This magazine would not be possible without the tireless work of our creative directors, social media team, and all our genre editors. A special shout out to our copy team headed by Olivia Citarella and Charlotte Van Schaack for revamping the copy system and making the whole process a lot smoother. We would also like to thank Lily Lemme, who worked as a design assistant this semester and designed all the graphics for the magazine.
We appreciate all the labor our staff has put into this magazine and acknowledge that without the work of every E-Board member and assistant, this excellent magazine wouldn’t have come to fruition. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We’d also like to thank the different clubs and organizations we’ve partnered with this semester. As always, Creative Writing Club has been a consistent collaborator and, in many ways, AmLit’s life partner. Thank you, Oread Frias, for putting on a fantastic event at Kramer’s this semester and allowing AmLit to co-host. A special thank you to CAS UGC and Black Arts Collective for co-hosting the Open Mic Night with us this semester. Thank you to our prose team for your dedication to organizing the Open Mic. Without you, it would not have been possible. A big thank you to all of our fellow student media organizations who have helped us in navigating being a publication at AU. Huge, enormous thank you to Maura Fox for advising us through this process and always being in our corner.
It is with full hearts that we present our magazine to you this semester. AmLit received a record amount of submissions this semester, with over 160 pieces in our submission drive. Thank you for trusting us with your work. We hope to have made you proud.
This semester’s magazine is truly the fruit of three semesters’ labor. We have found the promised land outside of a time of immense chaos. (Thank the AmLit gods.) This semester we had a motto: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” We would also say: “Let go, let God.” We’d like to note that neither Sydney nor Emma are particularly religious people, but that through AmLit we have rediscovered some semblance of trust in the universe. That is due to two reasons: navigating a maze of trapdoors and booby traps together in the publication of this magazine and battling our demons (the administration).
Many of our conversations this semester would start somewhere at one in the morning (when Emma would text Sydney) only for messages to be responded to at seven in the morning (when Sydney would wake up in a panic, and of course Emma would be asleep by the time Sydney responded.) Sydney is an incredibly lovely and patient woman, and Emma is very grateful for her tolerance. And as much as Sydney has loved working with Emma this past semester, she is also looking forward to going back to being friends and not having to stress each other out about rejected money requests.
In full transparency, I (Sydney) don’t know how AmLit will function without Emma’s dedication, hard work, and general insanity. It’s very rare that you get to work with someone you truly respect as a writer and a person, and I’m lucky enough to not only have the pleasure of learning under Emma as an EIC but also to be allowed to be friends with her outside of an AmLit capacity. AmLit is sad to see you go as EIC, but happy and excited to see what you will do in the future, because I already know it will be great.
As I (Emma) step down, I want to express how much of an honor it has been to serve as EIC these past two semesters. Despite the gray hairs it has given me, through AmLit, I have been graced with the opportunity to meet and explore the work of extremely talented artists and writers. AmLit has also provided me with a stable, uplifting foundation to support and bolster my personal and creative life. I will forever be grateful for that.
I would also like to share the great joy it has been to work with Sydney Hsu. Together, we have fallen into a natural and easy groove. Sydney, I think you may be my professional soulmate. Working with you has made even the hard, complicated stuff easy and fun. I am very honored to call you my friend and I look forward to continuing to grow together. Thank you to everyone that has made my term as special as it was. It has been unforgettable.
The growth of the AmFam and the community that we’ve created and inherited has meant more than words can describe. As EICs before us have worked to give us stable ground to walk on, we continue the mission set out and honor their legacy.
Without further ado, we entrust our magazine into your hands.
We <3 you AmFam!
Emma and Sydney
I tucked my desire into bed but it threw off the sheets, indignant and unlulled. It paced the hallway outside my room, it whined and hissed and scratched at the door until I had no choice but to turn the key and let it in.
I put my desire in a vase with some lilies-of-the-valley, white like snowdrops or underwear, but it drank all the water like a parasitic vine and no matter how many times I refilled the glass, my desire took it all and left none for the flowers.
I put my desire on ice, stuck it in the freezer with the microwave meals, but it glowed and warmed until it melted through the shelf to the fridge. It lit the vegetables and the leftovers on fire and kept going through the floor.
I sang my desire lullabies, I locked it in a dog crate, the roof and I threw it in the pool and I buried it in the backyard, I put it in the garbage disposal and flicked the switch, I put it in the attic next to the Christmas decor, I muffled it with bath towels and drugged it with pills, but my desire crawls back to me every time.
I’ve written my desire into this poem but it won’t stay here. As you read this my desire crawls back out of the words and down my throat, my desire finds me in the driveway and opens the garage, my desire asks the question and I say yes, yes, yes.
Medium Statement: pen ink, Posca pen on paper
Medium Statement: linoleum print on paper
On a cold sheet, I lay with my eyes out of my body. As I rise, a splash of cold water makes breath breathe quickly, becoming, faces facing mine, an embrace that squeezes my lungs (replacing lost wind with thoughts about god and love). a too warm breeze that rolls me down the block, and a million shreds of the floor built out of the deepest green grass. No longer is my soul cautious of future lives or intimidated, resisting touch and laughs or gifts. And though my insides are churning, it is happy, a good feeling I can’t imagine. A foreign substance in my body, lying outstretched and crying, stretching into faith in the change of seasons, from spring into summer unscathed.
I hurt only when I turn my attention to the ground and I see each flower that is bound to the Earth. I admire each and every petal, like gods among mortals, which can never know and will be kissing sheets of stone and leftover scraps of purple flowers. Each one screams about the infinite, confronting doubt, refusing moments and grass, fools who lie.
In protest I...
The words fall out of my hands. At last I rejoice life— I want to die as I lay outstretched, looking out to the stars, beyond the stars I forget why.
I am god. I am the flowers. I am grass. I am love. I am the cold sheets of the universe (I am the stars) falling before my eyes. I am my eyes. I am death. I am beauty. I am grace. I am feeling okay. I am, I am, I am.
Alexis Frorup
Medium Statement: screenprint on paper
Artist’s Statement: The “paper doll” series is meant to subvert the typical white and thin look of vintage paper dolls that you typically see by representing a thicker Black woman with various hairstyles to choose from.
The flicker of a streetlamp alone
Across the road in Baltimore.
Around the way police sirens roar
A man in cuffs, he was not grown.
A gust of wind and trash is blown.
Outside the bar the drunk men snore
The flicker of a streetlamp alone
Across the road in Baltimore.
The garbage men come to their zone.
Seafood sold in a corner store,
A Catholic church is next door.
A cap of a night being sewn.
The flicker of the streetlamp alone.
Behind your eyelids, a hurricane of thought
Uproots trees and floods cities.
The first place that your brain rushes to protect is the library:
The countless volumes containing every joyful memory will be water-stained and dirty, Seeming to soak up anxiety better than knowledge—
They will be destroyed, you know, and yet you cannot stop your feet
From wading through the slush to see the destruction for yourself.
The phone rings.
You are a cardiac arrest patient being shocked every time the cheerful tune blares out of the tiny speakers.
You are an air traffic controller with headphones glued to your ears and lines in your forehead that should belong to someone much older.
You are a grain of sand inside a child’s shoe, A stray piece of hair on the back of a stranger’s shirt, A board game with a missing pair of dice. Still, the hurricane swirls and the storm rages.
The phone rings.
