volume on her laptop and clicks on an already-liked video of good horror concert footage. cut to: the credits — a montage of grainy live footage, professional quality music videos, and behind the scenes vlogs to upbeat rock music (something along the lines of “bang bang” by green day or “boy division” by my chemical romance). cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — day a few days later, blake edits a news story on her laptop, sitting on a threadbare couch amid piles of papers. she pounds at the keys, frustrated. the apartment door slams, and she looks up. melissa walks into the apartment, past blake, and right into her room. blake how was — melissa leave me alone. blake sighs and goes back to typing. her phone vibrates as a call from jeff work (50s, newspaper manager) comes through. blake answers the phone. blake hello? jeff (o.s.) you got anything going on this afternoon? blake i have to finish this piece on — jeff (o.s.) there’s a big funeral. local celeb, musician, probably coked out but they’re call79 title of piece ing it a heart attack. can you go report on it? blake who is it? papers rustle from over the phone. jeff (o.s.) shawn ellis, from that punk band. you know him? blake not really. so what, a fluff piece? jeff (o.s.) nope. he’s famous. funeral’s gonna be ripe with fights and dirty laundry, gonna make for some great soundbites. blake frowns, setting aside her laptop. blake i’m not a tabloid writer, jeff. jeff (o.s.) you’re the best writer we have. you just need to write about something interesting, for once. god knows it would pay you better. blake i’m sorry, but scandalizing a dead man isn’t that interesting to me. jeff (o.s.) get that stick out of your ass, dean. four pm. i’ll send a photographer. blake stares at melissa’s door. jeff (o.s.) (cont’d) alright? blake four pm, okay. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — afternoon 80 blake hops on one foot as she shoves on her shoes, now dressed in black formal wear. blake bye, melissa. i’m going to a — uh — work thing. won’t be back until late. there’s still some soup in the fridge, i think. cut to: int. melissa’s room — afternoon melissa is watching a good horror music video turned up to maximum volume. still sobbing. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — afternoon blake (sarcastically) love you, too. cut to: int. aster’s convertible — afternoon, sunny tin summers (short for christian, 39, ex-lead guitarist of good horror, has clothes and a haircut like a suburban preacher and lives off past record sales) sits in the passenger seat of an open convertible, stuck in traffic. aster mckee (late 30s, ex-singer and rhythm guitarist of good horror, dressed formally for the funeral but clearly more of an unkempt guy with long hair, tattoos, and scruffy facial hair) sits in the driver’s seat. tin squints at the sunlight. tin got any sunglasses? aster presses a button, opening a container inside the car. tin (cont’d) thanks. tin looks at the pair of small, pink hello kitty sunglasses. 81 title of piece aster they match your eyes. tin puts them on. better than nothing. tin how old are the girls now? aster halo’s three, and dawn’s coming up on five. tin god, they grow up so fast. aster how about abbie? tin she’s twelve. goes by abigail now. aster oh, boy. tin yeah. she was too embarrassed to drive with me, went with hunter and her kids instead. aster to be fair, hunter’s minivan runs, unlike your serial killer-ass truck. tin it was working fine this morning! i don’t know why it decided to break down at the funeral home. aster maybe it wanted to get you and me in my car, alone. tin frowns at aster from behind the hello kitty sunglasses. tin where are your kids? aster their mom’s. she thought they were too young for a funeral. 82 tin (surprised) you’re separated? aster few months ago. tin damn. aster yep. aster drums on the steering wheel, clearly uncomfortable talking about it. aster (cont’d) anyway, where’s your chick? haven’t seen her in ages. tin marla’s dead. beat. aster oh, jeez. tin shrugs. tin happens. aster ...how? tin aneurysm. three years ago. it was quick. aster i’m sorry. tin yeah. they sit with that in silence for a second. it’s awkward. aster opens his mouth 83 title of piece to speak, but is interrupted by a woman in the car in front of them: fangirl 1 (twenty-something, wearing good horror merch). fangirl 1 holy shit — is that aster mckee? fangirl 2 (same age, same clothes) cranes her neck out the window. fangirl 2 what?! where? fangirl 1 there — the car behind us! tin shrinks back in his seat. tin shit. not now. aster eats up the attention, waving, blowing kisses, etc. what? it’s just fans. tin they hate me. aster come on. no one blames you for the breakup, anymore. tin you should see the blogs. aster why are you reading fan blogs? tin i get bored. aster well if you’re bored right now, want to give them a show? tin wh — 84 aster leans in and kisses him, quick. tin pushes him away. tin (cont’d) what the hell? aster not like we haven’t done worse, in front of bigger audiences. tin that’s different. it was the 2010s. i’m not — fangirl 1 jumps out of her car and approaches aster’s side of the convertible. tin (whispering) (cont’d) oh god put the roof up aster put it up put it up oh shit — fangirl 1 and fangirl 2 reach the car. aster leans out of his window. fangirl 2 oh my god! hi! aster hey. how’s it going? fangirl 1 so, so good! i mean — obviously not, but — y’know? tin you do realize you’re standing in the middle of the road. fangirl 1 jeez, it’s not like traffic is going anywhere. tin wonder whose fault that is? aster i think what our favorite guitarist is trying to say is that maybe right now isn’t the best time. if you give me your emails, i’d be fine to talk with you later. fangirl 1 oh — sure. here... 85 title of piece they type their emails into the phone aster hands them. tin watches as long as he can, before snapping. tin our best friend just died. just go. fangirl 1 and fangirl 2 back away toward their car, a bit red in the face. fangirl 2 he’s just as much of a dick as they say. tin sighs. aster rolls up the roof. aster sorry. tin not your fault. unless you started that stupid rumor about the breakup. aster (under his breath) not much of a rumor. tin what? aster nothin’. tin look, i’m not arguing with you today. shawn’s dead. let’s just get this over with. aster so you can ignore me for another five years? the car in front of them moves. aster shifts the car back into drive. aster (cont’d) i’ll be good if you are. cut to: ext. cemetery — afternoon 86 the casket is poised above the hole in the ground, covered in a variety of flowers. a preacher gives a speech in front a large tent. the seats under the tent are filled, the front row seating shawn’s wife, three kids, parents, and sister hunter carillo (mid 30s, ex-bassist for good horror, adopted sister of shawn, dressed in a sharp black suit and sunglasses, under which she’s crying) and her husband and two kids, and tin’s daughter abigail (12 year old girl, old soul solemn expression). about a hundred other people stand nearby. among them are blake and georgia (40s, photographer, bored expression) with shawn and aster. georgia yawns. georgia so much for scandal and intrigue. blake shut up. preacher — and as billy joel said, “only the good die young.” looking at the life shawn ellis led, this is surely true. tin (whispering) why’d he have to open his burial to the public? aster (whispering) i think it’s kinda sweet. it’s just like him. a nearby fan shushes them. tin frowns, but aster grabs his hand to stop his retaliation. aster (cont’d) ignore them. for shawn. tin (whispering) i just wish — a flash goes off. tin and aster turn to look at georgia, who still has her camera up. aster drops tin’s hand. 87 title of piece tin (cont’d) are you kidding me? aster leave it. preacher “seasons don’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun — ” tin i can’t go to a goddamn funeral without ending up on the front page? georgia steps back, startled. georgia i — i’m sorry — tin well, gosh, that makes it all better. i’m so sick of this. it’s like you think i signed my soul away. i’m still a goddamn human. i shouldn’t have to give up everything for people i don’t even know. i shouldn’t be afraid to go to a goddamn grocery store. i should be able to fucking mourn in peace because jesus christ, that’s my best friend in that box — aster grabs tin’s arm. aster the kids. tin what — ? aster you’re scaring the kids. tin stops to look at shawn’s and hunter’s kids, who are crying or close to it, then at his own kid. abigail shakes her head as if embarrassed and disappointed, then comforts the kid sitting beside her. tin i’m — everyone is staring at tin. a few other photographers have their phones or cameras out. tin turns on his heel and leaves. aster calls out after him. 88 aster running away. just like always. cut to: ext. cemetery — evening, after the funeral blake corners georgia outside the gates. georgia smokes a cigarette, now unbothered. blake jesus, georgia. nice going out there. georgia not my fault that rich guy’s an asshole. blake the article doesn’t need new photos. we still have some from past concerts and shit. this was completely avoidable — georgia if you want another boring-ass article. blake it’s a funeral. it’s not supposed to be a headline. georgia stomps out her cigarette, finally facing blake. georgia listen, i know you’ve got some sort of complex or whatever. blake b — georgia that’s for your therapist to figure out. me, i need to get paid. and if i have to exaggerate some washed-up millionaire’s gay affair to get rent money, i will. blake it’s not right. all people are entitled to privacy. georgia your sister — she’ll be thinking about college in a few years, right? might be nice to give her a chance at a degree. 89 title of piece blake thinks it over, but stands firm. blake i’m not using the picture in my article. georgia shrugs. georgia suit yourself. there are ten other writers in the office who will. blake sighs then walks to her car. a few yards away at the cemetery gate, aster watches with interest. he pulls out his phone and starts typing. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — night blake kicks off her shoes, mood dampened as she looks around the bare apartment. takeout bag in hand, she knocks on melissa’s door. a sad good horror ballad plays inside. blake i’m home. brought some thai, if you didn’t want the soup. melissa doesn’t answer. the song ends, and blake looks up hopefully, but moments later the same song starts playing again, louder. blake (cont’d) okay. good night, love you. cut to: int. melissa’s room — night melissa glares at the door, then turns back to her phone where the lyrics for the song are pulled up. she’s not crying anymore, but her eyes are red as she traces each word as it plays on the screen with her chipped black fingernails. at a lyric about standing up for yourself/doing what you need to do despite the disapproval of others, her face hardens. she pulls up a blocked contact labeled mother and unblocks it. the music swells as she starts tapping out a text. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — night 90 just as blake settles down and starts eating her thai food, her phone vibrates again, another call from jeff work. blake dammit. she clicks the answer call button. blake (cont’d) hello? jeff i don’t know what you did today, but — blake if this is about georgia, she was totally in the wrong and — jeff you got a book deal. blake knocks over her takeout in surprise. cut to: int. melissa’s room — morning, a few days later sun streams in through the window. the room is empty, the closet open with a few bare hangers on the ground. one of the larger posters is missing, evident by the tape left behind on the wall. blake (o.s.) bye, melissa. i’ve got a big, big work thing. i’ll be back late. there’s fifteen dollars on the counter, get yourself some pizza. cut to: int. hallway outside aster’s penthouse apartment — day blake stands in a well-lit hallway, one hand poised to knock, the other holding a worn briefcase. she’s wearing very stiff, formal clothes, hair pulled back in a bun so tight it must hurt. her hand shakes. blake don’t be a dumbass. 91 title of piece she knocks, sharp and loud. aster (o.s.) one sec, i’ll be there in — ugh, sorry... aster opens the door wearing pajama pants and a holey 90s rock band t-shirt, his hair a mess. aster (cont’d) hi, you’re the writer, right? blake holds out her hand to shake. blake blake dean. nice to meet you, mr. mckee. aster god, i haven’t been called mr. mckee since boarding school. aster is fine. aster shakes her hand and leads her inside. cut to: int. aster’s penthouse apartment — day the apartment is very lived in, cluttered with music paraphernalia and kid’s toys. an orange couch in the living room sits two kids, halo (3) and dawn (5) watching a classic 80s slasher movie. the kids stare at blake as she walks in. aster leads blake to the dining room table in the next room, where a space has been cleared in the mess of papers (a mix of legal documents and lyrics). aster sorry about having to change locations with short notice. i don’t usually hand out my address to strangers, i promise, ha. my wife — ex-wife, crap — she won’t babysit the kids until the divorce is finalized, and i didn’t want to bring the kids to an office and this is all so sudden i didn’t have time to find another babysitter who wouldn’t be weird — blake it’s fine. i’m just stoked to be here. aster blake (cont’d) oh, for sure, i expected you this is such a big job to be a fan of sorts — opportunity. i’ve never 92 written a biography — blake (cont’d) fan? hell no, i hate good horror. aster laughs. blake (cont’d) oh my god. i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean— aster no, that was my bad. i shouldn’t have assumed. blake my little sister really likes your band, if that helps. at the table, blake sits and starts unpacking her briefcase, pulling out papers, pens, her laptop, and a tape recorder. aster sits beside her. aster i’m honestly relieved. not being a fan makes you more objective. blake i guess, if that’s what you want. aster i wanted someone to write impartially. god, there’s a hundred thousand people out there who would dig for scandal or push their own interpretations on me, but i want this to be on my terms, you know? blake nods. blake i get that. aster so. how does this work? blake well, what do you want the book to focus on? past? present? the band? your life before the band? your political views? 93 title of piece aster um... blake okay. we can figure the details out later. for now, how about you tell me how good horror started? blake turns on the tape recorder. cut to: begin flashback: int. hallway outside music room — night a much younger aster, wearing a collared shirt and khakis with a neat, short haircut and tons of tattoos, walks up to a music practice room, guitar case in hand. aster excuse me. leaning against the locked door is a much younger tin, dressed like a raging punk with bright dyed orange hair and a dozen piercings. at his feet is another guitar case. tin you’re excused. aster this is my band’s practice room, so could you leave? tin pushes off from the door and crosses his arms. tin well, buddy, you’ve got the wrong room, because my band is practicing here in five minutes. aster checks the text on his flip phone, then looks at the room number. aster nope, i was right. this is my room. i suggest you move. tin falls back against the door. 94 tin i’m not moving a goddamn inch. aster move. tin make me. shawn ellis (28 at the time, about to become the drummer for good horror, tall and strong, full of life, bright smiles, and whimsically curly hair) steps between them. shawn hey guys! what’s up? tin thank god, shawn! tell this twink it’s our room next. shawn’s eyes pop out. aster turns to him. aster you know this asshole?! shawn forces a smile, dropping one hand on both of their shoulders. shawn aster, this is christian, our boneheaded guitarist. christian, this is aster. the vocalist who’s so kindly helping us out since farrad left us for law school. tin’s face drops. tin oh, shit. aster “oh, shit,” is right. and what kind of name is christian? you play for a punk band, not an evangelical choir. tin i didn’t pick it. what the hell kind of name is aster? aster pushes his hair back, a practiced motion. 95 title of piece aster it’s short for astrophel. means star, like the one i was born to be. tin turns to shawn. tin i have to work with him? aster you’re no peach either, tin. tin don’t call me that. hunter you’re so stuck with it, tin. hunter walks up to them, the most starkly different between now and then. here, her hair is dyed purple and flat ironed into fringe, her clothes are striped and ripped, and she’s smoking a joint. hunter (cont’d) what’d i miss? shawn (to aster) hunter. our bassist, my sister. hunter takes a hit. hunter his parents kidnapped me as a child. shawn takes the joint from her. shawn adopted, hunter. hunter hey! shawn what did i say about smoking in the music room? 96 hunter only during jazz? shawn exactly. shawn puts out the joint. hunter jerk. so who’s the twink? aster i’m not a goddamn twink! tin and hunter laugh as aster fumes. shawn’s smile strains. shawn great! you’ve all met each other now. and this is going to go great. cut to: int. aster’s penthouse apartment — day blake clicks off the tape recorder. blake i think that’s a good start for today. take a break. aster’s crying a little. he didn’t realize. aster shit. he sniffs. wipes his eyes. aster (cont’d) sorry. guess it’s a little too soon. blake you’re good. just start thinking which anecdotes you’d like to focus on, what kind of story you want to tell. i’ll type this out and do some research, and we can try again in a few days. sound good? 97 title of piece aster that sounds perfect. blake alright, email me a time and date when you’re ready. they head back towards the door. halo and dawn are asleep, and the movie’s credits are playing. aster thanks. for not being weird about any of this. blake (surprised) of course. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — night blake takes off her shoes, exhausted but smiling. she goes to the worn couch and opens her laptop to start research right away, not noticing the fifteen dollars still on the counter, untouched. cut to: int. main room of the dean apartment — morning, days later blake knocks at melissa’s door holding a plate of toaster waffles, half dressed for work, obviously mid-getting ready. blake it’s been a week since you’ve stepped out of that goddamn room. seriously. you need to eat something. i don’t care what celebrity died today. she waits for a response. nothing. blake (cont’d) come on. i have a work thing in half an hour. big project. gonna make us rich. still silent. blake (cont’d) i’m coming in. 98 she barges in. cut to: int. melissa’s room — morning the room is just as empty as before, albeit a little more dusty. there’s a note on her desk that says “don’t come after me.” blake drops the food on the desk and reads the note. blake oh my god. oh my god. cut to: int. conference room at the office — day blake’s ears are buzzing. whatever aster is saying is muffled. her hair is a mess, and her shirt is buttoned up wrong. blake sorry, could you repeat that? aster i was just talking about that thing tin does on sta— hey, are you okay? blake shakes herself. focuses. blake yeah. i’m sorry. aster waits for her to continue. blake (cont’d) it’s just been a rough morning, my sister kind of ran away — aster what?! why the hell are you at work? blake i — we had an appointment? aster stands. 99 title of piece aster and we can obviously reschedule. do you need a ride to the police station? blake no. aster so you’ve already filed a missing person case? blake no, i — she looks around, but there’s no one lingering near the conference room. blake (cont’d) i don’t need melissa to get in any more legal trouble. she’s got suspended from school again last month, and she’s a step away from getting expelled. aster nobody’s arresting a kid for running away. blake i know, but i just became her legal guardian a year ago, and she hasn’t taken the transition well. she’s probably going back to mom’s place. aster okay. that’s, what, a few miles away? blake mom’s in california. aster ohhh... blake so melissa may not be following every law to get there. she doesn’t exactly have a car, or bus money. aster uh-huh. got it. blake and i really don’t want this to go to court again, because i have no idea if she’d choose me again. 100 aster okay. no cops, got it. aster’s phone rings. aster (cont’d) shit. is it okay if i — ? blake no, yeah. go ahead. aster stands and answers the phone. blake turns to her laptop. aster hello? he pauses. aster (cont’d) chicago police?! blake and aster meet eyes. blake (whispering) did you call — oh my god, please don’t say anything — aster (cont’d, whispering) i swear i didn’t call them! they called me! i’m not going to snitch, i promise— aster cuts off, now serious. aster (cont’d) what do you mean, desecrated? pause. aster (cont’d) huh. okay. let me know what you find out. thanks. bye. 101 title of piece blake everything okay? aster sighs and sits down heavily. aster someone dug up shawn’s grave. took his body. blake oh shit. aster yeah. blake (realizing) oh, shit. aster what? blake nothing. just — did they say when it happened? aster about a week ago. blake i haven’t seen melissa in a week. aster pauses, laughs. aster sure. grave robbing, the latest teen fad. blake she’s obsessed with good horror. one time i cleaned her room and accidently swept up a bit of confetti she’d bought off ebay that was allegedly from one of your shows, and she wouldn’t talk to me for a month. and the reason i had to become her legal guardian was — our mom was into some messed up shit. so whatever morals melissa managed to inherit are probably a bit twisted. 102 aster sits. aster oh my god. you’re serious. blake i don’t want to jump to conclusions, but the timing fits. aster let me help. blake what? aster to find her. and maybe shawn. maybe me and hunter and tin can talk her down, band to fan. plus, i can bribe the cops to keep her out of jail. blake no. i can handle this, it’s just family drama. last thing she needs is to learn acting out gets her what she wants. aster from the way you talk, she sounds troubled — blake and i’m her guardian, so it’s my job to help her. aster (gently) i know. but i’m not asking. this involves me too, if she really did... blake sighs, dropping her head in her hands. blake fine. aster stands, gathering his things. aster got it. if you’re free now, we can go grab hunter. she needs to know — it’s her brother. 103 title of piece blake stands, too. blake okay. and, thanks. for not being weird. aster smiles. aster anytime. 