Someone’s pencil two rooms over taps incessantly on a desk.
The fire alarm blares but nobody moves a muscle.
A symphony of coughing and clicking and tapping and scratching blares in your ears
As you sit, bound and weighted, in a pool of rising water.
Nobody else, it seems, minds the music. They were born knowing how to swim.
The phone rings.
A mourning dove calls to his lover on the opposite side of the street.
A water sprinkler jets erratic patterns of mist into someone’s lawn. You want to hop on your bike and glide down the sleepy summer streets of your city, Not a cloud in the sky and not a thought in your mind.
Medium Statement: paper collage
Stop the clock!
Please cease your incessant progress just a moment. There is something I can no longer be without.
I tripped over it in the woods one day one May,
And now it will know me for the rest of my life, Or it fell from the thirtieth story and killed me.
Either way, I have begun to grow antlers and pray Pluto to possibly understand.
Last night I— (half-alive and breathless from tension, I grabbed them by the nephrons and stepped through the night into the universe where we’re the watchmaker and time falls plumb over onto itself)
—I left a word in their head about the roots of the earth in the woods that May.
Medium Statement: ink and digitally added black background Noelle Sommerville
I should have left you on a doorstep somewhere. I should have let someone else be your mother so you could learn to resent her instead. Not because I regret the way my body has become well-worn furniture under your body. Not because I don’t deserve the slammed doors, or side glances from people you bring home, who say I don’t seem that bad and still have to believe you first. I must be humbled to tie this timeless bow. More than a bitten lip for thinking
I’d do better than was done to me. And still I learned well how to leave you out feeling silly in the rain as you try to explain all this wet coming down in your hands. I am sorry for the days I don’t understand the ways you love your body. My own mother would tell me I could be prettier, but I don’t want to become that. Our bodies, daughter and mother, are so entwined that it burns you as I hold the hair dryer too close. Even if we hold the same form, that doesn’t make my thick skin into yours. Won’t filter implicit learning of my worst, when you deserve something more. I have known what it’s like being a daughter and I’ve regretted every minute of it.
You don’t deserve any of it. My daughter, you are the most you can be and some day your most will be a mother whose daughter resents her.
Content Warning: alcohol
Lily Nold
Content Warning: substance abuse/drugs and alcohol
Content Warning: female genital mutilation
Artist Statement: “Jasmine Flower” tells the story of a woman who underwent FGM (female genital mutilation).
The exchange of my worth, my being my bodiedness of a person, transactionalized
I’m a commodity, like a ceramic bowl being sold in the market next to fifty other bowls, stained with floral patterns
I was cut, at the ripe age of eleven the older women in my community spoke wise words over this adolescent vessel
I don’t know this body, it’s been prodded and I’ve not become familiar with it
I’m vacant, they told me my clitoris made me masculine
So they cut
The pain becomes routine, pain a part of schedule
I’m married now; he wears a coarse thick beard of hair, scratching the delicate pores on my cheek
The mud I’m stuck in is dried up, there’s a caste of dirt and sand on the surface
With no choice but to wait in it, I stand in it as if I’m in a still body of water
The kind calm enough to balance in, to cool off from Jua la Kiafrika
I have to keep this body primed
Shunned, I’ll have nothing
Mama told me if I do not go through with this I won’t have a proper burial
Lost like a petal from the jasmine flower separated from the stem
Already dismembered and excluded
They cut me
My mom told me
Not to wash
My hands so much
But she is back home
Up north
And I am standing
At the sink
Watching white
Turn to pink
Momentary relief
A falsehood
That will bleed later.
Staring into the sun from across the counter until my poor set of eyes can’t take it anymore. Doors swing open and customers laugh all while we take their plates and fill their glasses, providing nothing but the best.
Don’t let the phone ring more than once, we’re watching.
Forever people watching, on lazy summer days when school’s out, or on relentless winter nights where we all bundle together to feel each other’s warmth, to feel something.
Forever wishing to be a part of something bigger, forever living through others.
Chivalry is not dead! says one customer (that is) to the other.
Sharing short stories from past lives before our own are commanded back from us.
Towards the cracked pond begotten by a drought because rent is too much and we all seem to have forgotten.
Children chanting “wish! wish! wish!”
I wish to depart from this place and never look back, only forward. To independence.
The restroom? Oh sure, towards the back to the right.
P.S. Don’t pay too much attention to the kitchen, or you’ll regret it.
Sixteen-year-olds and bottles of wine.
Searing plates cradled by calloused fingers.
Worked to the bone like the bone that boils in our soup of the day, forever changing and forever inquired upon when a salad would always be chosen because we love what we know best.
We’ve run out of knives again and the plates, where are the plates?
Babies crying like we’re forever trapped together on a plane headed nowhere, we’ve taken off but the captain decided that we were better off in the air, or maybe we’re stuck on the tarmac that’s been scorched by the sun with no plans of moving anytime soon. What difference does it make? It’s our poorly written script for a film that’ll never find its way to a screen, but it’s all that we’ve been given so we’ll make do.
How was everything? …
Why is the rabbit in the moon? Why plant your seeds where no one knows? I'm tired again. Two nights of four hours of sleep, surprisingly stone sleep, and somehow time still slips like spools in clumps and oodles on the floor. I wish my feet were dangled over lily pads in water where time didn't exist. I would dive straight to the bottom and dovetail into somersaults, watching my hair suspended so pretty underneath the surface. I remember feeling some of the only calm moments of my girlhood underwater. I used to love it so much in that quiet. One time my mom came running into the bathroom, screaming at my tummy-down torso floating in the bath, thinking I drowned. I was having such a great time watching the world sit still. I remember it even now. I laughed when I realized how scared I made her by accident.
I used to think maybe I was a fish or God forgot to flip the switch on my lungs making them need for air. I was born to float in wide-eyed wonder and see the colors of mermaid scales, coral creatures, and sun refracting on the waves for thousands of years. Sometimes it felt like I was only holding my breath above the surface and the whole world was flipped on its head. I was such an angry little thing and such a good eater, always a member of the clean plate club. I ate every jealous bite and spiteful word and spit it all up on the altar. I learned how small people make themselves big, how laughter makes you leather like all that’s rough and smooth and hollowed out from the inside. I made a beach day out of betting the waves they couldn’t knock me from my feet. I picked up sand dollars and wore bruises like badges of my indomitable strength and holy martyrdom. I litter swears in my sentences like the venerable rebel, like Jesus, the criminal. The god of the oppressed. The holder of silence, the giver of quiet. I met that motherfucker in the tub when I was eight years old! But nobody called me to the cross, same way nobody called to tell me about the tsunami that wiped the earth and wiped me clean of every last man who dared to call himself the first.
Medium Statement: 35mm film
You were lucky enough to be born in the fall, and I the spring; making you a person, while I remain a measly lamb. I was not alone in my newness to life, but my siblings that beat me to life also beat me to death as they were slaughtered before I ever knew them.
I have been alive for a few short hours and my mother—a snow white ewe belting in the corner from the uncomfortable feeling of your hand inside of her—no longer knows me. These things happen, you tell me as you pick me up from the hay and tuck me into the warm flannel of your chest.
These things happen, you tell me as you lead me out to pasture to roam with the rest of the sheep. I am too old, now. Too upright, now. Too grown, now, to still feel the sting of the mother that forgot me.
(She’ll remember the next one, I’m told. Clean him off until his fur is white and free of infraction. She will feed him. Teach him. Love him as if he were the only lamb she’d ever known because he was.)
I am no longer a lamb, yet lambing season continues on. Now, with a year between my birth and my present, I will become what my mother once was, and you will demand it from me. How unfortunate to be born in the spring.
A lamb looks up from her place in the hay below. For a moment, I imagine her gazing at me—not as a ewe—but rather a person, like you. And when I look at her, I see a girl with a yellow top and a bright smile, rather than just a lamb. But, just a lamb she shall be, not unlike me.
You poke me, making me move towards my new lamb. These things happen, you tell me as the lamb latches onto me. Lambing season will not end. Tomorrow, you will ask more from me as you always have. And I’ll be left a lamb born in the spring as you remain a person for having been born in the fall.
The setting is a little cafe that I picked out on the west side of the park. On the block before, I give myself a once over in the window of an abandoned storefront, make sure I know where the mace is in my kitchen-sink purse, and check my phone for what his face looks like. Although, according to my roommate, I am blind to physical characteristics on men besides white, brown hair. Joshua B. has blue eyes though, and he texted that he is wearing a striped polo today.
When I walk in, I spy him sitting at a table tucked in the corner next to the cashier counter, which stands vacant, as the cashier is also the barista attending to a group of women. Everything in the cafe is soft green: wallpaper, spider plants draping off the counter, napkin holders on the table. It has a very lovely feeling that gives me hope as I approach the table where the brown haired twenty-one-yearold from Arizona studying history at a local university has seated himself.
“Joshua?”
He turns to look up at me approaching, “Oh, hey. It’s nice to see you.”
I smile. “Do you want to order first and then we can sit?”
“Go ahead. I think they’ll be out with my food in a minute.”
He ordered before I got there? I imagine what I must look like standing next to the table. One long slow blink like a cartoon character. “Okay! Can I leave my purse here?”
I take my wallet and phone out, checking the time as I approach the bar to ensure I wasn’t somehow late. When I return to the table with a coffee and chocolate chip cookie, I see that a second server must have materialized to deliver Joshua a caesar salad that he has absolutely, tragically drenched in ranch. Ripples appear in pools of ranch when fat white droplets cascade down shreds of lettuce and plummet into the crevices of tomato.
“So you’re a history major, right?”
“Yep.”
“What made you get into that?”
“Oh, you know.”
I stay silent hoping for more.
He turns from me back to the salad, and I wonder if I am somehow prying.
“Growing up my dad was a big World War II guy. I liked his model planes, and I think that’s what got me started— aircrafts, and then it grew to general military history.” I wait for a return to my volley, but nothing. Joshua takes a large forkful of salad and forces it into his mouth leaving a white creamy trail at the corner of his lips.
“Do you have a go-to coffee shop order?”
“Not really.” More silence.
You’ve been texting me incessantly for the past week, Joshua. And now you can’t ask me a question? What happened to wanting to go to art museums and Homer Simpson memes?
Maybe this is better than Trey G. from New Jersey, who wouldn’t stop talking about how the only thing he reads is this one massive sweeping fantasy novel and how it was actually his novel and how the only thing he reads is his own writing and not for editing purposes but because it’s the only writing he enjoys. I hate writers.
“I think my go-to is a lavender vanilla latte with oat milk, 16 oz.”
“Oh, nice,” he breaks eye contact and stares deep into his salad as if the folded shreds of romaine are more interesting than a warm-blooded human. Maybe the waiter wrote blink twice if she’s crazy in ketchup on the bottom of the plate.
Too specific? Does it sound like I’m trying to be special? Please like me. I need to meet someone. How are young people even supposed to meet with the dissolvement of the third space! “What do you think about that? Whoa, sorry! That’s not what I meant to say outside my head.”
“You’re fine.”
“No, that was weird.”
“Oh. To be honest, I zoned out. So whatever your faux pas, it made it by me.”
“Oh, okay.” I am not sure if I should be relieved or offended or trying harder. “What are you looking for on Tinder?”
He laughs a little and looks at me, “That’s another faux pas.” He doesn’t answer my question and pops a miraculously dry crouton into his mouth with his fingers.
Maybe I should stab his fork in the back of my hand to see if he says anything. Instead I crumple the cookie’s plastic wrapping and throw it away in the can nearby.
“Are you leaving?”
“No,” I say confused, and then when he seems confused I add, “I’m going to wait for you to finish eating your salad.”
“Oh.”
Can other people in the cafe tell that I am on a first date? Are they praying for me? Why isn’t some wonderful woman from that group across the room, who is a complete stranger but knows distress when she sees it, coming up and saying, “Oh Jane! Why haven’t you picked up your phone? There’s been a terrible accident and you need to come right away!” And then I get up without paying and run away with her and we make out on the subway.
He begins to push around the leftover ranch, and I get the unnerving sensation that he’s about to lick the plate.
“Would you like to go take a walk in the park?”
A beat. “No. I think I’m actually going to hang out here for a while.”
A second beat. “Okay?”
“You should go.”
I don’t know what to say, to this or in any future conversation we could possibly have, but I suppose it is best to end with a pleasantry, “Well it was nice to finally get to talk with you in person, Joshua.”
“Yeah! You too… uh…” He looks apologetic before taking out his phone. “It was nice to meet you, Zoe.”
“My name is Jane.” I don’t even wait for a response.
There is a whole other world inside the wooden room of my dad’s guitar. Pluck a string and you can feel the air dance, strum a note and your soul vibrates in time.
I spent much of my childhood there in that quilted maple pocket dimension, learning Petty and Garcia by heart, not hand. I could never make my little fingers form the songs— but then again, I never really tried. I was always more content on the other side of the strings.
I’d tap the violet abalone to the beat and watch my father play, picturing myself in that knotted room, close enough to feel the music in my acoustic bones.
Medium Statement: screenprint on paper
Sunlight streaming in the window pingpang ricochets through the brick alleyway, and washes the room orange around you. There is life abstract and alien for you to glimpse through apartment windows from apartment windows—
Or you are reading this poem on the metro, on the platform, in between rushings. Yes, it is you in the writing.
Tell me, is it raining for you? Are you staying dry enough, as much as you can? You are seen one out of many in your beautiful mess. Do you remember reading me before?
Have I told you I am writing a poem about you? Wherever you are there is truth in your laughter now.
Have I told you?
There is a little bit of you in every poem I write.
Cardiff skies upon shucks and sea-shelf beaches, the sheep will bah and bah, Magellan will roam. The water trickles onto toes like foam forget whence there was English teaches who distraught. Pints upon pints of thatches being fought. Scritch, scratch, sail away from the chrome, into the hills and out of the catacombs. Ignore now the speeches of he who preaches. Look down upon left deck, there is a free man! Over the land to the Jones’ and the Thomas’ a train ticket curdles the restraint and he ran, the old man squirmed, he was callous and pompous. Step up man to man, he saw it firsthand, for he went back home.
They said it was the best. So much so that everyone—upon descending those dewy stairs, waiting to see the behemoth, then climbing across the threshold of space—rushed to get it. As if they could wish it, could yield it. Though, naturally and evidently and certainly, someone would have taken the spot. One by one they would step up only to meander away, sullen and swollen by the hit they just took.