8 13” x 16” intaglio print with chine collé ginger miller 꿀 생강 (honey ginger) 105 you were even more beautiful with those manic eyes, so bright and refulgent, i never dared think a more beautiful grey, and even when you stared at me with such distaste and— hate, i couldn’t help, in frustration, but love you, and i still do, though i haven’t met with your soul in quite some time; it makes me wonder— was it ever just your eyes, or the damaged soul i saw inside, that made me love you more than i ever thought to love myself. christopher cassetty mania, and her beautiful countenance 125125 a pitcher of black tea bitter but refreshing six spoons of sugar tastes so saccharine i drank so deeply of that southern sweet tea the sugar laced my lips and the caffeine filled my blood it feels so sweet warm like the blazing summer sun ever present on my back seen as the heat of the southern god’s gaze my skin burns a sinner’s red a carcinogenic weight of judgment spreads beneath my peeling shell it’s corruption has long since set in mold creeps across the pitcher’s surface my lips sparkle sweet my tongue rots my blood runs thick with bile eris hembree southern sweet 4343 ryan’s dad lay up in the icu, having drunk himself into a coma. miles from the hospital, down a turn-off from a country road, sat ryan and his three younger half-siblings overlooking a shadow-drenched lake. named big long lake, though neither big, nor long, it was a familiar, bittersweet place they used to spend time at when they tried to act like a family. before his dad and his stepmom, sarah, got divorced. back before they kicked him out. before his siblings grew to hate him. before all of this. the hospital and their small hometown were out of sight, but the haze of light surrounding it acted as a compass north, in opposition to the moon and the dull ember of ryan’s cigarette. he watched a wisp of smoke trail up around his arm, over his shoulder, before it vanished behind him over the still water. goosebumps lined his arms as autumn encroached on summer, and he hadn’t thought of stopping for a sweatshirt in his rush here. now, he wasn’t sure why he bothered to rush at all. a frog croaked in the distance, followed by a diluted splash, but it did nothing to break the tension chewing on them like leeches. silence had followed them from the hospital, and it was his fault. when the nurse shared details of his dad’s condition, a wreck, broken bones, busted spleen, he’d remained composed. but it was their dad’s ridiculously high .45 bac that triggered his laughter. it was a bad habit, his go-to when tears weren’t available, so it caught him off guard when his brother, alex, punched him in response. in the time it took to gather his bearings, security arrived and ushered them out until they could “calm down.” ryan had shoved his fists deep in his pockets, licking away blood, and happily obliged. his twin sisters, max and natalie, trailed after them, nat apologizing to the thin security guard, while max repeatedly tried to get sarah to answer her phone. their mom was on a five-hour time difference, living it up with her new husband in wales. ryan saw this as an opportunity to shut his brother up and asked them all if they seriously believed sarah would fly back for this. for them. it was callous. but so was alex’s comment that ryan should fuck off back to bloomington, that once their mom arrived their family didn’t need him. he kicked a stone and took another drag. he shouldn’t have laughed. alicia rump a fine line 44 when he’d received the curt call from alex to inform him of the situation, he left straight from his job at tony’s automotive shop in only his jeans and a tank top to pick them up because it was alex’s car their dad had wrecked. ryan was tired and on edge, and his shitty filter was extra shitty. it had been six years since his dad and sarah had kicked him out. now 24 years old, he was 115 miles from his bed, his dog, his life, and he felt the years as an anchor dragging him through the past. his siblings were trying to kick him out again, as if it wasn’t his dad up in that bed, as if this wasn’t his family too. always them, where he was always him, never included in their family. even with sarah on the other side of the atlantic, they still wanted him gone, believed sarah would be back simply because she had said she’d return if they needed her. it was a fucking joke, is what it was. now he wished he remembered to stop for more cigarettes. their suffocating hope felt sick and cloying. he stood away from them, looking into the night sky while they sat observing everything but each other. natalie, now 16, watched the fireflies as they lit up around them. by ryan’s standards, she was the sanest of all of them, keeping quiet and trying to remain calm. she was holding up as well as someone could when their dad drank themselves to the brink of death, at risk of family services intervening, with a mom who may not give a shit. max’s expression refused to communicate. ryan kept checking, kept subtly glancing her way to interpret something, but besides checking her phone, and glaring, max was tightly controlled. prideful, in how she refused to look or speak to ryan. she was stone. alex would barely look at ryan, now only giving his sisters his attention. his anger was palpable, but he was stubborn enough to bite it down now, unwilling to react without another catalyst. ryan hoped he felt a little guilty for his part in getting them kicked out. ryan watched his fingers twist the hem of his shirt, again and again, his knees bouncing up and down. restless. how much had changed since ryan saw them last? was violence something alex used to cope, or was it a one off? was it ryan, specifically, that drew his family to violence? there was a time these kids looked up to him. when he was 12 and alex was six, alex followed him everywhere. ryan hated it, too young to understand what a blessing it was. then, when he was 18, and alex was 12, and his sisters, max and natalie were 10, he got kicked out. they took sides, and not his. his only contacts were his dad, which was always a gamble between abuse and the spare 45 title of piece clarity of a sober mind, the occasional message from alex when he needed money for something his dad flaked on, and the random, sweet “miss you” texts from natalie that gave him hope that they still cared. “this is fucking ridiculous.” max mumbled from her perch on the back of the bench. she ignored the glares her siblings sent her way. “don’t say that,” natalie said. alex sat up straighter. “no, it is though. he’s laid up in bed with dts, our mom is across the fucking sea, and we are here. why are we here? what has this stupid lake ever done for us? shouldn’t we be there waiting on news, or, i don’t know, at home showering and sleeping, considering you assholes got us kicked out,” she didn’t glare at alex. no. her venom was directed solely at ryan. “they’ll let us back in soon,” alex said, acting like the calm, collected older brother he claimed to be. this was offset by how he looked down at his shoes rather than any of them and in how he switched from twisting his shirt to clenching his fists. ryan kicked another stone and took another drag. stubborn, the lot of them. “sure, but why are we here? nothing good comes from this place. let’s just go home.” “then we are even further away,” ryan said. “but at least there we have food, a shower, and can sleep in a bed until there are more updates,” max said, and ryan tried his best not to wilt under her glare. he was eight years older; how did her disgust have this power over him? but she was right. ryan knew this, but the ache in his chest, the memories of this lake when they all became a family, back when they were little and his dad was healthier, drew him here. despite the last time. he didn’t want them to go home to the house where he didn’t have a bed. alex and him locked eyes and looked away quickly. “the doctor wants us close by. critical time period and all that,” alex said. “yet they won’t let us in the room,” max argued. “critical time period,” ryan reiterated. 46 “or, you’re an ass.” max spit and sat back, crossing her arms, done with both of them according to the way she looked away and looked out over the lake. nat glanced at ryan, then down at her boots, clearing her throat and speaking up. “what if she doesn’t come home?” nat’s voice trembled, cutting through the uneasy silence. damn. leave it to a fifteen-year-old to brave the heart of the problem. both max and alex’s shoulders pulled tight, while ryan stopped fidgeting. “she will,” max said, though she looked away from the question. “and if she doesn’t?” nat pressed, sharper now. “she’ll call when she wakes up. don’t waste time speculating.” alex said. ryan watched as nat’s hands balled into fists. “what if she’s angry and doesn’t listen? what if she thinks he deserves this? what if all she says is ‘good riddance’?” alex leaned forward, his jaw tight. “then that’s what she says. would she be wrong?” ryan had to fight back another chuckle. it was ridiculous, all of it, even this. their faith…it hung on nothing but hope. foster care, social services, survival; the consequences if sarah didn’t return for them. it was something they believed in because they needed her to, but it relied on faith alone. in ryan’s opinion, none of her actions proved she’d care enough to return. she left them to their dad and that alone confirmed everything ryan needed it to. she wasn’t shit. they were fucked and they knew it, and still they protected her, refusing to admit it. but natalie wasn’t abiding by this script. “it’s been six months!” nat’s voice rose, frustration spilling out. “what if she doesn’t come back, and she’s angry, and we’re left to pick up the pieces? what do we even say to her? what do we do?” max stood abruptly, pacing. “we tell her she’s right! it’s all messed up. but if he survives, then we’re fine, right? she doesn’t have to come back.” “and if he doesn’t?” nat leaned closer, her voice shaking. “it’s fucked up either way-” 47 title of piece “don’t cuss,” alex snapped, his tone sharp. “—and if he doesn’t survive, will she come back? please, alex. will she?” “he’ll survive,” alex said. nat stared at him, glanced at ryan, then max, before throwing her hands up and yelling, “there’s no proof of that!” ryan flinched. the idea that his dad, the only parent he had left, could die tonight, or tomorrow… despite his father’s fault, the idea was too heavy for him to bear. he sank to the ground to hug his knees, pulling in an empty drag of his cigarette to focus on something else, and tried to center himself here in the present. not the future without his dad in it, and not the past where memories threatened to drown him. he was vaguely aware of his siblings glancing at him, knowing that they, like him, were thinking of his mother. his loss, something they’d always walked around, unwilling to recognize. now that death was on them as well, he could feel it like one great beating heart counting its last seconds. ryan’s mom died in an instant. a moment, a heart attack, when she was too young for anyone to have seen it coming. one moment, they were cooking together in the kitchen. the next? she dropped her freshly baked tray of those halloween stamped pumpkin cookies and collapsed, unresponsive, while he sat with her for hours trying to get her to wake, sat with her until his dad came home and called for an ambulance, knowing it was too late. he knew death, intimately, even if he was only 5 at the time. he’d never rid himself of that anxiety, of that loss. they knew this, but this was their first time properly facing the weight of death. he couldn’t validate their fears, couldn’t put words to the pain and dread they’d never bothered to sympathize with. “he might not,” he said, unsure if he was being vindictive or honest. “he may die. expect the worst, be fucking grateful if he survives.” they stared at him. “expect the worst. he dies—” he had to swallow. “and sarah doesn’t come home. anything more than that is a blessing.” alex shot up from his perch. “shut the fuck up. you don’t get to say shit like that!” ryan stood, taking one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it aside and 48 standing to face alex. “say shit like what? the truth?” “you’re so…so callous! you act all high and mighty and righteous, but you don’t give two shits if she comes home or not so don’t act like you do!” “of course i care, you fuck. you think i don’t want her to, for your sake? you think i want to be here right now? we have no control over her or what happens to dad. we are all stuck in this, together!” alex lunged forward and shoved him in lieu of an answer. so, he shoved him back. alex stumbled and max caught him, moving to get in ryan’s face. “i know he’s your dad too, but you’ve been gone for years, and you can’t act like you care nearly as much as we do since it isn’t your ass on the line.” “he’s still my dad!” ryan shouted, grateful for their isolation. “his bac was .45. most people don’t survive that shit, i’m just being realistic! i know i’m older. i know i’ve been gone, but that doesn’t mean shit! it’s simply more ammo for you—” he pushed her back by her shoulder into alex, who was backing up into natalie. “to use against me!” “you’re always satisfied when they prove you right. this is just another example,” alex said. ryan stared at alex, and he couldn’t help the hysterical laughter that bubbled up and spilled over. he wanted to light another cigarette, but he was out, so he let his laughter run free until tears started leaking from his eyes, and he doubled over. “you think i’m happy being right? you think, what, that i’m happy that she’s gone? that we are in this situation? just because it validates that yes, he’s a drunk and yes, i think she’s neglectful? you think i’m happy about that shit?” he laughed again, wiping his eyes. “aren’t you? won’t it make you happy if she can’t come home? you laughed! he’s dying and you laughed! you make fun of us for hoping she’ll come home, yet you’re laughing now! why wouldn’t it make you happy if we are left to fend for ourselves like you were? won’t you feel victorious?” ryan stared at alex, stared as alex’s words seemed to register in his head once spoken out loud. alex took another step back as natalie grabbed his elbow, biting her lip. max shook her head looking guilty. 49 title of piece “think about what you’ve just said. do you hear yourself?” ryan asked. like you were. they knew. they fucking knew that he was thrown aside. knew he battled his dad’s anger and stood up to it. knew their fights centered on his mom, both weaponizing her memory, his dad using it as a knife of disappointment, as another excuse to drink, and ryan as condemnation against his father’s actions. they knew that sarah disapproved of him, always had, and treated him as the scapegoat for her marriage woes. blamed him, as a kid, for not telling her about his dad’s drinking problem that hadn’t existed prior to his mom’s death. they fucking knew, and still they blamed him. still, they looked at him, not as an older brother, but as a vindictive adversary. he remembered how he used to get in trouble every mother’s day because he didn’t want to celebrate sarah when he couldn’t even get out of bed, memories of hugging cooling flesh and vacant, unstaring eyes swimming before his. how did they remember that? were they remembering cursing him for picking them up when his dad was drunk, because he wasn’t their parent? he remembers their disappointment and feeling gutted by it. did they think that made him proud? were they thinking of the screaming match he had with sarah when she turned a blind eye to his dad sideswiping a parked car when max and natalie were still in car seats? did they think he was wrong for giving a shit? were they remembering the last time they were at this lake, the day he was kicked out, when ryan defended alex. it was their father’s birthday, and he wanted to go fishing; wouldn’t take no for an answer. the entire morning was shit, their dad slurring, slipping on mossy stones, blaming them for every fish he didn’t catch. all were unwilling to vocalize what they knew was true and their dad’s anger rose in the perceived judgement his drunk ass rightfully assumed. ryan had his back turned to his dad, trying to secure the bait to alex’s line before his dad noticed it was the third time he’d lost it. alex’s hands were shaking and ryan tried to calm him, but they could hear their dad’s tone growing impatient. when his dad decided they weren’t moving fast enough, when he moved into their space after throwing his net to the side, his purple face and glossy eyes let them know the situation was out of their hands. the fishing pole slipped through alex’s trembling fingers and ryan stood between him and their dad. he braced, thankful for alex’s retreating footsteps when his dad threw his weight into a punch, a blow to the jaw. he remembers nat yelling, and someone crying. did they remember him getting up and fighting for the keys his dad stole as he yelled at the kids to get back in the car? what did they think of ryan wrestling with his dad to keep him from the wheel, now that his siblings were scared and obedient in the backseat? ryan looked at all of them, each of them unable to look away as if they were all caught 6 years in the past with him. 50 did they remember how long it took for him to get home? he never knew what occurred in the time it took him to walk, only that he nearly cried in relief when he saw the truck parked safely in the driveway. he hadn’t noticed sarah, not until she stopped him from walking inside to tell him his dad wanted him gone, and he had 20 minutes to collect his shit and get lost. alex was 13 at the time, ryan 18 about to be 19, and he hadn’t been home since alex asked him why the fuck he bothered, that he was wrong to agitate their dad. blamed him. “i’ve never felt victorious.” alex had the nerve to scoff, and max leaned to pull alex towards the truck muttering “let’s just go,” but alex shakes her off. “you left too, and you act like you are better than them. you’ve never loved mom, and you’ve always fought with dad. you’ve never cared enough to act like we are your siblings, always quick to run away and play the ‘not my mom, not my family’ card. you got to fuck off and leave us behind just like you accuse her of doing. what makes you so much better than either of them? huh?” alex yelled the last word. “i was 18! i was also kicked out, if you don’t recall, i wasn’t allowed to stay! none of you fought that decision, or called to say they were wrong, or to let me know you wanted me around! no, what you said was that it served me right! jesus, the fucking standards you all give me vs. the ones you give our parents is ridiculous, i can never be on the right side of anything!” he reached for another cigarette, remembered he was out, and cussed into the night, kicking another stone towards the lake. he couldn’t see where it went, but he heard the dull splash as it sank beneath the water. his hands were shaking. “what would you have me do, if not fight with dad? give him every cent he tries to wring me for, be it your car, max’s lunch, natalie’s band gear? did y’all ever see that money? did you want me to ignore everything and act like we were a perfectly happy family? would you have me act like i think it’s fucking mint that sarah up and left? when my own mom died? you think i wouldn’t have an issue with her abandoning you guys? should i act nice, and take your shit, his shit, her shit, and smile? would that be enough?” his chest was heaving. “you all are my siblings too, but you’ve all acted like i’m a spare, like i’m not real or like i don’t get to have a fucking say!” it was all coming out now. “i can’t help that i’m older, that i’m not your mom’s kid, that dad drinks, yet you all blame me for this! you guys all got to have each other but somewhere along the line you guys cut me out. i didn’t leave you, i didn’t want to, wouldn’t, but you pushed me out!” “yes, yes you would. you did!” alex wiped his nose. 51 title of piece “last time i tried to come home it was you who told me to get lost. last time i called dad he told me to fuck off. last time i tried to get max a birthday present she said not to bother because i didn’t get it in the fucking color she wanted, fuck, natalie is the only one who has ever been even a little kind to me, but even you don’t bother if alex and max are around.” natalie was crying now too. he focused on alex. “we were kids! you were older, and we were just kids!” alex said. “i was too!” ryan yelled. fuck, he still felt like a kid, and right now, he felt very, very young. “i was your age, alex.” silence broken only by crickets, by their heavy breathing, rang loudly. “what am i to do, huh? where and what would you have me do?” his body was trembling now. “you could come back?” natalie said. ryan stared at her as alex gestured for her to shut up, and max stepped aside, hugging her body. he thought of his job, of his dog. he thought of them and the phone call they were waiting on. “if you’ll have me, i will. if you need me, i will be here.” he said, voice breathless. he wouldn’t be his dad. he wouldn’t be sarah. not if he had a choice. he thought of his mom and her pumpkin cookies. the last time he felt like he belonged somewhere. he ached for it, for their acceptance, for a chance to be there, and for his mom to relax in her grave knowing someone cared about him. for them to fucking hug him like they wanted him there or something. “we don’t need you,” alex said. natalie reached for his arm, but he yanked it away, turning his back on them. max, still hugging her body, refused to look up from the ground. natalie looked at ryan, her big eyes lost and he stared back feeling equally helpless. ryan wrapped his arms around his turning stomach, matching max’s pose. he knew the words sitting on the back of his tongue were true, but they felt toxic, like speaking them out loud would be a sure way to get poisoned. maybe they didn’t need him. but their dad was…dying. despite how they knew he’d gotten bad, that he was rarely sober, home, and reliable, despite how much ryan hated him…he loved him. loved the person he remembered, before alcohol became him. he was his dad, his last parent, he couldn’t be an orphan at 24. didn’t know how he’d continue with all of these issues between them unresolved and tan52 gled. his breaths grew tight, a wheeze, and he clenched his fists trying to breathe around the band squeezing his lungs. it wasn’t that they needed him. he needed them. “for fucks sake,” natalie said, ignoring max telling her not to cuss. “alex, get over yourself already. fuck, ryan. we feel guilty you dumbass.” “natalie!” alex hissed. “why are you acting like this?” natalie looked at both alex and max who were staring at her. “why are you acting like we haven’t talked about it? as if we all don’t feel like shit reciting the same crap over and over again? you remember that night, i know you do. we know he defended us, we know they kicked him out, we know dad’s an ass, and we know mom left, and no i don’t care if she’s happier over there, it’s still true. why are we still acting like he’s the bad guy? i’m sick of it. i’m sick of having no one to rely on and the one person i want to talk to i feel like i’m betraying the two of you if i do, though i know you feel the same!” “nat.” “don’t nat me, max. just be fucking honest.” the band around ryan’s lungs loosened, his eyes wide as he watched alex’s lips quirk into a little smile as he stared at their sister. “can you stop cussing? please? it’s weird when you do it.” alex said. the air around them lost 20 lbs. “oh, fuck off.” nat said, though her lips quirked with a matching smile. alex glanced at max before letting out a huff and collapsing back on the bench, his body language defeated. he spoke. “that night, dad’s birthday. i didn’t mean to blame you for it. i meant to, like, apologize. beg for you to forgive me for fucking up. but then i saw your face when you came upstairs. saw the bruise. your panic. it scared the fuck out of me. i heard dad’s decision to kick you out. i was so angry, but i, like how could i go up against the both of them when it turned out that way for you? before i knew it, i was angry with you for getting in the way, for calling out the problem, for not letting shit go and taking that stupid hit that wasn’t meant for you. still am, i guess.” he grew quiet. “know it ain’t your fault though.” alex leaned over his knees, his hands gripping his hair. “this is all so fucked.” “after you left, it got worse.” max said. “then mom left. it felt like we could 53 title of piece hear you mocking us from afar, laughing at us for turning our backs on you and choosing them. and if you were the good guy, that meant we were stuck with the bad guys.” max looked up from the ground to stare at alex. “we weren’t stupid, i’m not saying that. just…every time you tried to be there, it proved how much we weren’t getting from dad. every time you tried to help meant that you thought we needed help, and i couldn’t stand that either. look at what it got you! it reminded us of that night, and how we let you down. not to mention, at least for me…you’ve got to hate us at this point.” she looked away as her voice quivered. ryan gaped at them. that’s… “no. no, i’ve never hated you guys. our parents, sure…but never you guys.” max sniffed, then ducked into her shirt to wipe away the tears that were falling at an increasingly quick pace. he wanted to reach out to her, felt it in his bones, but their past, muscle memory, kept him back. “i told you guys he wouldn’t hate us.” nat quipped. she flashed ryan with an insecure smile. alex just put his head in his hands. “i don’t get how you don’t.” alex said. ryan understood, suddenly, and felt his world shift to the left. it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t them; he was part of their family. even if ryan chose not to include sarah. they were siblings, grew up in the same household, were equally affected. it was pride, and fear. this kid sitting with his shoulders hunched, as if their parents’ decisions were his to bear, blamed himself for the shit ryan went through. just as ryan blamed himself for never being enough. “it wasn’t your fault. that day. i’d do it again in a heartbeat. you were just trying to fish.” alex let out a self-deprecating laugh. “if i had just done it like you showed me-“ “it wasn’t your fault dude. dad blew his top. nothing you could’ve done deserved that reaction from him. you never needed to apologize.” “i should’ve called.” “it would’ve been appreciated.” a ring cut through their eye contact, through the silence. they all looked at max’s phone. the word mom flashed from the screen. in the panicked looks they all shot each other, ryan felt his decision cement itself. 