If you looked hard enough you could almost see the life in their eyes leave their body. They may take solace in the justifiable idea that one of them took the spot. If they were able to see a fellow commuter, fellow patron, and fellow pattern-maker, then they would at least continue the rhythm of their walk; it would ensure, naturally, that one of them would get it tomorrow. If they didn’t recognize the newbie, or if they found the fellow commuter unwilling to look at the train of people and provide an awkward but proud “I’m sorry,” then they would feel even worse. A random person who didn’t know how good they had it, what luck!
So when you walk down those half wet stairs, slightly worried that this is your first time, you wait patiently for the beast to arrive. Then you feel its force push you back, and it is upon you. Getting on the train, you are a child taking those first steps wondering why no one else is here. Your eyes grace your watch, and the train came early! You grab a seat two cars down from where you got on, passing through ghosts. It feels obvious why no one was there; even then, at least one other person would confirm you weren’t alone. You walk down each aisle, looking for a good spot. You pick one, but then have doubts. On to two, the same. The third is perfect. And it even has a window to gaze out at the land then river then tree.
As you look around, every other vehicle to see the outside world is blocked. It’s coated in an opaque substance that gives away the age of the train. This turns your attention to the actual scene; something you didn’t have reason to pay attention to until you noticed those windows. How beautiful, the red worn seats, with their dirt and cracks and different shades. The walls are not white, but you can witness their attempt to be. You take a sip of your coffee, placing it between your legs, and wonder what would happen if you were to spill it. As you are questioning, you feel a pair of eyes on your neck.
You turn around and see three people looking at you. The first one is staring with contempt, that is until you break eye contact and cannot see his round mouth anymore. You wonder what is happening, but you have a suspicion. Looking back, you see that his eyes never left your body. You give a polite nod, with lips pressed together, and raise your hand as if to say sorry. Can he even see your hand? No, the seats are too high. But no matter what, you still do it, it makes you feel better. He doesn’t react, and then his eyes subtly shift. Where were they looking before, because now they stare into your eyes with a new intensity. The window! Could your hunch have been right? Was this about the window?
The man then steps forward, sitting a few rows in front of you. You try to forget about it, but the same thing happens! Another person, then another. You repeat the polite nod and motion of the hand. Are you apologizing? If so, why? You got this seat. Do not feel bad. You don’t even know if that is what this is about. Maybe it’s because of your clothing—sweatpants?—or, possibly, maybe just even, your hair? Yes! That is what the man was looking at. You rest easy, close your eyes in satisfaction, and feel the weight of the continued eyes lift off of you. If you don’t pay attention to them, they’ll go away.
You know that will not happen, though. You hear someone asking to be let on the train, and others respond by saying they’re waiting to see who got the window seat. Another says to just move to let him on, and another says to fuck off. You take a breath, did you have the only window seat on the train? You look back around and see the windows again, but this time you see that it was true! But no other car had any either? Why was a window even so important?
The person then moves on, and you see another take her place. Okay, you say. Your eyes grow wide, face contorts, and the realization that this won’t stop comes over you.
“You can take the seat!” You then stand up, hands gripping the seat in front of you for support, and take the seat in front of you. You smile one of those clearly annoyed I-hope-you-gotwhat-you-wanted types of smiles. Goodbye window, you mutter under your breath.
But no one moves. The air becomes suspended, silently you feel it choking you. Those eyes, why do you feel them still? No, it’s not the same; it’s even stronger. You see those who passed you and that they are staring; two stand as tigers waiting to leap and attack. Their eyes shoot into you, and you turn away to look at the line—the same. The two tigers start to run to the window seat; the person next in line beats them and sits down. The first tiger then turns and pounces on the second, and the second takes something out of her pocket and the first lets out a cry.
The window-seated goer laughs, and the line slowly dissipates to nothingness. Everyone finds a seat; everyone takes out a phone. Maybe next time you can get the window seat.
When I was a little girl, I used to look up at the sky and think about the birds and clouds and planes overhead. I used to pick out little worlds that were all my own, all created entirely for myself.
Family trips to the aquarium felt like this. Maybe aquariums and zoos and museums all generally gave me the egotistical impression that the world was created for me, but when I walked through the blue-black halls with water overhead, I was convinced the fish and sharks and stingrays all found a home in my brain and remained there, until just now.
There was a time when I would visit the aquarium with my parents. We would all gather in my mother’s car, a cool-blue Civic always hand washed (by me) and vacuumed free of crumbs (created by me). My mother is a slow driver but harsh in her assessment of the road. Quick turns and fast stops. And maybe this translated into her personality. Going from one extreme to another, playing hopscotch with her emotions.
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into her approach to the harsh demands of the busy streets of the city.
My father, who was awkward in his look and manner, never seemed to outgrow himself. He still wore shirts from college, ratty ones with holes in them, and kept his hair unbrushed. He didn’t wear suits or button-ups; he rarely wore shoes. He seemed to be in a constant state of childhood, whether that be his own doing or someone else’s.
But, as we drove to the aquarium, with me staring out the window watching the clouds pass us by, I found little worlds to occupy myself as my parents fought over the radio dial, until eventually my mother turned off the radio entirely, huffing out: “I’d rather the silence than the Grateful Dead.”
We got to the aquarium around midday, and while it was a weekday, the busyness could be seen from the parking lot alone. Rows and rows filled with school busses, trucks, only for the congestion to be added by my mother’s shiny blue Civic.
My mother led us through the aquarium in a quick procession, nearly like she was walking towards something rather than through. Every now and then I would pause to look at a brightly-colored fish, only for my mother to stop in her stride to chastise me for not keeping up.
My father would disappear for long periods, only to pop back up eventually, always with a big smile and wide eyes. I never quite learned how he always seemed to find us. If he went around the aquarium at random intervals asking for the whereabouts of a rather severe woman and the young child that accompanied her. But he always did. Find us, I mean. Even now.
Half an hour later, after forgoing the gift shop, we were back in my mother’s blue Civic with the engine idling.
And it’s been so many years that I’ll likely never remember what was said, but sometime between the aquarium parking lot and the driveway at home, my father turned around in his seat to look me in the eyes and deliver the news my parents had been waiting to tell me.
“Your mother and I are getting a divorce,” my father said, still smiling as he always did. “We think it’s only fair you get to choose who to live with.”
Selfishly, I didn’t answer.
there’s glass on my floor. little shards of stars begging to insert themselves into the webbing between fingers and toes.
there are microplastics in our clothes. they don’t fit right over my skin. my favorite green sweater has uranium in it.
i’ve learned that it actually doesn’t matter whether or not i choose to let you in.
there’s glass on my floor. and i know you didn’t come through my front door.
Alexis Frorup
Medium Statement: screenprint on paper
Artist’s Statement: The “paper doll” series is meant to subvert the typical white and thin look of vintage paper dolls that you typically see by representing a thicker Black woman with various hairstyles to choose from.
Medium Statement: pen ink, Posca pen on paper
Content Warning: eating disorder, mental health, suicide
A standard office space with worn, cream-colored furniture. A loud machine blares white noise. We sit and wait to be called up to prepare our food. Adorn hairnets and gloves. For an institution trying to help us recover from eating disorders, there is less food variety than any kitchen I’ve ever seen. We are timed, observed, and stuck. Some cry. Others fidget with their food. Some just wait for the clock to run out. Our phones are locked in a closet; bathroom trips are supervised. We are a room full of adults with the same autonomy as kindergarteners. That’s what recovery is. Trusting strangers to lead you out of the dark.
On the brink of being 20, I am enrolled in my first ever outpatient program.
Twice a week, the dietitians take our vitals, blood pressure, and a blind weighing. Then we go to a group, the topic ever-changing. It feels like I’m at summer school, learning how to become a functioning human being. Other people I know have a summer internship or are traveling Europe.
“All foods fit. You have to nourish your body. It’s a process.”
Being in treatment is a strange mirage between school, summer camp, and prison. The other patients are older than me, yet we all feel like children in time-out. Everyone else has done residential or other outpatient programs. They’re all here the entire day when I leave before noon and go to my coffee shop and pretend I didn’t just discuss my deepest insecurities with strangers. I feel not fucked up enough to be here but too fucked up to keep pretending that I’m okay without it.
Some days are bad. Everyone is tired, eyes drooping, melting into the group room’s couches. Shaking legs, terrified eyes, distracted. I’ve never felt more claustrophobic in my skin. When the therapist prompts questions, they are met with silence.
When I try to remember how it was before, I’m faced with a spider web of mummified memories, entangled for my protection.
Always crying, never eating, fantasizing about different ways to stop my heart. I don’t think I inhabit the same vessel she did. It’s more comforting to believe those things happened to someone else.
Now that it’s all over, it feels like a dream. Maybe it was. It was not a nightmare, just a truth that was too hard to accept at the moment. Now, it’ll be a seed. Slow growing, but there.
Peaking through the weeds.
The floors are swept, the dishes are done, and the bed is made. After a whole week of classes, work, exercise, groceries, cooking, and hanging out with friends, I finally have time to write. Incredible, creative, witty, innovative, analytical, crafty, and dynamic ideas have been festering in my mind, waiting to get out, but I simply haven’t had the time. But here it is.
The opportunities are endless. The lack of time drives me nuts, and it never seems to end, which is why I cherish an opportunity like this. Now’s the time to take advantage and do what I’ve been talking about for the past six months. A smile peels across my face as “Chapter 1” pops onto the top of the page.
Progress! It feels so good to make progress. Man, I love progress. This is where it happens. The first word. All the greats, Tolstoy, Woolf, Austen, Dickens, Orwell, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Lewis, Rowling, Shelley, Morrison, Rand, Adichie, Shakespeare, Wallace, and Vonnegut all wrote a first word at one point, and I’ve just joined their ranks. Thrilling! Now I just need the first sentence:
In the beginning. Actually, that one feels a bit cliche. This will be a masterpiece after all, so it needs a masterpiece first sentence. In the beginning. Alright, how about, Relentless rain battered the cabin window. Ehhhh. Relentless rain battered the cabin window. Doesn’t quite grab the reader by the balls. Needs to be sharper. A kick in the face. Like a cup of coffee. That’s a good idea. Coffee. I need some coffee. Something to get the blood flowing. The six hours of T.V. I watched last night threw off my sleep schedule, so coffee’s just what I need. After all, I do have the whole morning to write. It’s better to take some time to get off on the right foot. And while the coffee brews I could read a little to get some inspiration. Just like writing, I haven’t had much time to read, and how am I supposed to write if I haven’t read. All the greats read. A lot. And my lifelong dream is to be one of the greats. I think about it constantly. Publishers begging for my work, audiences drooling over a new release, and prize committees giving me so many medals it hurts my neck. But I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself, I need to quit stalling and go make some coffee. Alright, back at the desk once again, and now I’m really ready. My brain is wired and fine tuned with a few pages of For Whom The Bell Tolls fresh in my mind. I never thought it’d be so enthralling. And to think it’s been on my coffee table the whole time. I even took a few minutes to watch an analysis of Hemingway’s writing style on YouTube. It’s so great having all this time to write!
Okay, back to the first sentence. The trick will be writing with the inspiration of Hemingway without plagiarizing. I need my own voice: He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. Incredible! I knew I just needed a little inspiration. The words are flowing from me now. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay...
Was that the doorbell? Perfect timing. I was starting to lose my creative juices after grinding it out all morning. I’ll just leave a note to know where to go from here—(For next time, read first chapter of War and Peace). Great! I’m really rolling now. I wonder which publishers I should reach out to? Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. At this stage an editor is much more important. An editor, that’s the next step. Wow, I can’t believe how easy this is. I can’t wait to write again next month!
little sister
you were forged in the ashes of this world born into brokenness, sickness, violence.
when the days get me down i remember i have to live if not for me, for our brother. for you. the cruelty of this place has tricked me before but i know better now and i will always teach you, feed you, love you, put you first because i know you don’t know me that well yet, but that’s what i do. little sister
we will share our secrets in the dark, with the covers up over our heads giggling so much that you almost forget i’m not your age. remember, i came from a different life of our mother’s, a time before your sunshine smile hit this world.
little sister, don’t let the white man get you down. Xolani Yasmine.
if your name can’t be pronounced correctly, maybe it doesn’t belong in their mouths in the first place.
oh, African Bengali girl, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re lesser when you’ve always been more. our ancestors survived all this, made our bones stronger so we could walk across this stage and not be forgotten. little sister you won’t be forgotten. you and i are embers— push us lightly and we’ll make a forest fire. you don’t know yet, but the women in our family are forces to be reckoned with and i’ll be damned if i see anyone try to put you out.
little sister
i can’t wait to see your squishy little face those tiny toes. to see you grow as i do see myself in you we will never be alone because God gave me you.
Content Warning: rape and sexual assault
And you turn the headlights off.
Sometimes I think I’ve never left that backseat. The girl that was before, counting the seconds in her head
Praying it would be enough, that he would stop.
But it was never enough.
I watch through the fogged window
And see myself fade to nothing at all.
These whispers of memories haunt me, I’m not blameless. I never was.
But I was so young And gentle
And we both know I didn’t deserve that.
I wish I could hold myself Cradle her in my arms
But I know I’d never let her leave.
Noelle Sommerville Medium Statement: charcoal on paper
The violet is like deep October, resin on the inside of a witch’s cauldron, or tapestry frill endowed with the richness of heritage and stirred like a hot drink.
Deep violet like pairings of black and silver, a reserve of spring mist below caves of amethyst and selenite where nobody goes. I’ve only known a couple girls like that. Daisies on her sweater, vanilla bean beauty. They hide out in the wide open, like their mothers, young and frozen in a photo on the fridge. Elegant and pointed like lace and pretty stories, always seeping from the sides. Those sepia sisters can’t hide themselves like blood splattered on the snow. They kiss girls at sleepovers in silence and sink so innocently into the softness they lack. But they can’t stay there, won’t turn the petal over. They need the oscillation, serpent whispering validation in their ears. With weapons that he fashioned, she will cut her as she goes; selfish sister, when will you learn that what you reap is what you sow?
I knew one of those girls once and she lingers in my memory. Of bloody noses and cold cement, flowers lost to frost.