54 he nodded at her, braving their past to step closer. “hope for the best, right? regardless,” he looked at them all, “no one’s kicking me out. got that? i’m not going anywhere.” natalie let out a wet chuckle and slid under max’s arm. her hand shook as she held up the phone. alex and ryan looked at each other as max swiped to answer the phone. “hello?” sarah’s tired voice cracked through the speaker. “mom,” max went to speak but it was if her throat collapsed in on itself, a sob swallowing the rest of her words. natalie ducked into max’s shoulder and alex stared at the sky, blinking away tears. max waved her phone for someone else to take over. ryan grit his teeth, but took a step forward. no one stopped him. “hey, sarah. it’s ryan.” i’ll always be there for you if you need it, sarah had promised them when she left. well, he thought. time to prove it. 151 is nothing something? can nothing be when something is? does the absence of a thing tell us anything? it doesn’t exist. what doesn’t? consciousness has no physical form yet it recognizes all feeling. it takes up no matter so does it matter if it knows the difference between something and nothing the only guarantee for life is death. is darkness just the lack of light? emptiness does not prove that something was there, but something being there proves that there was empty before. every action has an equal and opposite reaction. the existence of mountains implies the depths of oceans. absolute zero allows no light, no life, no movement, no temperature, nothing— but can never be perceived. so is nothing something? the monolithic accomplishment of consciousness exists, therefore an equally formidable absence of it does as well. is everything nothing? i think. i am. what am i not? everything exists strictly within observation, but that begs the question what’s observing it? clayton hunsader how to open a can of nothing. 63 slowly. running from my scalp down through the long strands falling over my shoulders. the bristles wiggle through tangles and snags. making my hair soft and weightless. weightless as fog over a boreal forest, over pine-mapped backcountry trails or plots marked with crosses and stones. my father combed his beard with a boar bristle brush. i wonder if he sensed him. who would think to look in pie crust, glue, fertilizer, or in the bristles attached to a square backboard with a wooden handle? ordinary everyday things. i have a pouty lower lip, i think while watching myself in the mirror. again, raising my hand to the top of my head, i brush all the way down to the tough coarser ends. i keep reworking the same sections of long dark hair. i spent my lifetime watching. a lifetime watching his beard turn from brown to grey. i wouldn’t have known just from looking that i could find you here. unsnagging knots in my hair or resting, resting behind the medicine cabinet. here. among my toiletries. i thought i’d find you in the forest. lumbering across the backcountry trails. a path carved out by cloven hooves beneath you and those that came before you. before me. blackberry brambles, nettles, and ferns. a lineage trampling out a ritual of migration across lifespans. predestined and passed. passed to me. dad, you didn’t have much, but you did have what you knew of the woods. you had all the time we spent on those trails. i know you would have wanted to leave something behind. i squeeze my eyes shut as i tease out a difficult strand that won’t unknot. i picture you resting in the ferns. belly pressed and laid into the soft earth. grey-blotted eyes, a spotted snout, and soft brown stripes. stripes that run laterally, stretching with the expansion of your lungs. slowing. flesh, blood, tusks. bristles scratch softly. how did they scrap your body? what words did they use when they deconstructed you? body to carcass. creature to material. bones, hair, and nails to minerals, bristles, and upholstery. i can’t go back. i still see you there. kayla mcveigh two boars best of poetry 64 in the forest. charging. through tangles and twists of brambles. squealing out as metal rings in the air. wings flushed from the coverage of low-hanging branches. tree sparrows part, weaving like needles through the fabric of the sky. the ground meets you cold and hard. thorned vines of blackberry-spotted thickets snag and knot around you. tightening, they tangle. your hands swinging at your sides, underneath the cream-colored mittens i crocheted you—mistaken for the flag-raised tail of a white-tailed deer. it’s hard to see through the dense tangle of branches and vines. it’s easy to shoot a boar. i hope they cried when they took that shot, but i doubt it. done. throwing softened strands of long dark hair behind my shoulders, i can now place such an everyday thing back on the shelf. behind a bathroom mirror— clouded. framed edges peeling with layers of slapped-on paint. in the medicine cabinet—so unsuspecting. above the sink. your bristles hold oils. glistening, they could almost be mistaken for black waxy plastic. how do they cut and gather you to make such fine everyday things? somewhere i imagine smokestacks and plumes spit poison in the shape of clouds. like a crematorium spitting out the ash of those we loved. distant factories and you on their fractured lines, just another order. behind the scenes, worker’s hands remove me from your full processing. removing me from the full ritual of your death. i can only guess what the steps look like between death and consumption. i thought it would be hard to find you. i pictured having to search for you in our well-scavenged woods, our backcountry trails. you had an eye for spotting wild mushrooms, puffballs, and morels. it’s hard to imagine you anywhere other than in the forest and yet here you are in such everyday things. why am i so surprised when it’s you? wasn’t there life in all our commodities— at some point? so everyday and ordinary that we are abstracted from what they contain. dad, i kept your boar bristle brush. tangled in nettles, lips purple—blackberry stained. resting. belly pressed into the earth. bleeding out red, you mixed into the soil of our backcountry trails. i feel guilty for wanting to ask, at what point did you stop being a boar and become a brush? 1818 as link stares through the windshield at the red glow of the traffic light filtering through the sheen of a downpour, the only thought in his head is what the hell am i doing in a car with him? “oh, dude–this one’s my favorite!” patrick says from the driver’s seat, cranking up the volume. patrick says that about every song that plays on the alt-rock radio station. link’s head aches in time with the drumbeat. ten minutes before he got into this godforsaken car, link was rifling through the sparse contents of his fridge to scrape together a meal to watch urban exploration videos to. he deserved a restful evening after the thirty-minute phone calls he’d waded through at his job as a receptionist at the local urgent care. he nearly fell asleep on the spot when he shed his khakis for sweatpants. so, when the doorbell to his apartment rang, link waited a minute before sighing heavily and answering the door. dripping rainwater on his doormat was patrick ryans, exactly how link remembered him: highlighter bright shorts, knee-high rainboots, misfits hoodie, and gel running down his face off his no longer spiked hair. the only new thing was the pathetic look of concern slathered across his face. back when they’d been roommates, patrick never looked anything less than confident, even when his actions caused link physical pain via secondhand embarrassment. the only thing that stopped link from slamming the door on patrick’s sad face was the energy it would take. look, patrick was an asshole. in the near decade they’d been friends, patrick hadn’t held a job down for more than a month tops. he forgot to give link a ride when he needed one, chatted up the girls link called dibs on, leeched off link’s food supplies, and stole from link’s record collection—just the record, not the jacket or inner sleeve, meaning they got all scratched up. but patrick could also be incredibly compassionate. he’d stay late at bars chatting to strangers until they’d sobbed their entire life’s story into his sleeve and vowed to go back to therapy. a minute later, he’d break a guy’s nose for disagreeing with his music taste and link would think compassionate my ass. link slid the worst parts of their friendship to the back of his mind when he was with patrick, but the grievances piled up. patrick’s impulsiveness and constant complaining was hell on link and his undergraduate degree, causing link to move in with ada (his then girlfriend, now ex) sooner than either of them were levi miller pineapple chunks 19 ready for. he graduated, thank god, but never made it into medical school like he wanted. the space from patrick had been worth it all, though. with his world no longer dominated by patrick’s whims, link reanalyzed their friendship from a more objective perspective and discovered how much of an asshole patrick was. link made other friends, safer friends, and tried to let his and patrick’s friendship fizzle out like forgotten birthday candles drowning in their own wax. but patrick doubled down, texting at all hours of the night and sending him so many memes he thought his phone would run out of storage. so, link blocked him. a week later at a new year’s eve party, patrick showed up and cornered link in the middle of the living room to ask why he’d been avoiding him. “seriously, man.” patrick’s voice rose, and he shifted from foot to foot. “why are you being such a dick? did i do something to piss you off?” the ball was dropping on tv, and people around them were searching for a partner to kiss. link felt their annoyed eyes bury under his skin. they were probably all wondering what awful thing link had done to patrick to deserve his fury. link wanted to scream that he wasn’t the problem, patrick was. “just tell me how to fix this,” patrick whined. the b-tier celebrity started counting down on tv, the chant echoing around them. five, four, three, two— something inside link snapped. he shouted, “are you that stupid? you can’t be fixed, and i’m sick of trying.” patrick’s rage melted off his face, leaving behind burnt shards of humiliation as he excused himself from the party to the opening lines of “auld lang syne.” the people around link fell silent, glares hot and sticky on his skin. he left soon after. to patrick’s credit, he gave up on their busted friendship after that. the past few years went by without so much as an email. but then he showed up on link’s doorstep. as link answered the door, “what the hell are you doing here?” was on the tip of his tongue, but patrick hugged him before he could say it. 20 “ada told me,” patrick said, destroying any other protests from link. they stood like that for a minute in the open doorway, patrick trying to hide his sniffling in link’s shoulder and link ignoring the wet spots it left on his ratty t-shirt. once his legs felt like they might give out under patrick’s weight, link asked, “want to come inside?” patrick sat on the lumpy ikea couch they’d bought together years ago. link microwaved some water for tea. “didn’t know you still talk to ada,” link said over the buzz, watching the mugs dance around each other on the turntable. ada had cut contact with patrick around the time link did and never mentioned a reunion. course, link and ada didn’t talk about everything now, having suffered a relatively messy breakup. it was link’s fault, he admitted–the struggle to get into med school and giving up on his dreams of being a physician took a toll on his ability to be a good boyfriend. recently, he’d rebuilt a semi-stable friendship with ada, who’d found her own happiness in a coffee shop she’d founded. “yeah,” patrick said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “she got me a job at her shop.” “you have a job?” link asked before he could stop himself. patrick laughed. “three years is a long time.” “you dress the same,” link said, settling back against the counter. “doesn’t mean i’m still the same stupid, jobless, record-thief,” patrick said. “i’ll get those back to you, by the way.” “it’s fine,” link said. “i’m not really into records anymore.” “even dark side of the moon?” patrick asked. link paused, response dying in the back of his throat. “you took the dark side of the moon?” patrick dried his hair on his hoodie. “like i said, i’ll get it back to you.” “don’t.” link’s fingers clenched around the countertop. “i don’t have a lot of free time for records anymore.” patrick’s face twisted. “like you didn’t have time to tell me you got c—” 21 title of piece god, that song is fucking loud. link’s head pounds, pulling him back into the present, in the car with patrick. “can you turn that down?” link asks, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “oh—yeah, sure man,” patrick says, twisting the volume dial. “right. headaches. from the cancer and stuff.” link sighs, wishing again that ada kept her mouth shut. when he found out about the brain tumor, he told her first. he doesn’t really have anyone else to tell, and he doesn’t want his diagnosis to spread among acquaintances and strangers who’ll tell him they sympathize to clear their conscience and bring him casseroles he doesn’t want. he just got the diagnosis confirmed a week ago, and he has no idea what to do. as a pre-med student he’d studied all sorts of treatment plans, but it’s different now that he’s the patient. besides, he doesn’t even know what treatments his insurance will pay for. “what are your odds?” patrick asked, back in the kitchen. the microwave beeped, loud and cacophonous as a middle school choir. “about seventy-thirty,” link said, thinking he should mop the floor sometime. “seventy you live?” “seventy i’ll die.” that was when patrick grabbed link’s hand and pulled him outside to his car, telling him they were going out. link protested, complaining about the ache in his head and back, but patrick assured him it would be quick, and link was too tired to care. so that was how link ended up next to patrick in his car. “is the temperature okay?” patrick asks, hands tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. “stop acting nervous,” link says with a snort. “i’m not one of your dates.” “if this were a date, i would’ve pulled out my special date playlist, guaranteed to get me laid,” patrick says. “and you’d be wearing a g-string under those sweatpants.” “how do you know i’m not?” link asks. 22 patrick lets out a choppy, raucous laugh, the kind that used to get him and link thrown out of classes, churches, and restaurants. “god, i missed you,” he says, wiping his eyes. “yeah,” link says, fidgeting with a hole near the hem of his shirt to distract himself from the way his stomach sours. a few minutes later, patrick whips the car around into a parking space, narrowly avoiding a station wagon to his left. “we’re here,” patrick says. “where’s here?” link asks, squinting through the rain. “you’ll find out,” patrick says with a knowing smirk that reminds link why he’d been friends with patrick to begin with. patrick is like a firework: bright, colorful, exciting, and overall breathtaking. but he’s also extraordinarily loud, hurts your eyes if you stare at him too long, and leaves charred remains and the distinct smell of smoke in his wake. like the time patrick thought it would be a good idea to break into an animal shelter. it was just before three in the morning and link was supposed to be getting sleep before his organic chemistry exam. patrick shot down all of his protests as he picked the lock on the back door with practiced ease. the lock clicked open. “ladies first,” patrick said through the handkerchief covering his lower face. link entered the building slowly, tugging up his own makeshift mask. the shelter was low on funding—no security cameras or alarms that he could see. then again, the second they got to the kennels the dogs started barking louder than any man-made alarm. the mix of types and pitches of howls in the echoing hallway neared deafening. link wished very much to be at home. “god, they’re just packed in here like luggage,” patrick yelled over the roar, kneeling to stick a finger into the cage of a doberman, who scuttled back, ears flat against its head. “it’s not right.” “we should get out of here.” link yelled back, eyeing a poodle that snarled like it was under demonic possession. patrick stood with a wildness in his eyes not unlike the kind he’d get when stuck on the final level of a video game. “they deserve to live,” he said, opening the doberman’s cage. 23 title of piece “holy fuck!” link slammed his back into the cage on the other side of the aisle from the large black dog, fully expecting to watch his best friend get his throat ripped out. but the dog didn’t move; it just shivered violently. “i’m not going to hurt you,” patrick whispered as he crouched, palms outstretched in front of him. the dog stepped forward gingerly, then sniffed his hands. “you’re free, buddy,” patrick said. the dog stared at patrick, then took off down the hallway. it stopped at the back door of the building, looking back at patrick expectantly. “open the door for her,” patrick said as he moved to open the next cage. link did, moving slowly so the dog wouldn’t decide to take a chunk of link’s leg as a to-go meal. the dog bolted into the night. link hoped someone would find it before a car did. the shelter was miles from any major roads, but it was late and the dog’s coat blended in with the dark. after the doberman came a flood of dogs, big and small, slow and stumbling, some coughing, some howling, like a ragtag parade. if he hadn’t been so worried they would all get run over before sunrise, link would have said it was weirdly beautiful. last out of the shelter was patrick, carrying what looked like a disheveled mop. they ran back to their (link’s) car and slammed the doors, out of breath in the front seat. the silence was piercing after the previous canine cacophony. “hey, bug-a-boo,” patrick said, petting the mop, which licked him. looking closer, it was a scraggly white dog with red-rimmed eyes, drooling on patrick’s jeans. “you stole one?” link asked. “look at him. he’s sick,” patrick said, gesturing toward the admittedly pathetic dog. “he looks like a strong breeze would kill him.” the dog whined as if agreeing. “you should take it back,” link said. “they know how to take care of it better than you.” “it’s a kill shelter,” patrick said louder, gently combing his fingers through the dog’s tangled fur. “the older ones, the sick ones, they’re first on the list. i left the puppies. they’ll get adopted no problem.” “oh,” link said. he started the car. 24 “his name’s gonna be joey. like joey ramone,” patrick said. “you like that, joey?” the dog sneezed, the force of it knocking his head against patrick’s knee. “i think he’s deaf,” link said as he pulled out of the parking lot, careful to check for any newly stray dogs. “perfect, he won’t mind if you turn the music up,” patrick kissed joey’s head. “right, sweetie?” joey had lived with link and patrick for three months before dying of lung cancer or some other canine respiratory disease they couldn’t pay to fix. putting joey down almost killed patrick, but link reminded him it was better than living in pain. plus joey had spent the last few months of his life eating bacon and pizza with a human who loved him. patrick didn’t come out of his room for a week after. he turned his music up, but all the punk rock in the world couldn’t cover the sounds of his sobbing. bright, shocking, and beautiful for a moment, then back to smoke and melted plastic. link wonders when patrick will crash tonight. link follows patrick through the downpour, focusing on his industrial grade orange shorts to lead the way. the sign above the building clears up as link gets closer, and once he can read it he turns to patrick. “you took me away from home to go to a goddamn grocery store?” link shouts to be heard over the rain. patrick shrugs and says, “i thought you’d be too tired for a strip club.” link almost laughs in incredulity. inside the store, link shakes the water off his skin. he gives up on his clothes, which are completely soaked. in the television positioned to show them security camera footage, he sees the shadows under his eyes and his stooped frame, pronounced by his wet clothes. he looks like shit. he wonders how much worse he’ll look after radiation or surgery. he wonders if he’ll be able to afford either. for a split second he wishes someone would just put him down before it gets bad, like they did joey. inside, patrick speedwalks recklessly around the store, practically running down the other shoppers. a woman with broken sunglasses glares out of the empty frame as patrick nearly knocks her over in the cereal aisle. link apologizes for him, but patrick is already in the next aisle over. 25 title of piece after tracking him down, link grabs hold of patrick’s arm. “slow down. what are you looking for?” “you know,” patrick says, shaking him off. “i really don’t,” link says, more exhausted than ever. he feels like he’s babysitting a toddler who hasn’t learned fundamental conversation skills yet. “you know,” patrick says again, firmer. he passes a tired-eyed man crouching in the pharmacy section with a fussy baby on his back. “goddammit,” patrick hisses under his breath. “just tell me,” link says, pissier than he intended. “come on. you remember,” patrick says, heading for the dairy freezers. link grabs his arm again, holding firm. “fucking tell me,” link says a little too loud. the tired father glares at him. patrick shrinks a little. “pineapples, dude.” link turns it over in his head. “why the hell are you buying pineapples in october?” “you seriously don’t remember?” patrick asks, suddenly sounding a little congested. that’s when link remembers. back when link was a pre-med student living with patrick, he shared the health tips from class with anyone who would listen. patrick, who had the immune system of a victorian infant, received the brunt of it. whenever patrick got the flu, a sinus infection, or particularly bad allergies, link cut up fresh fruit for him. though it changed depending on the season, he most often bought pineapples on sale at a local stand. “vitamin c will boost that immune system,” link would say, plopping a bowl of fruit on the couch. “makes your skin glow, too.” “fuck off,” patrick would say underneath a mound of blankets and tissues even as he started eating. “cures all ails,” link would add. 26 between coughs patrick would say, “you sound like my mother.” “that’s what i get for sleeping with her,” link would say before dodging the pillow tossed at his head. the fruit stand shut down a few years ago from pandemic-related problems. link hasn’t thought about it in ages. he thought the whole thing annoyed the hell out of patrick, the kind of habit someone only allows after years of friendship. but patrick’s frantic eyes now plead with him to remember, hands hanging uselessly by his sides. “i need to—” patrick cuts himself off, clearing his throat as he surreptitiously wipes his eyes. link takes his hand and leads him across the store to the canned fruit aisle. patrick insists on paying, digging through his wallet for the necessary five dollar bill after his card declines. on the drive home, link turns the radio up, smiling as patrick sings along with a voice that could make dogs howl and children cry. his headache isn’t that bad anymore. the rain lets up to a sprinkle, the kind of mist that feels nice in warmer weather, so they sit on a nearby bench instead of heading back into the apartment right away. a dying streetlight casts just enough light for them to feel safe from mugging but not enough to hide the stars. a dog howls contentedly somewhere in the distance. “fuck,” patrick barks. link looks up in alarm. “what?” patrick turns to him with a look of saturated horror. “i forgot forks.” they stare at each other for a second before link bursts out laughing. “here,” he says, pulling the tab to open the can before handing one to patrick. “drink up, trick.” “so stupid,” patrick says, accepting the can. link pauses opening his own can. “you’re not stupid. it’s eleven pm, we’re all stupid.” “gee, thanks,” patrick says with an eye roll. his face gives way to a pleasant smile all the same. 27 title of piece “cheers,” link says, clinking their cans together. “to our health. mostly mine.” “eat your fruit, asshole,” patrick says, tipping his own can back. link does. the pineapple chunks taste more sweet than bitter. 