When I was in the first grade, Lincoln Elementary School had a program called While You Weren’t Looking. The reward system existed to encourage kids to do nice things for each other. If a teacher saw you do a good deed, they’d later award you with the While You Weren’t Looking sticker. You’d wear the badge all day with a three-dimensional yellow smiley face admiring you. Plus, you’d write your name on the backing of the sticker to be deposited in the fishbowl in Principal Salerno’s office. At the end of every week, Mr. Salerno selected one name out of the fishbowl, and the lucky winner was called to the library to pick a prize out of the treasure chest. On a particular Friday I was on the edge of my seat. Yes, it was Friday. Yes, I was anxious to escape to the playground to trade Bakugan with Logan, but I knew I’d gotten a While You Weren’t Looking sticker that week. I had to wait. I don’t remember hearing my name or going to the library. I don’t even remember what I’d done to get the sticker, but I remember staring into the treasure chest of endless toys. I spotted an iPod Nano (it was the kind of school that had iPod Nano money even though I was a free lunch program kind of kid). Even more enticing was the blue Littlest Pet Shop penguin. My decision was near instant and final. I snagged the coveted LPS animal, and that was that. For years I would regret this moment where I foolishly picked some dumb figurine over an iPod. Even in my teenage years I pitched it as a laughable story of childhood stupidity. “I don’t even have the toy anymore,” I’d chastise myself. “I’d still have an iPod.” Once again I call this story back up from my memory. Now I’m twenty-one years old. I’m laying in the bathtub crying because the boy I’m with hurt my feelings. I wish I could be that girl again and pick the Littlest Pet Shop penguin. I wish I could remember my first grade teacher’s name. I feel like I used to feel about that day—a sinking pit in my stomach. I cross my arms around the chest that once bore a While You Weren’t Looking sticker and hug my ribcage. My bath smells like sharpened pencils and Scholastic magazines. I feel more like a child now than I ever did. I’m glad I’ve at least forgiven myself for the Littlest Pet Shop penguin choice. I sink below the surface of the water and imagine myself a goldfish, or eight years old again, or anything other than exactly what I am right now.
Artist’s Statement: This piece is based off of the Norwegian fairy tale “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” originally by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. The text is from the English translation of this story, and the image includes motifs from modern adaptations, as well as my own imaginings of this scene.
Medium Statement: linoleum and handset type print on paper
Clair Sapilewski
Medium Statement: 35mm film
lips pursed behind the projector. i’ve been a big fan of slant rhymes and wet floors. blameless accidents. divine intervention. some perversion of l’appel du vide. everyone is playing a trick on me, and there’s no narcissism in that. my gut being honest about what it feels like to be ripped limb from limb.
how do you always know where to look? why do you have to give me something to hide from? promise you’ll come find me. fluorescent and in plain sight. pretending i want to be this invisible thing. pretending i don’t want to split the orange with you or wash my hands every time i talk about what i look like turned inside out.
when the world ends i’ll revisit it all. ce n’est pas la mer à boire to change everything, commit a murder and run from it. fake my death with the happiest of daggers and leave my tea to steep too long on my bedside table. merge on the highway for once and pick which kind of sick i will be for the next decade (sea, love, home).
there’s a chance i will die out before we figure out a word for “blue.” wine dark sea and skin incarnadine. tchaikovsky’s skull in my hand as if i deserve it. in the time of violet seas an apology was just a defense, an ancient way to crack a window and let more light into the arena, a way to splash each other just to get salt in your eyes. tout est bien qui finit bien but i think i am left unsatisfied. i want someone to press my palm into. i want to linger at the lost and found and sing myself to sleep.
Sometimes I get homesick for places I’ve never been, searching for recognition in unfamiliar streets, picturing myself somewhere new. Cities I’ve known only in photographs somehow carry a warmth—that particular warmth of scooting closer to the hearth, of roaring fire and prickly hands seeking heat.
I sometimes feel as though I’m made of wishes—not passing fancies for this or that, but deep desires known only in dreams forgotten upon waking. I feel their outline in my bones, but no matter how hard I try, the wishes fail to take shape. And so sometimes I wander, as if a ghost, in the streets at night, chasing something
that I don’t know how to find. Lately I’ve been wandering less, worrying less. From the moment you walked down that hallway towards me, a certainty settled down into my chest. Something within me clicks into place every time you put your lips to mine—that familiar warmth of coming home every time I look into your eyes.
The truth is that I’ve missed you all these twenty-one years I spent without you, that I feel I’ve known you all this time. Sometimes I just stare, trying to memorize every shape of you. When you catch me, you laugh, and I hear the distant sound of clanging bells, like a welcome party or a wish fulfilled.
Medium Statement: digital (Procreate)
Dressed at the casket, everyone knew before I did. Black buckles and black bows, ravens crooning in a row; what tempted you to go? I’ll be composed and polite, quiet for the first time. I’ll look and not touch. Respect for the departed. The color left your skin weeks ago, wicked tinted olive corpse tells me it’s finally time to say goodbye. The things you carried, mountains you crested, words you let escape your soft and sweet and absent lips—none of that is here now. None of you is here now. After all, it was your choice to go. What comes around in autumn time will find its roots in me; ripped from colder, deeper roots my gentle giving tree. Black buckles and black bows, ravens crooning in a row.
Spools of yarn and marigolds, too, shower your head and your thick black hair. Now that crimson and yellow garland is snapped, drained like a tree that’s just been sapped. Watercolors, currant, and thyme, pickles and clementines in saccharine decay. I start to turn my nose away from things with softer cores. Bruises surface, always stay, but instead I look the other way. Gentle creature, brown-eyed boy, you left me blowing in the wind. Light as the first wish I made for you, heavy and hopeful like the last. It hurts to see you write me now, far off in the sky. I wish that spell would reveal itself as a convenient, heartless lie.
On the mountain you said you thought of me. I hope you saved your breath. I hope you climbed up faster, spared me your laughter, left a taller man.
a story about a machine
flip it on and a recitation of symphonic circles come to life much better the big light elucidates the blood knots that once bound my back to the beating couch now hold my parts inside monetarily sovereign the lashings i received were sobering a reminder that church is never easy just keep moving i know how this one ends
i pick up the blouse buttoning my sternum together my conscious sits between the ribs just above the 8th button dressing my wet skin has always felt like an anthology of entropy sublimating the tar covered chapbook i strapped to my biggest gaps will never reach the skin i chronicled i have held and been held and yet my layers remain impenetrable a testament to my sedulousness
the memory retreats submerged before the arbiter i bite down on my boy collar beckoned by a conductor without a product in mind i write in my sleep chewing my sheets in the shape of my creation begging for a glass of milk and piece of the sleeve fastening my script
72 safety pins to secure her corners adding some weight to the proposition the crop rotation holds me accountable to discounted sublimation an encounter with the terrorizing truth roared through my inner world the sound score lathered my joints with the conjunctions i needed to meet the archivist and her clerical staff
i am selling a man-made machine today
A silver chain hangs and on your chest, a cross. Its backdrop: a stained black uniform that we both share. It’s a scene of death, and it’s dirty— but you can’t clean it because your mother said no, Christ isn’t the one that needs to be cleaned. The outside light pours in & I can’t stand it. The cross catches the light, and I’m blinded. Meanwhile, you speak with your hands because you conflate love with proclamations of it. My eyes are still closed and you are across from me, me in the darkness & you, still in the light. I want to ask you— if your cross has ever caught too much light and burned a hole inside of your chest.
I think of biting down on the metal to see if it’s worth anything. I think of how you can imagine the texture of anything before it ever touches your tongue. I think of how I’ll never know what it’s like to believe in something the same way that you do. I think of how I think too much while thinking that love & attention are one and the same. I imagine the chain on my tongue: the metal tastes like blood & the blood tastes like you.