123123 a dozen orange nike boxes, the famous white swoosh splashed across the side, fill your closet from floor to ceiling, each with the same white tennis shoes, a deal too good to pass up, you say. the seeds of alzheimer’s sowed. golf shirts line the same wall, a pastel rainbow of tags hanging from unworn sleeves, saved for a someday that never comes, the golf courses never played again, as the roots of the disease take hold. the hallucinations start before your words are gone, stinging accusations of affairs and lies, paranoid visions of being followed by secret agents, hate-filled rants you scream but don’t recall, your love-filled marriage a distant memory while alzheimer’s sprouts, blocking love. too soon, the disease strangles your voice and trips you while you walk, until sitting and being overgrown is easier than fighting through the thickets. a non-native species, invading both your thoughts and actions, your “i love you” crowded out, dementia in full bloom. kim kile generations 34 30” x 40” mixed media on canvas robert smith pictures of lily 81 kate as she walked to room 810 at the end of the hospital hallway, kate noticed the quiet first. she heard no nurses with clanging medical carts, no noisy families pushing the limits of visitation hours, and no encouraging words like “just one more push!” coming from behind closed doors. on a floor that should be full of first gasps for air, she heard no newborn baby cries. the hallway was hushed like the quietness surrounding every grief she had ever known, imitating those few moments before loss becomes palpable and aching. kate slowed her steps to delay the inevitable, thinking to herself that if she turned around now, she would never have to face the horrifying truth that waited for her when she entered the room. taking a deep, cleansing breath, kate pushed the door open. she noticed the picture of a long-stemmed, white rose that hung in the center of it, and she winced. the room was like every maternity room she’d ever been in with a delivery bed, two uncomfortable-looking conversion recliners upholstered in a mauvy shade of plastic, and an empty newborn bassinette in the corner. it had everything kate was used to seeing in this type of room except for the feeling of nervous anticipation and the rhythmic whooshes of a baby’s heartbeat coming through the fetal heartrate monitor. only the heartbeat of kate’s daughter, tully, beeped through the heaviness of kate’s sorrow. kate hesitated at the door, praying to herself as she had since she’d answered the phone earlier in the day, please give me strength and the right words to say. kate stressed the pleases in her head so they sounded more like please hoping the politeness and urgency in her silent petitions would encourage god to answer them more quickly. peeking around the curtain pulled across the entrance to the room, she whispered, “hey, sweet girl. i’m here.” tully opened her eyes and grimaced as she struggled to sit up. kate missed seeing tully’s eyes shine and the corners of her mouth turn up in her familiar tully smile, the smile that pulled up the tops of her cheeks to the bottom of her blue eyes until they squinted. instead, kate could see her fear masquerading as tiny, iridescent tears, squeezing from the corners of those blue eyes when she finally reached the side of tully’s bed. she leaned in to give tully a long, warm hug, hoping it would give tully a feeling of warmth and the sense of comfort hugs sometimes did-safe and familiar like a favorite quilt or a worn teddy bear. “hey, mom,” tully said in a groggy, hoarse voice. “thanks for coming. you guys got here fast. you just missed dr. hanson.” “i’m so sorry, tully,” kate said, not knowing if she was apologizing for misskim kile how still we see 82 how still we see ing the doctor or for the loss of tully’s baby, only six weeks from his due date. “what did dr. hanson say?” “she gave me some anti-anxiety medication for tonight and said they’re going to induce me tomorrow morning. they don’t know what happened to him, mom. they can’t tell us why.” the “why” questions would keep kate, tully, and tully’s husband, john, up that night. why had tully felt their baby in the morning only to discover there wasn’t a heartbeat at her appointment that afternoon? why did this happen at 34 weeks? why couldn’t tully protect him? why couldn’t kate shield tully and john from this unthinkable sequence of events? kate reached back into her first-time mother memories and thought about the contrast between today and the day tully was born. she remembered thinking how beautiful a sapphire birthstone would be in a mother’s ring someday, but then tully showed her independence and determination by coming in the last week of august. now she and tully could both wear peridot stones in honor of their oldest children. it was a comparison kate wish she didn’t have to make. tully “hey, mom,” ollie said. “why do turtles remind you of teddy?” ollie’s question came as he was sitting at the kitchen island eating a pb and j for lunch, slowly chewing each bite and then licking the thick glob of peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. tully looked up from the sink where she was rinsing off the breakfast dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. “well, ollie,” she said, “when teddy was still inside of me, he would always hide from the ultrasound technician, and we could never get a good look at his face. he liked to tuck it into his chin and curl up tight in a ball like a turtle going into his shell, so your dad and i nicknamed him, ‘teddy the turtle.’” “do you think he still looks like a turtle?” ollie asked as he spread a dropped lump of jelly around in circles on his paper plate with his index finger. tully didn’t know how to answer ollie’s question. how could she explain to a 5-year-old that her memories of his older brother were beginning to fade, just like teddy’s images on the ultrasound paper hanging on the refrigerator, smudgy and out-of-focus? “i think, ollie,” tully said, “that teddy probably still looks like a turtle because whenever i see a turtle, i think of him and, i think he still wants us to remember him.” “yeah, i think so, too, mom,” ollie replied. “i think he’s still acting like a turtle so that when we see him someday, he can surprise us with what he really 83 kim kile looks like.” tully paused just a moment before responding to ollie. “i think you’re absolutely right, ollie. i can’t wait for the day when we finally get to see teddy for real.” after lunch, tully set ollie up with an eight-pack of finger paints, butcher paper, and a full roll of paper towels-just in case-then sat down in the adjoining family room and thought about her teddy conversation with ollie. even though she’d told ollie that teddy probably still looked like a turtle, she knew differently. teddy, in fact, had been born looking very much like a baby, fully formed with ten fingers, ten toes, and his father’s irish, upturned nose and dimpled chin. although his eyes never opened, tully liked to imagine that teddy had her blue eyes, a recessive trait that somehow ran strong on her side of the family passed down from her grandmother to her father and then to her. even after six years, tully still felt teddy’s loss in the deepest nooks of her heart and mind, the sadness tugging at her whenever she thought about the day they “lost” him. tully hated the phrase “lost a baby” because it sounded so irresponsible, like she and john had somehow misplaced him and then had forgotten to go to lost and found to retrieve him. she also never knew how to answer the question, “how many children do you have?” did she answer truthfully and then explain that her oldest was stillborn? or did she lie and leave teddy out of her count? ignoring theo’s being felt disrespectful to tully, and she silently apologized to her firstborn when she took the easy way out and answered, “we have one little boy named ollie.” tully looked away from their family picture on the opposite side of room and glanced into the kitchen to make sure ollie was still painting on at least the marble countertop and not the walls. he was, gratefully, and he noticed her watching him. “look, mom,” he said, holding up a picture filled with splotches of green, blue, and brown paint. “i painted a turtle sitting on a log in a river. do you think it looks like teddy?” “i see your turtle on the log, and i do think it resembles teddy a bit,” tully answered. “let me get a closer look.” tully walked back into the kitchen and stood behind ollie and his painting, leaning down so her right cheek touched the top of ollie’s head. she breathed in his little boy scent of peanut butter, vegetable-based finger paints, and a touch of baby shampoo before speaking. “why, yes, i really see it now,” tully spoke into ollie’s left ear. “the turtle’s head is tucked into its shell, isn’t it? and it’s sitting quietly and still on the log, hoping we can’t see it, right?” 84 how still we see ollie nodded his head up and down and turned in his stool to face tully. holding up his still-wet picture, he asked her, “can you please hang it up next to teddy’s picture on the refrigerator when it dries, mommy? just like you have my preschool and kindergarten pictures next to each other?” “of course, ollie,” tully replied. “i’ll even make sure daddy sees it when he gets home tonight, if that’s ok with you.” “yep,” said ollie as he jumped from the stool and left the kitchen headed to the mudroom and the door to the backyard. “i’m going outside to swing now, mommy. i’ll stay in our yard. don’t worry.” kate the next morning kate woke up stiffly from a restless and uncomfortable night sleeping in one of the recliner-sleepers. for the one moment she existed in that dreamy state somewhere between sleep and awareness, she wondered why her husband wasn’t snoring beside her and where their cat, izzy, was since she wasn’t curled up on the curve of kate’s tucked-in knees. she then remembered her current reality. taking a quick peek behind the gray plastic curtain pulled to keep out the early morning light, kate saw a sun-filled, blue-skied august morning. the lingering orange, purple, and pink bands from the indiana sunrise outside promised a perfect summer day, a feeling not echoed in the little room on the eighth floor. kate knew today would be the hardest day she had ever faced, and she questioned how she could find peace and purpose in the upcoming tragic moments. having been induced herself, she knew the process tully would go through as part of her induction: the pitocin drip, the cervix checks, and, finally, the call to push. but today, instead of a steady sound of whooshes and beeps, the three of them had just one heartbeat to listen to, a single human to watch electronically. a small cadre of nurses came into the room throughout the morning, checking-in with tully, monitoring her vital signs and emotional state, but never staying long enough to make small talk or prepare the room for a standard delivery. they didn’t need to turn on the bassinette warmer or put the pediatrician on notice when it came time for tully to push. for 30 weeks, kate had imagined the scene of helping tully and john bring their baby boy into the world. she visualized how she would hold one of tully’s hands while john held the other, and, as tully’s support team, they would tell her to push, push, push. how they would watch for the baby’s head to crown and tell her he was almost there; just one more push tully, and you’ll see your baby boy. today, though, kate whispered to tully how brave she thought she was, how tully was the strongest woman kate had ever known, and how tully was the best mama in the world to teddy. together, kate, tully, john, and dr. hanson brought baby teddy into the world and into tully’s waiting arms. from his head covered in wispy, black hair to his tiny, curled toes, teddy was perfect in every way but one. in the solemness of the “after,” kate thought she would find a sense of closure 85 kim kile that only comes with knowing the why. instead, she found emotional support and physical strength in the people who endured the day with them. the compassionate doctor who carefully laid their precious teddy on tully’s chest, hiding the true knot in his umbilical cord, gave kate relief to know that tully was supported. the discreet nurse who wiped away her own tears while swaddling teddy and who took care not to touch his fragile skin any more than necessary, preserved more than just teddy’s complexion. she gave their family permission to hold him for as long as they needed to whisper, “i love you,” and say their goodbyes. and it was the willingness of a hospital pastor to baptize a stillborn baby when another minister refused that showed kate how faith is more than church doctrine; it is the act of honoring christ’s intent in horrific situations. in the aftermath of teddy’s birth, kate sat in the near silence and absorbed the comfort that surrounded her family through these simple acts of human kindness. tully after ollie left the kitchen to swing in the clearing of their wooded backyard, tully picked up her cell phone from the counter where it had been charging, unlocked it, and tapped the phone icon. near the top of her recent calls, she saw the name she was looking for and touched “mom ice 2.” she made sure she still had a view from the large kitchen window of ollie swinging on his playset as she waited for her mom to answer. “hey, tully,” her mom said after a few rings. “what’s up?” “hi, mom,” she answered. “not much really. ollie just finished lunch and some finger painting, and now he’s outside swinging. guess what he painted?” “oh, that’s a hard one, tully,” kate said. she was trying to go down the current list of ollie’s favorite things in her mind before answering. “i’m going to guess either a car or a cat.” “not even close, mom,” tully said. “he told me he painted a turtle sitting on a log in a river because it reminded him of teddy.” “teddy,” kate said, lifting the end of his name with her voice so it became a question. “yes,” said tully. “ollie asked about teddy during lunch today. just out of the blue, he asked me why turtles reminded me of teddy, so i told him about teddy hiding during his ultrasounds and how we gave him the nickname ‘teddy the turtle.’” “oh, tully! i wish i could be there to give you a hug right now, sweetie,” said kate. “i know that had to have hurt a little-maybe even a lot. how are you doing right now?” “it did, but i’m fine. i just wasn’t expecting that deep of a conversation with 86 how still we see a 5-year today,” said tully. she hoped the small laugh at the end of her sentence didn’t give away that she wasn’t as fine as she said she was. she walked over to lean against the kitchen island to steady her shaking legs. “i can come over if you need to talk, tully,” kate offered. “it won’t take me but a minute to put away what i’ve been working on and head your way. i’d love to see both of you anyway. it’s been a few days.” “it has been a few days, and you’re more than welcome to come over, but please don’t think you have to take care of me, mom,” said tully. “i’m really ok. i’m just reminiscing about teddy and all we went through those couple of days. i still don’t know how i survived.” tully heard kate take a deep breath before she spoke again. “tully, you are the bravest woman i know,” kate finally said. “i’ll be there in just a few minutes. tell ollie i’m on my way, and i can’t wait for him to show me his picture.” kate she led tully into the bathroom and helped her undress while the hot water in the shower created a fine mist around them. tully’s long, blonde hair was matted from staying in bed for two days, so kate gently brushed it to remove the largest knots before she washed tully’s hair. “ok, baby,” kate said. can you step into the shower without too much pain? you can sit on the shower stool we bought for you to use while you heal.” “yeah, i can get in there,” tully replied, wincing as she lifted each foot and leg into the tub. “i’ll do this as quickly as i can so you can get back to bed, ok? i just know that a warm shower always makes me feel better,” said kate. “there’s just something about having clean hair and a clean body that relaxes me.” “i don’t think i’ll feel relaxed for a long time, mom, but the water feels good, and i really do appreciate you helping me get settled at home,” tully replied, as she leaned her head back into the stream of warm water, letting it mix with the shampoo and tears running down her face. after kate got tully dried off, dressed, and back in bed, she left her to nap alongside her husband, john. kate closed the door to their bedroom as quietly as she could and glanced across the hall to the room where the nursery was ready for a new baby just two days ago. during tully’s stay in the hospital, kate’s husband, and john’s parents had removed any trace of the baby that was supposed to arrive in a few weeks. they 87 kim kile had packed his unused clothes, books, and newborn diapers into tubs, and had taken them, along with the crib, rocker, and dresser, to a newly rented storage unit. just the weekend before, family and friends had gathered to shower tully, john, and teddy with gifts at a turtle-themed baby shower, and they were still receiving gifts at their garage door multiple times a day. kate looked outside every few hours for new boxes so she could then hide them under moving blankets in the garage until someone could be persuaded to take them to the storage unit. needing a few quiet minutes to herself, kate headed to her room, which was next to the former nursery. sitting on the bed, she melted into the mattress, feeling the enormity of teddy’s death settling like the weight of an immense boulder on her shoulders, back, and neck. her emotional trauma turned into a physical pain that seized her body and wouldn’t let go. all five feet, five inches of her ached as if her emotions had taken on life and were squeezing her until she couldn’t breathe without gasping. she fell back with her arms over her head hoping that if she lengthened her core, she could get the air she needed. deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, kate, she reminded herself. feeling the tension starting to loosen in her shoulders, kate sat up again and thought about what else needed to be done: notification phone calls to make and texts to send, plus teddy’s obituary to write for their hometown newspaper, and autopsy and burial details to manage. it all felt overwhelming in the moment, but kate was not going to let those responsibilities fall to tully or john. let them sleep while they can, she thought, as she started down the stairs to her waiting to-do list on the kitchen table. tully and kate “hey, ollie,” said tully as she walked out the back door. “guess who’s coming over in a few minutes? gigi!” “gigi’s coming over during the day! “why is she coming?” asked ollie. he stopped kicking his feet in the air, so he could slow down and talk to tully. “well, i called and told her about your turtle painting, and she wants to see it,” tully responded. “i’m guessing that’s ok with you, right, buddy?” she tried to stop ollie’s swing by putting her hand on the rope closest to her and holding on tightly. she didn’t want him to be tempted to jump out and roll in the grass while they were talking. ollie dragged the tips of his tennis shoes along the dirt path under the swing making a “shh-shu” sound every time they touched the ground until he came to a complete stop. he then spread the two lengths of rope apart with his hands before jumping and rolling in the grass anyway. “mom, i’m going to go sit on the front porch and wait for gigi to get here,” said ollie as he ran past her on his way to the front yard. “come with me, ok?” tully followed her son around the side of their house that bordered a small creek, taking care not to step on the scattering of purple and white violets blooming up-and-down the banks. she loved how the midwestern springs came 88 how still we see in bursts of color in her yard-white crocuses, red tulips, yellow daffodils, blue muscari, and purple hyacinths. pink blossoms dotted the red bud trees that grew along the creek bank, the entire scene creating a floral rainbow every march and april for tully to enjoy. “are you coming, mom?” asked ollie, as he raced toward tully from around the front of the house. “gigi will be here any second.” “almost there,” said tully. she ran toward ollie, grabbing him around the waist and swinging him up in the air. his giggles filled the space between them, warm and bubbly like the best bubble bath tully had ever taken. tully gave ollie a squeeze before setting him down feet first on the newly sprouted grass coming up in the yard. “there’s gigi!” ollie cried when he noticed a car coming up the long drive to their house. he started running to where the driveway met the sidewalk in front of the garage doors. “careful, buddy,” kate said. “gigi will be here in just a second. wait right here.” tully came up behind ollie and crossed her arms around him from behind to keep him from hopping into the driveway. she could feel ollie’s excitement in his fast-beating heart and the near misses his feet made on hers while dancing up and down. when tully heard her mother turn the car off, she released ollie from her protective hug. “gigi!” exclaimed ollie. “you’re here.” kate’s greeting mimicked her grandson’s enthusiasm as she met him in front of her car. “ollie! yes, i am. give me a hug!” she picked him up and gave him a hug while swinging him from side-to-side. “i’ve missed you, sweet boy,” she said as she gave him a kiss and put him down. “i hear you painted a picture that i have to see.” “i did! it’s a turtle on a log. i’m going to go get it now. be right back,” ollie said as he turned his energy into a run up the porch steps and through the front door. “i don’t know how you keep up with him, tully,” kate laughed as she and tully sat down on the wide front porch steps. “that boy has more energy in him than a can of red bull!” “yes, he does,” tully laughed along with her mom. “i swear if we could harness it, we might have the answer for our fossil fuel crisis.” tully’s tone became quieter, though, when she said, “i sometimes wonder what it would be like if i had two little boys running around all day.” kate leaned into her daughter, giving her hug. “two little boys would be a 89 kim kile blessing, tully.” at that moment, ollie burst back onto the porch, his turtle picture waving in his right hand. both women turned around and scooted over to make room for ollie between them. “here you go, gigi,” ollie said as he handed her his picture. “the turtle is right there,” he said, leaning over and pointing to a green splash of paint near the bottom of the page. “and see, he’s sitting on the log i painted right here.” ollie touched a piece of brown paint under the green blob. kate turned the picture toward her so she could get a better look at ollie’s piece of art. “ollie, i love your picture. your mom told me that you painted it after talking about teddy,” said kate. “is this him?” “gigi, you’re so silly! it’s just a picture of teddy,” replied ollie. “teddy lives in heaven.” “of course, he does, ols. you’re right,” said kate. “you’ve done a good job painting a picture of him though. it makes me happy to see that he’s sitting on a log soaking in the sun.” “ollie, why don’t you put that back in the kitchen,” said tully, joining their conversation. “i’ll hang it on the refrigerator after gigi leaves. you can play outside until it’s time for dinner if you want.” “ok, mom. i’ll be out back,” said ollie already halfway through the front door. “i love that he thinks about teddy,” kate said to tully. “it’s hard to believe it’s been six years since teddy died.” “on the day he was born, i promised teddy that i would never forget him,” said tully, “but sometimes a day or two goes by, and i realize i haven’t thought about him at all. then i feel guilty. it’s this awful cycle i go through.” “but you’ve passed your love for teddy to ollie. that’s obvious,” said kate. “even on the days he doesn’t come to your mind, i’m sure he comes to someone else’s. between us all, he’s not forgotten. he just decides who he’s going to visit each day.” “that’s a nice thought, mom,” said tully. “but you can’t imagine what it’s like to be the one in a million in the worst way possible. now that john and i have been on that side of the percentages, i always think the worst.” “i didn’t realize you still feel that way, tull,” said kate. i guess i thought that after you had ollie, that feeling went away. i’m really sorry i didn’t know or 90 how still we see didn’t even think to ask.” kate slid over to tully’s side and put her arm around her. “ollie is such a blessing, but there’s a reason we haven’t had more children,” tully spoke quietly. “the anxiety i felt during ollie’s pregnancy was just too much to do more than once.” tully and kate sat in silence for a few minutes while kate considered tully’s admission. she knew tully and john had gone in for multiple ultrasounds while they were pregnant with ollie, but she had no idea how much the stress of having a baby still affected tully. she ached for her daughter and john who, at one time, wanted a house full of babies. for once, kate had no positive words for tully. she was at a loss on how to comfort her without sounding insensitive. although she knew there would be no ollie without teddy, ollie wasn’t a tradeoff for the heartache they all endured when teddy died. he wasn’t a consolation prize. the grief lingered over their family like wisps of smoke swirling from person to person, sometimes leaving them alone, sometimes encircling them all with their tendrils. like a campfire, the embers of their grief glowed and smoldered, waiting to be ignited at a moment’s notice. “no words feel right, tully,” kate said after a few quiet moments. “i’m here for you in any way you need me. please reach out when those days hit too hard, and i’ll just sit with you.” “mom! gigi! come here!” ollie’s shouts interrupted their conversation as he rounded the front of the house at a dead run. stopping in front of them, ollie kept up his excited chatter while reaching out a hand to tully. “it’s teddy! teddy’s by the creek!” “ollie, honey, you know teddy can’t be here, right?” said tully as she stood up, took ollie’s outreached hand, and followed him to the side yard. “i know, mom, but he’s here. i promise! gigi, are you coming, too?” asked ollie, looking backward to where kate was scrambling up from the steps. “i’m right behind you guys,” said kate. she, like tully, was curious about what ollie could have seen in the yard that made him think he’d seen teddy. ollie stopped by the creek bank bending down and pointing to a tree limb that had fallen across the running water. “look, right there! right there on the log,” said ollie. “do you see teddy? he’s sitting on that log right by the bank. just like my painting.” tully and kate looked down to where ollie was pointing, the afternoon sun streaming through the spring foliage blooming in the trees above them leaving sparkles in the water and spots of sun on the limb ollie was pointing to. right where he pointed, a small painted turtle sat in a circular patch of sun nestled between a stand of cattails and a knot on the limb. 91 kim kile “see! i told you teddy was here,” said ollie. “he’s just taking an afternoon nap.” tully kneeled beside the bank and leaned over until she was just above the sunning turtle. “hey, teddy,” she said. “i’m so happy you decided to visit us today. she added quietly, “i’ve missed you.” kate stood behind her daughter and grandson and took in the surrounding scene-spring in glorious, full bloom along the creek, tully talking to “teddy,” and ollie chattering to no one in particular about how awesome it was that teddy was on the log “just like his painting.” almost as if it had heard them, the small turtle stretched its long head out of its shell and looked around, its gaze resting upon the trio on the bank for moment before slipping into the creek and swimming away. 25 don’t tell nobody she’s dancing on beer cans and shingles and bones don’t tell a soul have we gone crazy? are we even whole? she’s been dead so long closed in silence sky laid on her like a million men go on in wind let her be born she hasn’t seen stars only branded a whore. * today, my mouth is a tomb of the things white people forget. beneath the sky a garden blue stalks my name i forget this kind of fire strikes black bodies into shit oh friends wild until we are free set us afire again. saloni dixon pondering a black girl’s* suicide 107 it’s wide-eyed sleepwalking. cotton ball brain. a drunk walk home stone-cold sober. dust collecting on a spinning ceiling fan. you’re a robot wearing human skin, clouded eyes and automated dances. a puppeteer pulling their own strings. pressing the big red button. (where did it even come from?) you’re hammering at a blacked-out window, hearing voices on the other side. a one-way mirror. high-pitched ringing singing a lullaby. elevator music looping from the phone hanging unanswered by its cord. (who’s even calling?) it’s floating suspended under water. i know the end’s guttural scream fallen silent on silly straw ears. the clicks of a clock still ticking without batteries. (how is time still moving?) you’re a house fire— the home, the lit match, and the witness watching it. inhale the ash— your own exhale— and blow out clouds, covering the sky in a foggy blanket. eliza surdzial apology for a dissociative state of mind 1212 i had never wanted to be a mother. i don’t particularly remember the exact reason that i had made such a decision, but i know that i had done so at a relatively young age. perhaps it was that i considered myself to have this big plan for my life and i thought a child would ruin that. perhaps i was just a bit too selfish. i wasn’t very old when mom sat me down and told me that i would soon be a big sister. if i’m being completely honest, i don’t actually remember having that conversation with mom. i mean i’m sure i did because when you’re a parent having a second kid you kind of have to make the first kid aware of such a situation. what i do remember is me starting to help mom more, especially once she became mostly confined to her bed. i also remember that on the night that mom finally went into labor, after i had grabbed the hospital bag that we had packed for this moment, i laced up my brand-new pair of light-up pink and blue sneakers. i was so excited to show them to my little brother. i was determined to be an amazing big sister. though i think that type of big sister would have remembered more than i do. i thought that i could remember more. i wanted to remember more. i know that there was a time before it all got bad, but i’m sorry i just can’t think of what that was like. maybe it’s easier to remember the hard times, but the more likely option is that i don’t want to hope that those good times can return when it now feels like they never will. mom would be gone for hours on end. you and i would get off the school bus, run inside, grab a pop-tart or go-gurt, both off brands of course, and then retreat to our separate rooms in hopes that she would be home to make dinner. however, time went on and i eventually started thinking that i should just be the one to make dinner if mom wasn’t going to be around to do so. once i started making dinner, i thought i might as well do the dishes, perhaps the laundry, and maybe i could ask you to take out the trash since you were getting old enough. “you’re not mom. why should i do what you say?” you asked. “because i’m here and doing everything else. i’m just asking you to do one thing.” i don’t know what i did, but i did something by saying that. i still wonder what it would be like if i could go back and undo it. all of sudden you were screaming and throwing whatever was within reach at me. i ducked for a while, gabriella weaver fighting your memory 13 but at one point i definitely threw something back at you. i don’t know if it was me retaliating or what, but you just got angrier. those things in your reach suddenly weren’t enough and you started throwing your fists at me instead. this went on for likely half an hour before we both retreated to our respective rooms. after sitting in my bed for a while trying to find an excuse for what just happened, i decided it would be best to go and check on you. i truly didn’t care about the trash anymore, but i cared about my little brother. when i cracked your door open slightly that’s exactly what i found. my little brother, you, were lying in bed, shaking, crying, looking more scared than i had ever seen anyone. i started walking towards you when you jumped up and hugged me. “i’m sorry,” you choked out. “it’s okay. are you okay?” i asked. “i don’t know what that was. i don’t know who that was. it wasn’t me. i’m so sorry.” “it’s okay. i think you’re just upset and angry.” “i shouldn’t be angry at you.” “it’s okay. we’ll be okay,” i said as i held you until you cried yourself to sleep. that’s how the next four years went. it was me and you without mom. when you first started having your episodes they only happened probably once a month, but it progressed. at one point it was every other week, then every week, and eventually it felt like it was every day. nothing i said helped anymore. i can’t deny that at one point i got angry too. my manner of dealing with our situation was accepting it and improving myself where i could, namely school. however, you refused to do such a thing, and i hated that you wouldn’t just do what i asked. over time, our mutual resentment only made your episodes worse until eventually i no longer saw the point to check on you afterwards. once i graduated from high school, i chose to go away to college. i left you with mom. admittedly, i think it was good for both of you. there was no one left to take care of the house or to serve as an intermediary to your growing issues. she was forced to be a mom again. the thing about being in a new place is that it makes you long for those places that are familiar to you, even if those places weren’t the greatest. at least that was the case for my nineteenth birthday when i had no friends at school to celebrate 14 with and all i wanted was to go home and celebrate with family. i worried as i hadn’t really talked to you since i had started classes. mom had started therapy and was working to rebuild our relationship via constant messaging and a couple of calls here and there. i figured that for the party mom would gather grandparents and decorate the house in a theme she thought i would like while also fixing a meal that she claimed to be my favorite. she would be wrong about the theme and the food, but she would appear as the pinnacle of motherhood and hosting, and i knew that’s what she really wanted so i didn’t say anything. while i knew what mom would do during the celebration, i had no clue about you. on the day of the party, in walked our grandma who passed her mothering skills, or i suppose the more appropriate understanding would be her lack of mothering skills, onto our mother. i was in the kitchen, so can’t say that i saw what happened to start the chaos, but i can remember what was said. “what the fuck are you doing here,” you yelled. “that isn’t how you should talk to your family,” grandma replied. “please not today,” mom begged. “no cause why is she here? she’s a terrible fucking mom with a fucking disgusting taste in men. mom, you know that better than anyone. she needs to fucking leave.” at this point, i was slowly beginning to step towards the living room. everyone that was at the party had obviously heard the conversation and i was starting to get embarrassed as well as mad. i had to say something. i knew that me stepping into the situation would only make it worse, because it only ever made it worse, but i couldn’t stay quiet. “can i not have just one day? one day where you aren’t the center of attention. today is my birthday and i thought maybe you could just be normal, but i guess i was wrong,” i said. “like you aren’t the center of attention all the time. sister graduated top of her class. sister went to college. sister is so amazing,” you said mockingly. “just shut your mouth cause you’re no better than anyone else here.” “no, you shut your mouth. don’t ever act like i didn’t work to get where i am. you have no clue what it’s like to work for yourself and not have everyone cover for you.” “whatever. if she’s not leaving, then i am.” 15 title of piece with that, you turned and ran out the door. everyone turned to look at me and i fought back any tears that seemed like they might fall. i wasn’t going to cry over you. when i looked at mom though she was crying, and also contemplating whether or not to follow you out the door. eventually, everyone went to either help look for you or just went home. i stayed and waited. later when you finally walked back through the door you were bloody, bruised, and tear stained, but i couldn’t look at you for more than a few seconds. i wanted to see my baby brother. i wanted to see someone that in twenty minutes i could go check on and comfort, while also being comforted by, because i knew i wasn’t alone in all of it. yet, on that day, when i looked at you, i couldn’t see my baby brother at all, no matter how hard i tried. no longer did i have someone by my side. i was alone. you were alone. i never wanted to be your mother. i’ll admit that i tried to be. however, i know now that i never could have been that for you. i’m just your big sister and i wish that could’ve been enough. 101 first, you need to get off your lazy tail – yes, that one wrapped around the golden statue of some king you either ate or scared off. you need to stretch, make noises that will make any creature near your cove fly away, and maybe blow out a couple of puffs of smoke for good measure. look around at the pile of gold you have been sleeping on and realize it is far too small for a dragon such as yourself. once you are full of greed and the need to expand your gold pile, slither out of your cove. make it nice and slow so the ground shakes with each step and throw in an angry snort here and there. exit your cave, which we all know is just a castle you knocked over who knows how many years ago, and extend your wings. hold them out longer than what is needed, but you have to look big if any eyes are on you. speaking of which, take a big sniff. smell that? that’s a deer. and that? that’s a hog. smell the difference? no? that’s okay. you didn’t come here to eat wild animals; you came for something else. once you focus back on why you stepped out into the sun, get ready to fly. flap your wings around. you don’t really need to do this; it’s just fun to see everything fly away under your wings. lower yourself to the ground; that’s why you stretched earlier, and spring up as fast and as high as possible. pound your wings as hard as you can. it’s essential to flap as fast as you can; otherwise, you’ll... and what self-respecting flying dragon can’t get off the ground on the first try? once you are in the air, do some pointless spins and twirls. not because you enjoy it, of course, it’s just how dragons get off the ground. then a roar, not your main roar, but the roar you make when you’re on your way. fly south. dragons are always north of people. don’t get distracted by any animals, even if you’re tempted. remember, you’re filled with greed. the lands below you should change from forested wildlands to tamer forests, then to groves, fields, and finally, farmlands. if it doesn’t go in that exact order, you’re going the wrong way. trust me; i should know. if you see a farmer, make sure to fly right over them, not too low of course, high enough so they see the shadow pass over them, and then they hear you. they tend to scream and scatter like ants but are more enjoyable. do not, and i repeat, do not, remember that one man who just started to cry in a horrible voice the last time you went out. it’s upsetting to one’s health. once you locate the castle, make sure to roar – your “i’m going to eat you” roar. do it a couple of times to make sure they hear you. swoop in at the walls a couple of times. don’t touch anything, just get them really scared. let them shoot arrows or boulders at you. the arrows don’t do anything, and the big rocks are easy enough to avoid. once they all stink of fear – that salty, dungy smell – that’s when you know they are ripe enough and ready to be seared. open your mouth and bring up the greed that filled you; let it out. it will burn up the arrows, armor, the flesh inside, and even the stone walls. make a couple of passes; don’t make christian sickmeier how to dragon, for any curious fire-breathing, winged serpents out there 102 any art, just go back and forth. fly up really high and look at the castle. it should look like a child’s drawing. now dive. hold the dive to the last second then fling your wings out. all the debris and anyone around should fly back. walk into the throne room, eat anyone there, then find the treasure room. ahhh, there it is. you can hear it, smell it, feel the gold inside. once you break down the wall, look. just look. make sure it is bigger than your other pile, and if not, i’ll let you figure out how to move the gold. 158 digital painting emma cremeans family 65 my given name is haruki fujihara. for the convenience of others, i go by alex. to be completely honest, i don’t even remember when i started going by alex or why i chose that name specifically. don’t get me wrong, i don’t dislike my given name. my mother carefully picked out the kanji characters, as do many japanese parents, comprising haruki so that it would best embody me, as she once put it. haru translates to spring, since i was born on the first of spring according to the japanese calendar. ki can be spelled a variety of ways, but my mother chose the character meaning joy, because according to her, the day i was born was the most joyous one of her life. that’s why, she always disliked when others called me alex, probably even felt a little bit disrespected. we had a falling out over my name when i graduated high school, and my small high school in suburban valparaiso, indiana wrote alex fujihara on my diploma. someone in the office messed up the documentation. my mother was furious i didn’t push harder (really at all) for it to be changed. we mostly stopped talking, with the exception of birthdays or holidays, after i moved out to work as a tattoo artist in los angeles at nineteen. that was six years ago. she’s a stubborn woman, and i inherited that trait, so neither of us wanted to yield and apologize to the other. however, i think my resolve is weaker than hers, and i felt compelled to call my mother after the appointment with my most recent client. as the line rings in my ear, i find my chest growing tight, as if i have a real bad heartburn. it dings twice. then thrice. “moshi moshi?” my mother’s voice sounds tired, like she just woke up. i forgot about the time difference. it would be close to nine in the evening in indiana. as i swallow back the nerves lodged in my throat, i force my hands to stop their trembling. “nee, okaasan, i didn’t call at a bad time, did i?” “no. no.” there is some shuffling in the background, followed by metal clambering on the counter. “i was in the middle of preparing dinner. is something wrong? you rarely call.” “not really…” i say, losing my train of thought. “i just-uh…” my gaze lands on one of the many figurines i had decorating my tattoo station. it’s of a small child wearing black and red samurai armor, which makes it stand out amongst the anime figures who wear bold colors while holding dramatic poses. nya a. gaines identity 66 identity “haruki?” my mother calls. “are you okay?” “my client saw your doll, okaasan.” *** today was the day before a large convention was set to start at the los angeles convention center, so the little tokyo district had drawn in a greater influx of patrons than usual. it was already a rather condensed area with several small shops that honestly all sold the same overpriced anime figurines and botched looking keychains that looked nothing like the character. and now that the infamous “june gloom” had passed, the california heat was a merciless sauna that amplified any b.o. given this, i didn’t have many appointments lined up, because i wanted to make sure i could leave before drunken idiots began fighting to get inside the fifteen different sushi restaurants near my shop. she was my first client of the day, entering my shop at eleven-thirty. “welcome-” i started, stopping short upon seeing the beauty standing by the doorway, timidly twiddling her fingers. she had a heart-shaped face and iridescent hair that almost took on a purple hue depending on the direction of the artificial lighting of the tattoo shop. she strangely donned a baseball cap underneath a black hoodie, and her gaze scoured the shop quickly, almost as if she were searching for something. or someone. “i have an appointment…” she said, rocking awkwardly on the balls of her feet. i noticed her shoes looked quite expensive for a pair of sneakers. crisp and white with a black midsole. “it’s with alex?” her name was yuka chobe, according to the foreign driver’s license she gave me. her name contained the characters for summer and evening, and she was born in the same year as me, but in july. the picture looked a few years old. yuka had more of a baby face, and her hair was cut into a bob. “oh, my name spelled in english is y-u-k-” “it’s okay,” i cut her off, passing her back her license and paperwork to sign. “i speak japanese.” “really?” she switched to her native language as her eyes lit up. “you’re japanese?” “technically, yes. i was born in saitama,” i answered in japanese. “i’ve lived here though, since i was nine.” “ehhh? how old are you? your japanese is still so good!” “we’re both twenty-five. my birthday is in march.” 