It’s been years & my hair is much longer now, I’ve grown too. I wear white now, all the black has been purged from my closet. I never told you, but my mother used to always wipe the tears from my face. My friends too, it’s like we bear the weight of things together. Although— my hands seem to be nailed to something that I cannot let go of and it’s a shame.
I promise I’ll come back, one day.
You stare until you disappear, you carefully watch without blinking until the world inside of you dissolves. Now let go. Watch your hands fall as you fall.
You wait inside an empty house. Thinking of each mistake, needing to make a major change. You listen to nothing whisper secrets about how to love someone else.
Faith locks you to your brain: you are just a matter of time, you are going to leave behind your beloved when you run away.
It is dark and dangerous. And nature is spinning so quickly like a sting. You say, Please don’t hurt me.
In your dreams you cry. And when you return to the Earth, he lets you touch him. he asks you to touch him back.
You look through the sky every night… but there is nothing, you feel nothing. You want to apologize to God, in case you’ve somehow injured him.
Try to become a shadow, waiting for the sun to set, casting yourself across warm skin silently… secretly, until morning arrives.
Feel inside of yourself a mountain of burning love. You must confess or you will suffer eternally.
All you see is black everywhere. Either you are flying breathless through space, alone, Or drowning, choking underneath deadly waves of water. Either way you die; all you are is love.
in case you are scared i am becoming spineless
a stranger never felt so close to real the weeping wings of our pets speak for themselves showing me where the edge of suburban submission sleeps to share a meal would be antithetical to the existence of mundanity
you taught me the sweater that blocks the light will never hold my body it is meant to siphon tenacity seeking complete control of the arms i wonder why the feeling of drywall against my forehead feels like an embrace acceptance never made eye contact or even touched my face the taste of salt failed to permeate the exoskeleton of the invisible body but the allure of a painful machine enacting the same process of obliteration keeps my lids pried open i fold the remorse into neat piles i am careful not to create too much order in hopes you notice my humanity on the last episode i played just as you taught me infallibly pleasing forced to excavate my softest embodiment an inexplicable warmth holds me to the flame i will say anything to be illuminated extracting the autonomous vehicle a mare’s nest leads me directly to the remorseful driver
the temporal contact shared enstooled an amalgamation of bagged men our limbs tangle searching for denatured fragments of depreciation the pelvis settles between my soles of desperation calloused with demolition
i devour my neglected space while the four on the floor spackles me closed i am hunting for a home imagining life on the moon
i am coming back to you nonetheless because i want to be an iteration of you that doesn’t create holes a seamstress embedded beneath my soles i know the mending begins amidst the scrapes of an experiment gone wrong
Dad warned me to stay away from men that feed me off lies, but you were the first milk i tasted, and it was sour, so i’m used to growing strong off deceit. you were the first hug i never had and the first slurs aimed at me, so that man’s words meant nothing when they echoed yours
you were the first woman in my world, and how could i have learned my value, when the first woman in my world hated herself? you were the first woman in my world, when you left too easily, i decided to stay too long. they always blame the oppressed for not having the right infrastructure. i can’t trust others, yet you designed the system that way, so i would always be at the bottom with you. i’ve run so far, but i still see you in the horizon begging for someone to come save you.
I’m worried About the emissions From my drive To therapy. We’re all growing Towards the sun And down towards The gravity We’re all feeling.
I’m making friends With my ghosts.
The life in all things. The god in all life.
But there’s only so much Infinity.
I’m still waiting And it’s already Happened.
i want to sleep forever because of the chilly weather everyone is sick and i’m just starting to get better.
each night before bed i pull my eyes out of my head soak them in the sink for an hour while i shower.
sometimes i put them in wrong so they face inward and i see myself as suddenly bigger on the inside of my person where i hold some contradiction such as wanting to be me but disliking much of what i see or liking hummus but hating chickpeas and other such afflictions.
don’t think i suffer terribly or at least it comes in waves i’m just fine i flip my eyes around they’re facing out i feel smaller and i pout.
sometimes i talk out loud just to feel the vibration and to make sure i can still do it despite my singular habitation. i’d really like to go home see the boy who lives in my phone he makes me feel safe i don’t have to self-efface i fall asleep on his lap while he rubs my back.
all just to not be by myself or ‘for my mental health’ but i need to sleep inside the warmth of someone else.
lately i’ve been scrolling through old pictures on my dad’s retired flickr i see a little girl and imagine what it’s like to be her.
i pick my lip i eat the skin it bleeds and scabs i feel i’m six again.
Medium Statement: paper collage
There is a place due west of here where there was once a terrible forest fire. It burned and burned until the earth was black and trees were ash. I walked through it
some weeks afterwards, and it looked to me like an end. When I reached the center, where it began, the colorless world spread to the horizon, broken only by the rising bulb
of the sun in the distance. Sometimes I would wake with stinging eyes and a scratchy throat, the last breath of the forest fire burning its way through me.
Later, I got a job out East, and moved away for a time—and I suppose rains fell and seasons shifted and snow melted until that dark smudge on the earth started to wash away.
Eventually I moved back home for good, whether out of instinct or desire, I cannot say. On my first day back, I decided to visit that old forest’s grave, and found saplings and wildflowers pushing up out of earth I thought could yield no more life.
One day, maybe, I will take my children for a picnic in this young forest, and they will not smell even a hint of smoke.
Be still. Do not disturb the inside, the slumbering animal, but rest.
Watch it be soft. Watch the sweet air run down your body. Breathe in deep to match mine. Watch hearts beat loud like drums.
Becoming a flooding river; dance and scream over the wild earth.
Look into my life, my naked soul. Walk in between buildings with me until I cannot move any more.
Tell me everything, trust me, empty your heart for my sake.
You do not hurt me.
You do not suffer.
Watch me be alone together. Sit beside me, hold the pain in my body. It is getting too cold at night, cover my body.
I am half a soul when I sleep, scared to wake up, leaving my dreams in your arms, in your legs against mine. You flinch at the noise of concrete growing underneath you. So I will protect you from the monster under our bed. You were a baby, good and silent, who needed to be fed. You bit my hand, you saved me by accident. So I made you a man.
Let me show you something: Be still. Fall into my chest.
Watch how music floats softly, then escapes ripping like light. Maybe everything is a coincidence, but I am thankful to love you.
Look up. I am a star. I won't disappear. Be still. Watch the winter turn to spring.
Rose garden boy
A name
With a meaning
A sound
That is sweet
Like the smell
Of the roses
Their natural perfume
Kissing the Insides of my wrists
Your lips matching
The pink buds
That burn into Yellow at the center
A contrasting
White t-shirt
Gray skies
A boy who stops to sniff
His hands behind
His back Leaning in.
Content Warning: nondescript sexual assult
Dear Juliet, your memory lingers across the bedsheets of women I know. Souls split open from the hostile fingers of a breed that the patriarchy sows.
Dear Juliet, the voices of women, adorned to your wall a paper chorus; harmonies against your bronze form, our men see your bust and rub it golden. For us,
Dear Juliet, please know you’re just a child. Play with your dolls, refuse to dress as one, refuse to be filmed as you get defiled by a boy who they call a “holy son.”
A sea of women write for Juliet. A sea of women love you, Juliet.