67 nya a. gaines “ehh! you’re older? i’ve been speaking so informally this whole time!” yuka exclaimed. she pulled the bill of her hat down, trying to cover her face that was blossoming a bright red. i found it amusing. i wasn’t even that much of a senior to her, so i didn’t see the need for formalities and honorifics. i printed off the design i drew up based on the image that had been emailed to me. it was a small piece, so i didn’t anticipate it taking too long to complete. yuka sent me a wind chime and asked that i add a butterfly. as i continued to set up my station, sanitizing the table and getting my gloves on, my client continued to rapidly fire more questions. sometimes, it was difficult to understand her excited kansai dialect. “what’s your name in japanese?” yuka sat on the tattoo chair. “it’s haruki fujihara.” “what characters?” “spring and joy,” i said. “i was born on the first day of spring, and according to my mom, that was the most joyous day of her life.” i then let out an airy laugh. “she probably regrets that now, because i drove her crazy as a child.” “where did the name alex come from?” yuka asked, an innocent question that i avoided answering by shrugging and focusing my attention on the bottles of ink i needed for the piece. “do you not like the name haruki?” “no. i like my name. alex is just easier.” “how so?” yuka persisted. “well, when you live in a country where employers are quick to judge a resume based on the name you have, it’s quite convenient to put an american sounding name.” i tried to sound lighthearted so it would be perceived as a joke. though it hadn’t been a complete lie, yuka didn’t seem too convinced. “but you’re a tattoo artist. you work for yourself.” “that is true.” “then why don’t you use your japanese name?” “does it really matter whether i do or not?” “i suppose not, but…” yuka pouted, her eyebrows furrowing in a look of disapproval. “i haven’t gone by haruki since i was a kid,” i huffed, growing annoyed from 68 identity how her pestering started to resemble my mother’s. “that’s all there is to it.” i started going by alex in the third grade. that timeline was about right. when i started school, i was the new foreign kid from japan who spoke at most thirty words in english. my classmates kept forgetting my name or mispronouncing it, calling me “hair-ru-ki” instead of “ha-ru-ki”, which was extremely frustrating. repeating myself over and over grew annoying, so the next time someone asked, i blurted out the first american name i could think of. it unfortunately stuck. on the first day of school i always mentally prepared myself for the blank stare of confusion from the teacher looking at the roster, trying to figure out how not to screw up my name. they would go through the andersons, davidsons, and johnsons with ease, pause, then tentatively sound out “fu-fu-fu” of fujihara without the same previous confidence. i’d awkwardly chime in, “i go by alex,” and the teacher would nod and never use my given name again. the bad part is, my name was a relatively easy one to pronounce in japanese. it looked how it sounded, but little attempt was ever made to say it correctly. except by the one korean girl in my sixth science grade class who was kind of in the same boat as me. her name was minyeong, but people called her minnie. “why do you keep calling my son by a name that is not his?” my mother would angrily say during pta meetings. “do not call him anything but what is on his birth certificate.” combined with her thick accent and broken english, the teachers often could hardly understand her, let alone grasp why she was upset. “mrs. fujihara,” my teacher tried to calm her down. “alex here-” “haruki! his name is haruki!” “okaasan, please,” i muttered, sinking into my seat, wishing the cushion would swallow me whole and save me from the embarrassment that was my mother. “i asked them to-” “no!” my mother interrupted, switching to japanese out of habit when she was angry. “that is not the name i gave you. do you care nothing about what your name means?” i bit my tongue, and we stopped arguing after that. over the years she sent my dad to parent teacher meetings instead. he understood the situation a little more from my perspective. at work, they called him strictly professor (his name is ryusuke). my mother would still make it known she disliked the name alex, taking extra effort to address me as haruki when my friends came over or if she did decide to come to a school function. to be honest, at that age, i didn’t quite understand why my mother vehemently opposed me using what was the equivalent in my book to a nickname. i knew my legal name was haruki. i knew it meant “spring joy.” that wouldn’t change 69 nya a. gaines despite my desire to go by a different name so people would stop butchering haruki. alex didn’t mean anything to me other than serving as a means of convenience for others, and honestly, myself. “have you never used a nickname or anything of the sort?” i asked yuka. “it’s basically the same.” yuka frowned. “a nickname should be something you want. not something people call you, because they don’t want to learn your actual name.” “whatever you say.” after that, yuka dropped the topic, a prominent scowl still on her face. i resumed setting up. the tattoo stencil stuck to yuka’s fair skin well. it fit nicely on the back of her tricep, and became completely hidden underneath the sleeve of her t-shirt once it was pulled down. i positioned myself behind yuka, with the tattoo gun in hand. she straightened her posture as i dipped the end of the needle into the first color, black. “if you begin feeling lightheaded, let me know,” i said, turning on the machine. the gun whirled to life, resonating throughout the shop. “if you get uncomfortable then we can reposition to lay down.” yuka wordlessly nodded. the instant the needle poked at her virgin skin, she jumped. i pulled away before i could make a mistake. “sorry!” she panicked. “you can continue. it just caught me off guard.” after the initial jump, yuka sat relatively still for a first timer. every now and then, she twitched. it was an involuntary reaction, because the nerves in the arm don’t really like being aggravated. however, i was mostly concerned with how tense she was. “ne, yuka, what brings you to california?” i asked. yuka grit her teeth, exhaling sharply through her nose as i finished the outline of the butterfly. “i’m…here for a concert.” “oh really?” i cleaned the needle to dip into the purple next. i gently wiped her skin with solution to get rid of the excess black ink. her arm was slowly turning an angry red. “who are you here to see?” “i’m actually the one performing,” yuka let out a shaky breath. “my group is called harmony. we’re performing at la expo tomorrow night.” “are you sure getting a tattoo the day before was the best idea then?” i joked. 70 identity “your arm will be sore.” “today was the only day i could get in with you.” yuka hissed as i wiped her arm again, and i muttered a soft apology. “we leave the day after tomorrow for san francisco and then we head east.” the name harmony sounded familiar. i had classmates who were fans of those various j-pop and k-pop groups, but i never really paid all that much to celebrities. if there was a song i liked, i added it to my playlist without looking too deep into the famous’ personal lives. “if i may ask, is there a meaning behind this tattoo? there doesn’t have to be one, but i was just curious.” yuka’s body slumped a bit, the previous tension disappearing in an instant. i quickly tried to change the subject to the concert, but instead, she answered. “my older brother passed away suddenly in a car accident,” yuka explained. i sat back, turning the machine off. “he was my best friend, and i miss him every day. we always played with the windchimes as kids. the day after he passed, i was sitting in the yard crying when a butterfly landed on the nearby chime. i figured that it was him coming back to tell me that everything would be okay.” one would assume that opening up about this deep of a wound to a stranger would result in waterworks. i had tissues on standby. yuka instead had a fond smile on her face. while her eyes looked glossy, tears had yet to fall. she took a sharp breath before letting out a shaky exhale, straightened her posture and looked over to me, who quite honestly, sat dumbfounded by her strange behavior. “on your shop’s instagram,” yuka continued, “there was a picture of your station with a gogatsu ningyo as the focus. the base of the doll had the characters of haruki etched into the wood. i wanted to be tattooed by the one who was supposed to be the joy of spring. i figured their work would bring me happiness and help me honor my brother.” i went quiet. my throat felt tight after the heartfelt confession. i knew what doll she was referencing. my mother had it made for me when i was a kid for children’s day, a holiday in japan to celebrate youth and pray for their health and success. a gogatsu ningyo was the male counterpart to a traditional hina doll, which was often given to little girls for the same event. this particular doll of mine was a miniature boy wearing red and black samurai armor to symbolize strength and power. my mother had my name etched into it. i casually started to display it in the shop for aesthetic purposes. before then, i had it stashed away in my closet, because after a show-and-tell went wrong in the fifth grade, i really started to hate my name. my family was one of three asian families in the suburban town. my father got a job at a university in chicago, and would make the hour commute twice a 71 nya a. gaines week to teach his class. i disliked living in the rural city of valparaiso, because i quickly learned that many of my peers were close-minded, a trait they inherited from their equally close-minded parents. there was a kid in my class i particularly despised named tyler. tyler came from an affluent white, upper-class family who owned lake houses and took lavish vacations every month. when he first targeted me, his family had just come back from a trip to kyoto during spring break, and he went around bragging about how much he knew about japan, proclaiming himself some sort of expert on the culture now. i think he just wanted to show off his knowledge and that he thought he knew more than the actual japanese student. i often kept to myself, drawing comics alone instead of playing with the other kids at recess. when our teacher requested that each student bring in an item to showcase from their vacation, i brought in my gogatsu ningyo to explain about children’s day. “so children’s day is the last day of golden week and is to celebrate children and their happiness,” i explained to the best of my ability in front of the class. “my parents pray for my future and wish that i grow up big and strong.” “thank you for sharing, alex,” my teacher said. she then turned to the class. “did anyone have any questions?” “alex, what’s your japanese name?” a girl had asked. “it’s haruki. that’s what these characters here say. together it means spring joy.” i received many awes and more questions after, including my peers asking me to write the kanji characters on the white board, which i obliged without protest. “you know, that’s such a girly meaning,” tyler scoffed. “there’s no way you’ll grow big and strong with a name like that. i guess that’s why you go by alex.” i wish i had said something to retaliate, but at the time, i didn’t have the confidence to do so. instead i erased my name off the board and quickly took my seat in the back of the classroom. fifteen years later, i received the reaction i had long desired from yuka. “thank you, yuka,” i said. she tilted her head sideways in confusion. i picked back up my tattoo gun. i dipped it into the next color, pink, so that i can finish the butterfly. “thank you for allowing me the honor to commemorate your brother with my artwork.” i finished the piece in silence, hyper focusing to make sure each shaded area, each line, was perfect. only when she looked at the finished product in the 72 identity mirror, an hour and a half later, did yuka finally cry. *** “i had never seen someone so happy after getting a tattoo done,” i laugh to myself as i recount the earlier interaction to my mother over the phone. “she thanked me over and over and over. it started to become awkward, because i really didn’t know what to say from praise.” the more i think about it, the interaction is almost funny to me. yuka came to me because of a gogatsu ningyo i got when i was ten. all the doll does is sit on my desk and look pretty, yet it ended up being the reason why a client desperately wanted me to tattoo her. “nee, okaasan, i guess i have to thank you for getting me that doll all those years ago-” on the other side of the line, my mother is sniffling. “eh! okaasan, are you-” “i’m so happy,” my mother says. as she’s crying, i sit silently holding the phone to my ear, listening to her wails. “you bring me so much joy, haruki, and i’m happy someone saw my child in the way i always wanted.” i’ve never heard my mother cry before. she is one to always save face and hide any negative emotions. even during the times we’ve had disputes regarding my name, she never raised her voice nor lashed out, perhaps bottling up her feelings for years. after hearing her cry, i realize just how much i have been hurting her. “i’m really sorry, okaasan.” “for what?” my mother asks, still sniffling. “for disrespecting you in the way i did. i didn’t know that you saw my name in that regard.” “haruki, it’s not me that you think you’re disrespecting. it’s yourself. a child’s name is their first sense of identity and they will carry it with them all their life, which is why i cared so much about what it meant. you actively denied yourself that for years. you having a nickname was never the problem. it was the fact that you changed for the convenience of others.” as painful as the realization is, she’s right. growing up i made excuses for others who couldn’t take the extra two seconds to learn the proper pronunciation of my name, and let bullies dwindle my 73 nya a. gaines self-esteem with their petty taunting. i then let people, like tyler, rob me of the sense of joy i felt when someone finally did take interest in my name. as a result, i shrugged off a crucial part of me. i never really understood the significance of my name. actually, it is more like i never comprehended how it was significant to me. the meaning of haruki was always just the definition of the characters, and it never registered to me how my name interconnected with my identity. however, my name does not simply mean “spring joy.” it represents me and the joy that i bring, the joy i bring to my mother, and the joy i’ve brought to yuka. my given name is haruki fujihara. for the sake of myself, i should have always embraced that. 217217 i hope i work with her today. i hope she brings booze. a couple of shooters should do it. enough to get drunk but not too much or else i won’t be able to drive home. my highs don’t last as long as they used to. i need another person working in the kitchen so i can have a few smoke breaks. two cigarettes left. i’ll only smoke half of one and save the other half for later. shit. no one’s working the specialty board today. i’m on my own. orders pile up. i hate those coupons. ten sandwiches. drop fries. twenty sandwiches. cook patties and chop onions. thirty sandwiches. do the dishes, scrub the floors, clean the hoods. forty sandwiches. grab the wrappers, toast buns, change gloves, salt fries, sanitize the board, refill ketchup, take out the trash. come back in. fifty sandwiches. i need a cigarette. a drink. to get high. i need to get through this shift. call me a degenerate, an addict, a cog in america’s obese machine. one of many. it’s fast food. we’re greasy, missing teeth, come in all shapes and sizes, and covered in scum. maybe we are scum. scum feeding each other scum. thousand-calorie burgers cooked, built, and served by the lowest of the low. pedophiles, abusers, drug dealers. the worst kind of people. but few of them last. fast food isn’t for the weak. but it doesn’t weed out all the cowards. i should know. no time for self-reflection in this environment. watch the screen. watch coworkers come and go. finish the never-ending list. don’t cry when they complain—the manager or the customers. if it gets too hard, smoke or drink something. it always gets too hard. accept your role as scum and buy a pack of winston blacks. light cigarettes are for the weak. don’t worry about the wheezing, the insurance here won’t cover it anyway. i get depressed looking at the schedule. i stopped recognizing the names. all my friends disappeared. maybe that’s why i don’t get attached anymore when i train new employees. they won’t last more than a few months at most. how did i do it for thirteen? i could say the vices helped. but vice is an imagined crutch by someone too weak to handle their reality. i’m too weak. maybe all the people who left were too weak. i miss them anyway. even those that the drugs made me forget. they aren’t all bad. the people, i mean. my favorite manager’s little brother, fresh out of prison, might’ve been my favorite. he had a bad past with drugs. prescription. he came out sober though, besides weed and beer, and promised to keep it that way. i judged him before he hayden garris scum 218 came because of what i’d heard, and the ankle monitor he wore. he lifted a metal tray above my head and i flinched. i apologized and he said, “it’s alright, bub.” he always called me bub. i’d been wrong about him. he had a good heart. he inspired me. he was a doer. not someone with all sorts of plans and ideas, but a guy who gets things done. when he saw a tree in the road, he got out, before i could put the car in park, to move it. once our path had been cleared, he kept going. he wanted to clear the way for oncoming traffic too. i hope he goes far. but few in fast food do. i liked that kid who always slid across the greasy floors like an ice dancer. the one who sang along to santeria with me in the back while we made sandwiches. whenever i came in, he clapped me on the back and his face lit up. we had chemistry in the kitchen like no one else. we understood each other. but he left before i had the chance to say goodbye. he worked two jobs, and fast food didn’t pay enough. i miss the girl i fell in love with. who snuck back from the front to bother me while i was still learning the ropes. i made dumb jokes, trying to make her laugh. she had a smile i couldn’t get enough of. we snuck off to the freezer to kiss. when we got back, others laughed because they knew. we rescued each other from bad relationships. but when she left, she couldn’t save me from myself. from losing fifty pounds living on cigarettes and red bull. or gaining it all back and then some when i started getting drunk every shift. i embraced the lifestyle at a certain point. but i didn’t always turn to vice. i want to blame my first night shift manager. the one who snorted meth in the kitchen closet. the one who offered me a bump, telling me it would get me through the night. the one who supplied my first cigarette, and the hundreds after. the one who asked and received naked pictures from my first girlfriend there. the one who slept with the coked-up girl working at the gas station while i ran the store alone. i don’t hate him. he introduced me to more than the vices that fast food runs on. he introduced me to scum. scum uses scum. he used my car to meet his mom so they could plan to beat and rob someone for meth money. he used my money to buy a case of beer so he could get drunk before his girlfriend and her son came home. he used, yelled, and threatened to kill. but he called me his little brother. i can’t explain it, but a bond makes you ignore the scum right in front of you. he was scum and i loved him. scum isn’t all bad. maybe it calls you bub, sings santeria with you, or rescues you from a bad relationship. or maybe it calls you its little brother as it lights your first cigarette for you. maybe, on some level, we’re all a type of scum. 219 title of piece i took this job as a stepping stone. i needed the experience. back then, my hairline didn’t recede, i weighed a healthy amount, and i didn’t drink or smoke. i wore a button-up and black slacks with a belt to the job interview. i even printed out my resume for the meeting. the gm laughed when i handed her the paper. “i just want you to know, fast food workers are the scum on the bottom of people’s feet,” she said. i laughed the comment off and took the job. but i’m done laughing now. 221221 i cannot be held accountable for the situations i find myself in when tempted, for i am prone to dissociating, susceptible to sympathy, and plagued with intent. the rabbit’s head was flattened, only its ears intact, still erect. brain matter framed its head like a halo, seeped into tar where it was hit, smeared to a halt. it was only a short burst of red, not enough to be alarming. enough to spare. it came home with me, the rabbit. peeling it from the asphalt proved difficult, but i persevered. unfortunately, the skull was not salvageable. fortunately, i had a supplement. my workspace is pristine. a bit too dark for my preferences, but a lamp suffices. shadows lick and whisper against the wall as i work, peering over my shoulders as i operate on the being. i often have to bat them away. their breathing distracts me, but they refuse to leave, and who am i to dictate over them? just a man, or something eerily similar to it. whomever committed the heinous crime, admittedly, has impeccable aim. they had managed only to ram into the head, leaving much potential leftover. with the body intact, i only must peel the skin from the ruins. pick the bone shards from matted fur. the smell is quite wretched, but after much practice, i am able to distract my senses. reattaching a new skull to the spine is the easiest part, but having a head to press my lips to is the most exciting. with a mouth to breathe life into, i am capable of anything. should this… ability have been bestowed on another, less ethical individual, one could raise an army of the dead. one could kill and revive and kill again; the most cruel form of torture. to be the first and last face a person sees. to be their savior and their demise. the rabbit breathes without assistance. a furry body and an ivory head. it will join the rest of them; the menagerie of half-beings. mostly animals. i say “mostly” because i value honesty and integrity. i will not lie to you, i will not evade. they live here, inside this home and in the wilderness surrounding us, with me. me and the shadows. i do not surround myself with humans. i also value my own time, and i do not have predilections towards wasting it. evan allee the intricacies and eccentricities of loving a necromancer 222 every once in a blue moon, my supplies will dwindle. there are only so many skeletons for one to find, though i do search ardently. for every decomposed animal i find, there are five currently dying. i am only one person, i am only one man. i cannot save them all. i do not have the means to do so. i did endeavor. once. to revive an incomplete being out of anguish. i learned from this botched attempt that if the being dies with their bones intact, they must be brought back with them. poachers are my worst foe. to kill an innocent one to steal their autonomy for one’s own pleasure i find vile. but i digress. back when i was a boy, in the woods i found a buck horizontal on the leaves, its eyes glazed over, unblinking. the murderer had butchered it there; taken from it the parts they could eat. the antlers, only serrated stumps by an amateur wielder. skinned and left to freeze in the winter chill. it did not fight when i touched its wound; a single bullet hole in the temple. there, i kissed it. blew into the cavity like one would exhale tobacco smoke. it awoke violently, kicking and wailing in pain. a hoof landed a fatal blow to my left eye, squelching in the socket. i was not angry, simply shocked. confused as to where the darkness erupted from. the pain did not register then, but the horror did. the animal ran lopsided, a mutilation of lacerations and tendons. uncoordinated legs, naked, pink flesh, unprotected from the cold. a ribcage on display, the wind slithering through the bones like it would a wind chime. the buck did not sing, however. it screamed until it collapsed again, twitching, then slumped into the snow. every day i learn something new about this ability of mine. i cannot find it in myself to be disconsolate anymore, only intrigued. my research has shown that the body remembers the bones. the structure. it is my responsibility to restore that, however i must. once, i was brought a threelegged dog. it was simply born that way, cast aside by the breeder as defective and taken in by a kind individual. its passing was untimely, so it was brought to me. because the body had never known the feeling of four legs, it did not need a fourth to be revived. over the years, i have been forced to make artistic choices i otherwise would prefer to not. i have learned that parts do not need to match; the importance is that it must be bone. an animal with a crushed skull requires a head. a forcibly 223 title of piece shed buck needs antlers. if i am lucky, i may find some naturally shed, otherwise i am forced to practice creativity. desperate times have often forced my hand. i have strengthened my sleuthing skills over many years of practice. graveyards have provided ample stock, and bone carving has become a hobby out of necessity. i was able to bestow new antlers to the buck that blinded me and, as i screwed its skeletal frame together again, pride imploded within me. my artform is disturbing to many, despite those who pay handsomely for my services. my excursions into town are scarce and brief, but the rumors persist nonetheless. i loathed the idea that i was only a curiosity to the town. a blank canvas to cast aspirations onto. luckily i was sensible in my desires, and did not dilute my focus with want. until he appeared. panting, breathless, staggering from behind the tree that supported his weight. his face brightened with recognition as he mouthed, “help me,” then collapsed at my feet. as mentioned earlier, i cannot be held accountable for the measures i take when tempted, as extemporaneous as they may be. my turmoil was palpable, but i noticed his blood. smelled it. i could not turn my back, let alone the fact that i knew this man. his parents were herbalists, and he had been raised in their family apothecary. one i frequent on my necessary trips into town. i had seen him on occasion, but never concerned myself with toddling through conversation, though he frequently attempted. as one who derives pleasure from isolation, my social adeptness lacked exponentially. my contributions to conversation were nods and half hearted grunts. the half-beings are notoriously curious, flocking to the door to tilt their heads inquisitively. to walk on the stomach of the deceased man while i pulled the door closed. to sniff his clothes, his hair, his bleeding wound. nosing at it and staring at me until i validate their concerns. the shadows are helpful when they choose to be. they shoo the animals. assist me in dragging the man to my workspace, hauling him onto the table. i did not have to operate. he only required a breath to a bullet hole. 224 my name is cursed throughout the city, conglomerated with blasphemy and debauchery and while i do quite enjoy those things, i do not wholeheartedly agree that those words encompass who i am but the man smiled up at me when he awoke. the man did not leave after that. i did not ask him to. the words simply did not exist in my vocabulary. i had never involved myself in scenarios of requesting another to extricate themselves from my life, and the invocation of such emotions tenderness towards another person were unfamiliar and eerie. it made speech all the more difficult. how had such a disposition been quaked by one smile? at first, i asked him to stay for observation. having never revived a human before, my knowledge of recovery was scant. animals spring awake, sprinting, like a child from an afternoon nap, but he woke slowly. unhurried, he wiped his own blood from my upper lip. from our first conversation, he enamored me, and simultaneously unmoored me from the lifestyle i had grown accustomed to. my self-imposed exile had reached an expiration. for a long while, i agonized that he felt somehow indebted to me. never have i indulged myself in the fantasies of romance. i had no desire to, let alone to manipulate a person into false attraction towards me. perhaps it was his unyielding trust as he laid, dying at my feet. i did not know the story of how he had entrapped himself in such a dilemma; shot dead in the wilderness. my cabin was miles from civilization, and i lied perturbed at the narrative that he had sought me out. i have since learned that it was an unfortunate hunting accident, thus furthering my distaste for the sport. he laughs freely. despite my incompetence towards comedy, i have never once felt belittled or secluded, though i do at times catch him and the shadows in gesticulating conversation. he possesses a childlike eagerness to learn, fingering through my books and journals, crowding me in my workspace and hiding grimaces as i breathe life. he once asked me, “must you place your mouth on the gaping wound?” to which i responded, “if i recall correctly, my mouth on your gaping wound did not result in such disgust,” and he cackled, scaring the squirrel from the dead. it clattered about the room as i fought to open the window. with genuine interest, and to my deepest surprise, he requested i enlighten him on my talents. 225 title of piece i learned that he is a painter. at the beginning of his second week, i designed an easel. on my next trip to town, i purchased brushes. he created paints from clay, leaves, berries, and flowers. the house seemed to brighten once he became integral to the foundation. the shadows delight in him, and did not seem perturbed by the lack of shade. i hypothesized that they require more stimulation than i could provide, and he supplies it easily and without reservation. that, or they were constantly bored of my notions. i am a metaphysical man. a man of poetry, and an avid reader. i am a man of many thoughts, but they falter in his presence. i have ample opinion and have no qualms with sharing them loudly and with vehemence, but that was mostly reserved for the shadows, and they are barely sentient. or so i had thought. sharing such intimate details with another person, watching them as they processed and formed their own responses to my words was strange, and i had not expected it required such preparation. simple conversation often left me exhausted, but his devotion to me, of all people, never wavered. desire was no longer sour, it was the berries he crushed for paint. it was the tea he made every night after supper. it was a hesitant kiss to my unseeing eye. it was fresh baked bread with herbs from his family’s shop. it was native flowers blooming in pinks and yellows. blues and oranges. despair was red. the effects of my abilities revealed themselves with a shout, and a cry of my name in a tone that resembled the one he used as he lay dying. he was kneeling in the garden, our half-skeletal cat limp in his lap. “i kissed it,” he breathed. “i only kissed it and it…” he did not need to finish, he only raised the corpse to my own treacherous mouth, his eyes frantic and confused. i cannot speculate my expression was an image of anything different, though our reasonings were, drastically. the cat did not wake. despite my uneducated state of comforting another person, i attempted archly. it did not last long because to my surprise, he, with vehemence, apologized to me for the death of the cat. 226 his concerns for my well being floored me. i recollect a soft hand on my chin, manually shutting my mouth as my jaw had unhinged in shock. he dejectedly, not for his own sake, but mine, resigned himself to the wilderness for hours at a time, foraging for mushrooms and miscellaneous bones, transplanting what he had found miles out into my own yard. he mixed new paints and surprised me with a mourning portrait of the deceased animal; our unforeseen collaboration. his niceties were suffocating. his loquacious tendencies, despite the recent events, persisted. his forgiveness and hankering to spoil me with small gifts was undeserved. guilt was foreign and grotesque; a miasma of filth polluting the air of our home, darkening the space he brightened so effortlessly. a fortnight after the death of the half-being, i confidently deduced that my abilities catered to humans as well, with harrowing caveats. i had begun preparing for his absence. for the chasm it would create in my soul. i wondered if another shadow would spore from my melancholy. i had spoken to the shadows in whispers and apologies. i had even folded his easel and tinkered a case for his paints, but he did not gather belongings when i requested his dreaded departure. he appeared crestfallen, but left. he reappeared a few short hours later, bearing gifts of bones. saying he found them in a clearing, and the sun was shining over them; a beacon. saying he will leave if that is my true desire, but if the difference is to be made, his choice is to stay. i opened the door. “i cannot allow you to kiss me,” he stressed. “i cannot bear the thought. i will not take the chance.” our lives intertwined quickly, vining around one another like the ivy after winter frost. over time, it brought to the surface my outdated fears; that he stayed out of misguided obligation, not a genuine love for me, as i had for him. the urge to conclude our relationship for his own health nagged me; a worm digging its way through the core of an apple. instead of allowing it to consume me, i asked him why he chose to stay. he had stared at me in disbelief for an uncomfortable minute, before his omnipresent smile returned. “you truly do not believe my affections?” to which i argued, “i do, of course.” 227 title of piece “you entered the apothecary, skulking. it was quite endearing. rumors of you flitted about the town, but i am a stubborn man, as you’ve come to know,” he said, leaning back on his palms, the grass cushioning him. “do you recall my attempts at courting?” “courting?” i balked. “me?” he laughed. “do you know how difficult it is to find echinacea year-round? i either procured from growers out of county, or bought out another shop’s inventory of it. you did not think that to be odd? only one business in town having the ingredients for your favorite teas?” i flushed. he sighed fondly, shaking his head. “and all it took was a painful death to covet your attention. you do love to make me work for it.” i need not ask again. our intimacy did not lack because of the absence of corporeal closeness. my inexperience and disinterest in the physicality of partnerships did not deter him. he expressed many times that it put him at ease; knowing i was not dissatisfied. i was quite the opposite, in fact. when my anxieties gripped my bronchial tract and squeezed, he loosened the fist with a warm fire and tea, or a passage from the book he read, or sometimes a kiss to my left eye as we danced in the center of the room, my ear to his heartbeat. the one beating because of me, he so often loved to remind me. he often pressed my hand over it, telling me to listen, listen. i cannot be held accountable for the decisions i make when desperate, even when i am uncertain of the outcome when the decision is made. on the last day of his life, i prepare for a kiss. his hair is now grey. the hand that hovers over mine, tracing the bulging veins, is unsteady. the heart inside of him stutters, his breaths labor. his form is sunken; skin, papery. i am aware of my own reflection, but i do not concern myself with the vastness of aging. it is simply too large for me. my love for him is greater. visceral. since the day i met him, i feared the inevitable day i would lose him. the longevity of our lives i am immensely grateful for, but the life we have grown is naught without him to plant seeds with. 228 our love is perennial, that i know. i was once a man who did not waste time with wanting. because of him, i am now a man who values dreaming, and the importance of living. i can only yearn to reunite, whether it is in this life, or our next. 124 daylen byrd 7” x 5” chalk pastel anointed 6868 in the gales i see my fate, drifting effortlessly alongside me as she always has. i am tiny and helpless compared to her, compared to her compelling forces that guide me from place to place. but in the end i see no flaws with her logic. if she wants me here, flying above acres and acres of rolling fields and bustling human towns, then here i will stay. here i will thrive. i have seen my brothers and sisters, under guidance of the breeze, submit and fall to the ground below. they land on sharp blades of grass and glide down to the moist dirt, and the wind does not pull them back up. they remain there as tiny particles of white fuzz and a singular seed, but they call up to me as i continue to fly. “do not worry!” they beckon. “we will be just fine on this ground! we will bloom into bountiful bouquets; we will turn these dull and lifeless fields into galleries of wonder! our yellow petals will paint the earth in sunlight, and we will shine as we were always meant to! so go on—do not fret, and land on the ground when you no longer fear the stability beneath you!” they tell me not to fear. i fear anyway. the wind never lets me touch the ground. they let me see my siblings drift off, let me see them bloom into tiny dandelion flowers that dance and twirl in performances on the ground. but they never let me join. in truth, i am grateful for the winds that carry me high above the ground. those muddy puddles and dusted heaps of soil will remain a mystery. but what a bliss it is to live in mystery. i am blessed to only know the wind, to only know endless change and distance from the world. permanence cannot grasp me; i am free from it all, and i will be forever. i will always be changing, moving, leaping, flying. the ground will never rise to meet me, and i will never fall to its will. never, never, never, never… and then the gales guided me to the earth. even when i pleaded to them, begged them to not let me be swallowed up by the darkness of soil and the shivers of rain, they persisted. i touched the ground softly and watched the gales fly without me. there is nothing beyond the looming grass above me. there is nothing hidden in the shadows of greenery. there is nothing above me, hiding in the dark rain clouds. there is nothing here, nothing but stillness. there was no point in trying to stop the ground from consuming me. the wind mack nigh in the gales i see my fate 69 would not change my fate. i could not be lifted into the sunny skies anymore. the rain has already weighed me down. there was no viable choice but to submit to the ground beneath me, and though it was dark and cold and unknown, i let myself go to it and fall under earth’s fine crust. it wasn’t so cold after that. there was darkness, yes, but there was warmth too. i could feel the ground warming under the sun’s rays. i could feel the rain lifting off and evaporate into the clouds. i could distantly see the roots of grass stretch out to dig into the earth further, i could hear the birds and bugs that they were so blessed to see. and at that moment, in those days, in those eons of nothing but warmth and curiosity, i wanted to see and hear the world around me too. roots grew underneath me with quick instinct. they were feeble and stringy, but for now they could hold me. they could give me the courage i needed to lift from the ground. i was more than a soft seed now. when i lifted from the ground, i felt larger. different. made of sturdy walls of cellulose that left me flimsy but strong. the grass over my head was no longer looming, but welcoming. peaks of sunlight poked through, and i felt those powerful rays bless me with nourishment and love. i was loved here, somehow. i was loved by the grass. i was loved by the bugs. i was loved by the sun. i was even loved by the earth, whom i was so cautious of before. i was loved by them all, wasn’t i? more than anything, i wanted to love them back. i wanted to spread my roots through the ground, i wanted to grow my own leaves, i wanted to reach above and touch the heavens as i once had, but i wanted to bring them all with me. i grew so quickly i could barely recognize what my body had once felt like. now i was a tangle of scattered leaves, protruding stems, mixed and mangled roots around the earth i once dreaded. now i was amongst my new kin. i was one of them: a singular plant among a garden of affection. the fear i felt in the skies was gone, and there was nothing in my heart but curiosity and the brightest love. so, this is what the ground was like. my first flower bloomed unexpectedly. the blades of grass teased me for it, how i, once so fleeting and frightful, had grown so quickly around my new friends, and became so boisterous and confident that i bloomed a flower in this ground. but what a pretty flower it was, the one i grew. and what a treasured earth i fell on that i felt safe enough to bloom a flower. soon i grew more flowers, and soon new bugs flew over from the heavens to land on my soft petals. a bumblebee with heaps of pollen on her legs gazed at my petals. she rested her weary body on my body and spoke of distant gardens. 70 “is the wind still kind?” i ask her. she chuckles on my stem. “even when you’re in the ground, with your roots tangled in the dark crust, you still think of the sky?” “it is quite hard not to. all the wind has done has led me here.” “and… do you miss it?” she asks, rubbing her pollen off her legs in idle thought. “i think of the wind every day,” i answer, “but i do not miss it.” she spoke of how the wind carried her and her sisters across meadows and gardens, some of which held my brothers and sisters. she carried the messages of flowers abroad and migrating butterflies in the sky. and she corrected me on one thing, only one, before leaving. “the wind is not kind,” she claims. “that is not to say it is cruel, but rather to say it holds no regard for you. you just like to think the wind was kind because you have spent so long in it, drifting from place to place, event to event, with no rest in between. but now you are here, in the earth that holds you tight, with the grass that cheers you up, with the sun that wakes you every morning.” “but if the wind is not kind,” i ask her, “why do i still think it is?” the bee hums and shakes her wings against her body. “nostalgia keeps us locked like that. you’re no different than any of us.” days pass, and more creatures and insects gather around me with their wisdom. the birds tell me of the nests they are building and the children they are preparing for. insects hide in my petals and bless me for my coverage against their prey. and the blades of grass, who had been watching me grow from a frightened seed into the sunshine of their garden, are always laughing and watching the nights fade into the horizon with me. and the earth holds us all. though it is as indifferent as the wind, it holds us in our joys and comforts us in our sorrow. i do not remember why i was so afraid of this. the end of summer approaches, and my petals shed slowly and meet the ground beneath me. i’m wilting. i’m dying. but it feels good to die here, surrounded by the ones i love. they will take care of me and hold me during my passing. 71 title of piece i have children by the time of my death. they’re still growing on me, just reaching the end of their development, when i suddenly feel the last slips of my energy begin to fade. i know what will happen to them, but they are still so young and pure. i do not have the heart to tell them how the wind will tear them from me, will tear them from each other, will frighten some of them and overwhelm the others with joy. i cannot tell them about the ground they will soon find and the creatures they will meet. i will not try to predict which ones will be happy to find stability, and which ones will be so used to the wind that, the second they land on safe ground, they will panic and shriek and plead to not be left there. but this message, this one final call, is one i will whisper to everyone still near me. i love you. i, who was once so foolish and afraid, love you, the secureness in my life, with such intensity that i could not imagine my life without this love. i love you, dear blades of grass, whom i have bonded with and aided in our times of droughts and floods. i love you, insects from above, who gifted me with the pollen i needed to create my beautiful children. and i love you, earth beneath me, the being i did not know i needed. i love you endlessly. my children, who now fly away in the wind upon my dying breath, know forever that i love you. 112112 i went to fabbro’s steakhouse for dinner because big decisions are best chewed on with a fifty-dollar sirloin. the two-story, red brick building sat on the corner of high and tenth street. high street ran south, decorated with a long line of dazzling skyscrapers and luxury apartment buildings where bankers kept their mistresses. tenth ran perpendicular, its ends leading into crummy neighborhoods where dogs barked all night and mortality rates soared. on the drive over, i took high street. i envied the success of those men leading double lives, armed in armani suits, and driving maseratis and porches. they’d cracked the code my twenty-four-year-old brain still struggled with. i parked my rattling rust bucket next to a pickup truck caked in mud. on the way out of the garage, i spotted a few nicer vehicles. fabbro’s took all shapes and sizes. old money, new money, and working class families with shoebox cash saved for a special occasion. i still wore my work clothes, cheap blue slacks and a white dress shirt from macy’s. i needed to upgrade my wardrobe. phoenix has designer outlets, right? god, phoenix. the wild west. a full day of driving from indianapolis. insignificant compared to the countless days spent working toward success. i imagined the gritty taste of red sand, washed down every night with a bottle of 1975 cognac. an oasis of opportunity waiting for me out there in the middle of the desert. no, i’d wait to weigh the options once i had a table. the sooner the better. friday nights were busy, so i half sprinted down the sidewalk. the sun had descended beneath the concrete wall of buildings, casting dark, rectangular shadows across the street. golden light, shaped by white trim, glowed from the windows at fabbro’s. no line at the front door. my lucky day. a jingle of metal caught my attention as i crossed the alley separating fabbro’s from the parking garage. the space between them was pitch black. i searched for the source while quickening my pace, but my shoe caught the next section of sidewalk. when i pulled back my foot, the ground came with it. i braced for impact. maybe it wasn’t my lucky day. “woah! i gotcha, i gotcha now,” said a raspy voice. a firm hand held onto my shoulder and pulled me up, away from the concrete. i stumbled before regaining my footing. my hero emerged from the darkness. caramel colored eyes studied me from beneath a black stocking cap. he wore at least three fraying jackets and a pair of plaid pajama bottoms painted in stains. hayden garris dinner at fabbro’s 113 his matted beard had started graying at the ends. when he smiled, cracks on his lips split open. “close one, mr. taylor,” he said. “hank, right?” i asked. i should’ve known. in my defense, i hadn’t been to fabbro’s in a few weeks. hank always stood outside, begging for money with a best dad ever coffee mug. the last time i’d gone to fabbro’s, i had one too many martinis. outside, i almost stumbled into the street. hank caught me and offered to help. we talked a little, from what i could remember, as he escorted me to the parking garage. i slept in my car that night and the next morning i woke up with the worst hangover. “yes, sir.” hank nodded. “we have to stop meeting like this.” “yes, we do. how are you, by the way?” i asked. he shrugged, glancing up and down the sidewalk. “they come and they go. you know how it is, mr. taylor. some days things are alright. other days, not so much. but i’m blessed. i’m blessed every day. how about you? how is everything with your lady friend?” leave it to drunk me to blab about all my problems. i ran a hand through my hair. “well things are… they’re not anymore.” hank frowned. “what do you mean?” “something came up and i’m thinking it might be best to move on,” i said. down the street, a laughing couple entered fabbro’s. more would show up soon. “listen, i have to get going or else the good tables will all fill up.” “of course. i know you’re a busy man. but say, you mind contributing?” he held up a chipped mug half full of coins and a few dollar bills. i grabbed my wallet and checked for any cash. nothing. i sighed and shoved it back into my pocket. “i only have my card.” i felt bad. hank had helped me not once but twice now and i had nothing to give him in return. i doubted drunk me gave him anything either. in a world of transactions, hank deserved something. “it’s okay, mr. taylor. you go on in and get you a nice seat before they fill up. stay blessed. alright?” he began retreating back into the shadows. i pinched the bridge of my nose. 114 “wait,” i said. he stopped retreating and raised his eyebrows. “yes, sir?” “you hungry?” he argued at first. i think he felt out of place being offered to join me for dinner. i understood. mixing with higher classes can be intimidating and hank sat at the bottom rung. but i didn’t offer just so i could pay him back, i admitted. big decisions are best made with a second opinion. our lack of proximity made hank the perfect candidate. no bias. no stake. that’s what finally sold him. always eager to help. inside, i drank in the view. rows of tables dressed in white cloth sat all types: bargaining businessmen, bickering families, and bantering couples. servers in stainless black uniforms danced around each other on polished wood floors, balancing trays of steaming food and sweating bottles of wine. in the back, behind the bar and through the swinging steel doors, chef alphonse fabbro waved his knife like a wand and created magic. aromas of butter, garlic, and rosemary made my stomach groan. unlike me, hank seemed unimpressed by the spectacle. smile lines fought against the frown tugging at his face and his eyes narrowed. i’d expected him to gasp. or show some level of appreciation. all that time spent outside, begging for his next meal, you’d think being on the inside for once would at least lighten his mood. “i shouldn’t be in here,” he muttered. before i could respond, the host came to greet us. she gave hank a once over but said nothing. then she grabbed two menus and asked us to follow her. people stared at hank. one lady clutched her purse. we were given a table in a dark corner behind the restrooms. i should’ve argued for somewhere better but i held my tongue. i didn’t want to cause any problems. once we were seated, hank set his mug on the table and studied his menu. i already knew my order. a nine ounce sirloin steak with asparagus and a baked potato on the side. hank took his outermost jacket off and slumped back in his chair. those caramel eyes stared out the window, onto tenth street and beyond. “have you decided?” i asked. he nodded without looking at me. “so what will it be?” “soup of the day,” he said. his clipped words lacked their usual, passionate 115 title of piece rasp. maybe i’d made a mistake convincing him to join me. a young server approached our table. her black hair shimmered beneath the dim golden lights hanging above us. she stood close to six feet tall and her forearms were taut with muscle. “good evening, gentlemen.” “good evening,” i said. hank nodded without making eye contact. the woman smiled at us and gestured to the menus with a calloused hand. “i’m janelle and i’ll be your server tonight. can i start you two with something to drink? we have a great selection of wines and spirits. our tap options are on the back,” she explained. “water, please,” i said. “water,” hank said. “alright, i’ll be right back with those.” after she left, hank turned to me. “so, what’s this decision of yours?” “well, the consulting job i work at is offering me a transfer,” i said. “out in arizona, of all places. it’s actually where their headquarters is based. the job comes with new benefits: a fifteen percent pay increase, more paid time off, a free gym membership, and better insurance. this is all in addition to the benefits i already get.” again, where i expected hank to be impressed, his frown only deepened. “well, mr. taylor, seems like the deal of a lifetime.” “it is. and you don’t have to keep calling me that.” i laughed. although, if i’m being honest, i didn’t mind being called mr. taylor. “truth is, i don’t know your first name.” hank shrugged. “the night you came out stumbling, you told me to call you mr. taylor and nothing else.” “oh.” the more i learned about drunk me, the less i liked him. he sounded pretentious. “listen, i’m sorry about all that. i don’t usually drink that much and i probably wasn’t in a good state of mind. just call me owen. alright?” “sure, and you can call me mr. wright. since i’m your elder and all.” hank chuckled. i grinned and shook my head. “okay, mr. wright, what should i do? do i keep 116 working in indianapolis or do i take my dream job in phoenix?” “seems like you’ve already made up your mind,” hank said. janelle returned with our drinks. hank shifted back toward the window and crossed his arms. the source of his discomfort must’ve been the staff at fabbro’s. i couldn’t understand why, though. fabbro’s steakhouse only hired the best. hard working, professional, and attractive. janelle fit the description to a tee. “have you gentlemen had a moment to look over the menu?” she asked. “yes, i’ll do the nine ounce sirloin—medium rare—with asparagus and a baked potato,” i said. janelle nodded and turned to hank. “and you, sir?” “soup of the day,” he muttered. “okay, and any starters while that cooks?” she asked. “no thank you.” i smiled and handed her our menus. “alright, i’ll have that right out.” i liked her eyes. amber but lighter. almost the color of hank’s. “are you okay?” i asked. he shrugged. “can’t complain.” i hoped the meal would lighten his mood. a belly full of good food can work wonders for anyone. i took a sip of water. two degrees shy of freezing. water would be different in the desert. more refreshing. “so, you think i should take it?” i asked. hank scratched his beard. flakes of dead skin showered his lap. “if you want. seems like it’ll make you happy.” i glanced around. the table next to us sat two men clad in pinstripe suits. one had a receding head of snow white hair. frown lines deepened as his associate, a blonde man closer to my age, spoke in an excited whisper. i picked up something about a retiring executive and a new position opening up. bankers, if i had to guess. a cutthroat industry since 2008. i almost went that route but jobs were scarce. third-party consulting has more opportunity, although with greater risk. 117 title of piece i liked my job, but sometimes i wondered. would things be different if i was that young kid, sitting across from a skilled veteran who weathered the housing crisis? a man of prestige, worthy of respect. i looked back at hank. “i think you’re right. it’s the best option for me.” “i never said that,” hank replied. “well wouldn’t you agree?” i asked. “depends.” “on?” “what are you leaving behind? you want the job and all it comes with. a blessing, sure. but what about your life here? don’t you have family here?” he asked. “they live in fort wayne. i can call anytime and with the money i’ll be making i can fly back whenever i want,” i said. hank turned to me and set his hands on the table. his eyes sparkled in the golden light. “what about your lady friend?” the eye contact made me nervous, but i can’t say why. “what about her?” “that’s the question, isn’t it?” a laugh lodged in my throat. i took another sip of water. three degrees shy of freezing. “i told you i’m not… i’m not settling. i want her to be happy, but don’t i deserve happiness too? if i stay, she’s just going to hold me back.” “from?” he asked. “phoenix. opportunity. the next level.” i forced a smile. “you understand.” hank smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “oh yes, i understand. that’s why you picked me, isn’t it? because i have an unbiased opinion.” “exactly. everyone i’m close to here would see things differently,” i said. “probably out of selfishness, right, mr. taylor?” his smile bothered me. it seemed fake, mocking almost. “yes. owen, by 118 the way.” “i’ll stick with mr. taylor.” he waved a hand. “now, if you want an unselfish opinion, i’ll give you one. okay?” “okay.” i wished i were back at home. then i could finish reading the essays of warren buffet. the wise words of a modest billionaire always made me feel better. hank leaned back in his chair. “i knew mr. fabbro’s partner back in the day. not alphonse but his daddy, emil.” “i didn’t know emil had a partner,” i said. aside from the plaque near the front door commemorating his death, i barely knew anything about emil. but i did know he’d opened fabbro’s in the late seventies. he’d intended it to be a pizza place, but the vision shifted after they met a crowded market. “he did. a young, penniless man with a community college business degree. he had big plans for fabbro’s. once pizza failed, he helped emil turn it into a steakhouse. not just any steakhouse either. one with class. one where all types were welcome,” hank explained. my ears perked up. “really?” he nodded. “yes sir, mr. taylor. but the boy didn’t stop there. in 1996 he sold his share and invested in a few other startups. within a few years he had millions to his name and owned equity in over thirty different companies.” “wow.” rags-to-riches stories always motivated me. i almost excused myself to call my boss and accept the transfer right then. but hank hadn’t finished. “he had cars, tailor made suits, and a penthouse in new york for business trips. as his wealth increased, so did his appetite. he began cheating. cheating on his wife, taxes, and even his own companies. he worked twelve hour days, using cocaine to keep up. the boy kept reaching for more and more and more. when the housing crisis hit, his companies felt the ripple. half went bankrupt. a renewed sense of justice sent agencies hunting for crooks like him. they found him out and after a long legal battle they sent him away for four years and took every last penny. no one visited. he’d burned every bridge and his crimes impacted thousands.” i’d heard similar stories. rags-to-riches-to-rags. i never understood people like that. “listen, hank, i see what you’re getting at. don’t get greedy, right? don’t fall into certain traps. i’m not stupid, though. i understand—” 119 title of piece “you think the boy was stupid?” hank raised an eyebrow. “you think he was born corrupt? made decisions without thinking them over? people like him aren’t greedy because greed is an idea. he’ll never be the greediest. but a little greed is justified. a little cocaine is justified. why? because the next guy is always doing more. three grams of powder ain’t nothing when jeff over there is doing six.” “yeah, but don’t some people have good intentions? like taking care of their loved ones? setting them up for the future?” i asked. this conversation had started irritating me. of course someone like hank hated capitalism. i couldn’t stand people like him. always blaming the system for their problems. he shook his head. “you think it all came from a place of selfishness? he worked eighty hours a week to put himself through business school. why? because he grew up in a rundown trailer park with seven other siblings and a mom who struggled feeding them. but they didn’t want his money, so he gave it to his wife and daughter. daddy became nothing but a checkbook. they knew about his faults too. so every time he visited home he had to buy back their love. but the love ran out before the money did, and no amount of zeros can make you a good person.” “very moving,” i muttered. i needed a drink. maybe two. hank turned back to the window and our food arrived a minute later. neither of us said anything while we ate. i’d heard enough. taking him to dinner had been a mistake. clearly hank had a problem with success. if i were in his shoes, i’d probably feel the same way. begging every day outside a restaurant whose cheapest option, the soup of the day, costed twenty-two dollars. at least i’d paid back my debt. “so what happened to the wife and mother?” i asked. we’d finished our meals and i couldn’t handle the continued silence. the two men at the table next to us had left, leaving a half empty bottle of seventy dollar wine. i wondered if the busboys would hold onto the bottle and drink it after their shift for a taste of the good life. hank stared out the window, his caramel eyes following the dying flow of traffic. “when the boy got out, he went back to them and tried to start over. they divorced before he got locked up. but they made things work for a while. until he fell back into old habits. his ex-wife kicked him out for good when she found a bag of coke hidden under their daughter’s mattress.” “so he never changed?” why didn’t that surprise me? hank faced me. his eyes were wet. “he wanted to. he really did. he tried to 120 be the person they needed, but he couldn’t. he wouldn’t. so, in the end, he decided it best to stay away.” janelle came with the check before i could respond. she set the black check booklet on the table and rested her hand on top. “how did you enjoy everything this evening?” “very good, thank you, janelle,” i said. hank reached out and held his hand above hers, his palm hovering just millimeters from her skin. so close, but never touching. their eyes met. “i’m proud of you.” janelle’s plastered smile faltered. “do i know you?” hank wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve. “no. i just thought it was important for you to hear that. stay blessed young lady, and keep working hard. i’m proud of you.” “thank-thank you.” she swiped away her hand from beneath his and walked off. hank watched her until she disappeared into the kitchen. in similar lighting, their eyes really were the same color. “you do know her.” he nodded. “is she your—” “not anymore,” he said. hank put his outermost jacket back on, reached into the pocket, and extracted a thick wad of money. he set the roll of cash on the table. all one hundred dollar bills. at least a couple thousand dollars if i had to guess. “should cover the meal and tip. good evening, mr. taylor. stay blessed.” he grabbed his mug, got up, and left me to chew on everything that had transpired. how did i not see it? the eyes, the heartbreak in his story, and his fear of crossing the boundaries of his own exile. shame washed over me. the shame of my ignorance accompanied by the shame of my envy. how could i have been so heartless? i got up and bolted out of the restaurant. people stared. a few clutched their purses. but i didn’t care. outside, i looked for mr. wright. the sidewalks were 121 title of piece empty. i ran a hand through my hair. it doesn’t matter, you have somewhere else to be. i sped the whole way there. as fast as my old car would allow. i might’ve even run a red light or two. luckily, the cops stayed away from tenth street. as i entered a rough neighborhood, the sound of barking dogs greeted me. the sun had long gone down. i made sure my doors were locked as i crept past street signs, looking for the right one. once i saw the sign for prosperity court, i turned. the house sat halfway in. white siding had yellowed with age. in the driveway, i recognized a familiar, beat up red minivan. she still hadn’t replaced the back left tire. i shook my head as i parked behind it. the porch light was on but the windows were dark. i got out and advanced toward the steps. tangled wind chimes clamored together in the evening breeze. i opened the screen door and knocked. no answer. i knocked again. a light inside flicked on and a moment later the rusted lock turned. the front door creaked open, revealing an old woman in a bonnet and a nightgown. an unlit cigarette hung from her lips. she squinted up at me. “owen? what the hell you doing here this late?” she asked. “is lilian home? i need to speak to her,” i said. “i’ll go get her.” she rolled her eyes and padded back into the house, leaving the door cracked. a moment later i saw a familiar figure approach the opening. red and yellow flowers covered her pajamas. her pregnant belly stretched the fabric, tugging at the face of a yellow lily. her steps were labored and she walked with a hand on her back. tangled blonde hair framed her round face. red and puffy bags sagged beneath her wide, emerald eyes. she stopped a few steps short of the doorway and frowned. “what are you doing here, owen?” she asked. “i got offered a job in phoenix,” i said. lilian shook her head. “good for you. but what do you want? you said you couldn’t do this anymore, remember?” “i know.” i looked at the ground. “but i… i want to stay. i want to be here for you and take care of you. if you’ll let me.” the door creaked. i closed my eyes, expecting to hear it slam shut. then, cold 122 fingers touched my chin. i opened my eyes as lilian tilted my head down to her level. her eyebrows were raised but the frown remained. “why?” “because i don’t want to lose what we could have. i want to be better for you.” “prove it,” she said. then she stepped back inside and slammed the door shut. “yes, ma’am.” i smiled. “even if i have to beg.” 8 do you still roll up your skinny jeans into wobbly capris and trundle down the hill on the rickety stairs your dad built in the 90s? do you still cling to the tree trunks as you go? and when you get down there, crouching on the rocks by the cloudy water do you press your palm to the gravel beneath the stream? do you still wade in to your knees and back out to the u-shaped shore? do you leave footprints? do you dig up garter snakes? do you get leeches and laugh secrets into discarded diet coke cans? is anyone beside you to hear them? do you stuff your pockets with sparkly rocks your mom won’t begrudge past the porch? and if we went back—i’ll be home this summer—do you think we could strap on our crocs and whittle away the afternoon pretending to be something more than ourselves? i’ll call you as i ring the doorbell, like always, just to hear your sock feet thump to the threshold on the other side. maggie hoppel do you still go down to cicero creek? 197197 sun radiation of romance, center of this hopeless heart. my warmth so dependent on arms outstretching into a flaming embrace. revolving kisses gently blow in solar wind with electric charged strands held in hands and lipstick pressed against golden dome. a collection of your smiles erupt my day, making life bright and sweat glisten. sweet words, sweet promises chase along soft axis of your lips. mercury heart ignited at first, but i always came in second. responses flow in small variables, pass of 88 days before my recognition. even with thin atmosphere– transparency of emotions, pressure keeps me breaking. i named you after a god, but my ideations are helios, and i start to question faith. i ignore irritations to preserve tails made in quickness of our start, pushing lack of shady, dark moons. jaylee chastain hopeless songs to the solar system 198 venus love and beauty– hot and ready, so they say. you may appear bright in my sky, but acid rain laced words burn my skin. despite stings, i’m drawn to your magnetic field of charm, amber hair, heat unleashed. my thinking rotates clockwise as my gaze darts to the brightest star in blanketed, tragic sky, dim orbs peppered lightly. even with your beaming spirit, a telescope still seems needed. earth i seem so convinced that only you can give me life. only you can give something organic, or pure slivered tastes of something real. beauty can bloom, but core cannot uncover if crust of my being is merely being picked at. i’m suffocating on oxygen, but only artificial. the flowers on my skin are just now grown, and with them i make you a bouquet. but you can’t even gift a seed on the day that i was and am. mars storms of dust whir, emotion specks around– water freezing over by red that i ignored. not even olympus mons can compare to cratered communication days you deal. i keep making excuses, defending possible, potential life residing in our future, but you can not look past that thin atmosphere to even attempt to uncover such revelation about my being. delusions of superior– astronaut. 199 title of piece jupiter clouded visionary and rapid rotation of thought. your heart seems so big sometimes, until you are in a red spot. pushing field yet i pull, knowing you are no king to name. i see your faint rings, i have memorized each, though it is too much trouble to know mine. too much time, too much time, you can’t handle the clouds in the sky, nor stars so why do i expect memorization of constellations? you only know little dipper. saturn no intention of big rings, i suppose i knew from the start. i asked and you took six steps back. as a result, i choke on your dust and ice. i can feel you furthering, your flattened tone, sudden rockiness to your core, short-worded conversation– dense talks at surface level, and simple, small-scale visions. i can’t seem to land on a reasonable decision. my jet-streamed conscious falters pole to pole, moons falling to pieces in the weighted gravity of this soul. uranus your cold shoulder, the very same i would lean on. your particles of dust have turned dark, that i no longer have the skill to read you. we finally start to collide, spinning on my side, facing my back towards what used to be warm. your eagerness no longer visible to naked eye. i have to squint, even then you’re drifting off. i didn’t think i would begin to feel blue with you in my system, my love. yet here i stand, a gas of ideal. 200 neptune further from heat, further away from my heart. frequent storms occur, but your voice never had the courage to raise itself up– grab the attention from 7 other planets away. now you will speak of rings to others in system just as you might have done while still with me. only now i can’t hold you back, nor can i grasp on the imagination of the rings you showed to me in the back of my hopeful mind. may i see your face in the stars, becoming someone else’s sun. 191 24” x 36” acrylic on stretched canvas sophia sturgeon weightless 107107 one year on e means, “congrats! you’re not dead yet!” there’s only a few more to live, so live wisely. advocate for the muzzled congregates, degenerates, miscreants; the poor, confused, brainwashed kids. they’ve got their lives ahead of them, contingent behind public-funded doors. if they aren’t dead by 18, maybe they can swing back-alley hormones. maybe they won’t have to, but maybe that’s wishful thinking. maybe the government’s bit carved their smiles all the way to glasgow—and this isn’t mutilation, no. not like that thing they call “top” and “bottom” surgery. that’s where the line or the weapon is drawn. it’s unimportant whether it is held by someone else’s hand or the child’s own. it’s not like the land of the free is too our home. evan allee this land is your land, this land is my your land 30 my lovesick knuckles creak as they clutch you, for fear i may lose you, my voice. you bring soul to my symphony. your flowing ink a river, bringing life to the words that sprout into sycamore groves. i wear the muddied remains of my words down my hand like battle scars. you, my sword and my shield, the warrior cry i will croak until the end. i imagine if they cut me open your gel would be pumping through my bruised, black heart. ashley wilson ode to my pilot g-2 07 pen