Rain falls on the pavement outside, clinging to the streets briefly before gathering to flow into gutters, to that wet underworld I have no place in. Fog hangs thickly outside my window, and I trace shapes in the condensation, forming your face again and again.
I can spot blades of grass rearing their heads in the face of a cold, wet morning. It’s three days to Christmas, and I’ve yet to see a single spot of snow. I remember weekends spent shoveling driveways, so distant now, coming home with cheeks bright red and socks soaked.
Lately, I’ve found myself afraid to reach beyond tomorrow, to imagine what is around the bend for this precarious world. Will my children ever see the world blanketed in white and ice? If so much has changed in ten years, I cannot imagine what kind of world awaits them.
I miss you, but I’m afraid for you too. No moment feels certain anymore; nothing is promised.
So I wish—for what?
Simpler times?
Usually my wishes are not so big, not too much for me to ask.
Most of the time, I just want to hold you like we have time—so much time that it spills from our hands and splashes around us.
I know that’s too much, so let me just wish to make you laugh tomorrow, and let that be enough.
i sleep with you probably out of spite.
like a witch like a bitch
like everything you want to call me when you miss your mama when all that’s between you, and me, is a comma the curve of my spine makes space for my sigh and a “fine”
fuck you and this stupid rhyme cause i’m better than this or no i’m a bitch.
or whatever you think you can say to get me to suck it fuck it
mama, say you want it it
rhymes with witch rhymes with bitch rhymes with “love it,”
the space between my left and right knee, crazy.
Medium Statement: screenprint on paper
DContent Warning: gun violence
Nasally inorganic black and white clipped and cropped bullshit. Chemical manufacturers lost shipments of plutonium ins and outs oopsie daisies wrong ringed finger. Pushing on the eyeball till the squiggles come out sense in that, cents in this, a pickpocket makes a micro out of the honest living. Newscast pornographers I’ve seen more dead people than your father has and there’s no hair on my chest. They shot four kids and they walk on. Flagpoles turn them upside down, string up organs pushing and pulling, inserting and wriggling. Concrete idiot brow the permanent salute
Content Warning: gore
I was fast asleep when you called me.
You knew you weren’t supposed to, but I knew better than to answer, and still I did. You asked me to go for a drive to the state park because you wanted to photograph the black bears in the earliest hours of the morning. It was that time of year when they came out in droves to dance and gorge themselves on berries and cleanse the Earth. You wanted to go down there right before the darkness of dawn slipped into that icy sapphire of the awakening morning. Those, the coldest moments of each day with the crispest blues waning into the softest yellows. All this the backdrop to the otherworldly yet natural display of the black bears. I could see why you’d want to capture it in a photograph.
Suddenly we were there, in your car, but not alone. Another, more foolish man crept from the parking lot to the edge of the trees and bushes where the bears rolled around and screamed a bizarre terrifying laugh. You unlatched the driver’s side door and creaked it open, drawn forward by a carnal desire. I couldn’t feel my mouth move, but I know I pleaded with you to shut and lock the door. The man slid closer, and a chorus of unseen voices begged him to recede. In all his masculine hubris, determined to be the one to immortalize the necessarily fleeting event, he stepped—wholly detected by the nearest bear—even closer. As the bear reached for the man and his camera, I dug my fingers into your shirt collar and ripped you back into the car. No more of this. We watched as the bear relieved the man of his arms and legs, unmarrying flesh from bone in the most sinewy and sloppy divorce. I picked little scraps of your skin out from under my fingernails from when I’d grabbed at you too harshly. We couldn’t hear his screams, but felt them reverberate in our tongues and settle resolutely in the back of our throats. His were ours, and ours were his. We locked the doors and climbed into the back seat. The sun was rising with a force now, slowly but surely, just as the bear tore this man limb from limb in the same deliberate fashion.
I sat cross-legged in the back seat and you buried your head in my lap. Your amber hair spilled over my knees as you sobbed into my thighs. You begged me to make it stop. You cried with the anguish of a lost child in the grocery store—snot nosed and inconsolable. I stroked your bent head and ran my fingers lovingly through your dampened hair. You became smaller than I’d ever seen you, begging me to please, please make it stop. It consumed you. I just sat and petted you. A smile flashed across my face. You were beautiful in the way of a forest fire or a hurricane—I could watch the disaster with a particular awe for beauty in the carnage. I lifted your head to kiss the blooming abrasion on the back of your neck where my nails had peeled up the layers of delicate skin. A little bear lumbered atop the Jeep, groping for purchase to tear an entryway. This must have been its first year, opting out of the low hanging fruit to instead pursue a more arduous prize. Thankfully, it never found one, ‘cause they don’t build Jeeps like they used to, so the kelly green 1999 Cherokee was resilient despite the bear’s best efforts.
In the blink of an eye, I’m home with all the awareness that I had deposited you on your mother’s doorstep. She’d glared daggers at me for destroying you in the way that I presumably did. She knows nothing of the bears and the dancing and the man and the ritual. As a girl of my age, she may have once, but she’s since forgotten.
For a brief moment I feel bad for what I did to you. Regardless, I shed my skin. The world melts into indigos and flaxen golds around my black hair and kisses my fuzzy forehead. There’s the taste of blackberries in my mouth. Somewhere a camera shutter clicks, and I feel I could last forever.
I am desperate for words
To explain to you how it is
To love you.
No human has loved before.
The sentences cannot be formed
In any language that has been spoken.
Instead, let's have
A woodland waltz, Will you have this woodland waltz with me?
Fold into me, fold into the earth
Become one with me and then with the trees
Waltz with me, autumn leaves.
Rhythmic fingers, Fingers are the instruments of love
My poems, their music
Found in the symphony of your bliss.
Crystal tears,
Your face blurs with my fascination
To memorize every pore, every hair, and to hunt for every loose eyelash. Each touch I get to make produces another drop of admiration. Whoever said love was a rosy colored world must have had red dye in their tear ducts.
Auburn Leaves, Burning leaves
Burning forests
Burning love
Burns cautiously
Passionately
Unapologetic
Feed our fire, auburn leaves
Until it can move mountains, Cross the timelines and the seas.
I’ve no change for postage stamps.
Not snowflakes but auburn leaves
Cling to my tongue, Extended jaw and opened mouth
Here I can swallow you whole.
Please don't go, I love you so.
What do I do when I’m the problem? What do I do when I’m the problem; scratch my way up the telephone pole, stand up tall to face the wind, and bleed for the rest of my life?
For you, friend—are a brilliant liar, watching the tower fall down and topple over you on one of those big ocean waves:
you can talk like it’s not coming within twothree inches of your life, like you were born to do.
Since the sky’s gone red and the earth of our bodies withers as it wanes, you’ve kept to transplant somehow.
When the drought comes, We have known you to guzzle golden goblets filled from a fountain dry as december.
When the heads roll, We have watched you laugh at their dead faces. You beg for sympathy this way,
and you are good at it! When the dog is left alone she shrieks; who are we not to shriek with the dog?
Who are we when we’re left alone? You don’t have to say. I know it’s private but I know we’re someone falling down.
Thank god I already blessed this earth. Cried—sobbed as hard as I could And laughed, died of laughter here. I learned everything here; everything, goodbye.
What a sparse address; shelves full of books I cannot read. By moon or by sun there are buzzing flies, and I will not get any rest. Crumbs at the breakfast table.
Go forth, foolish progeny, and fill us with your gaiety. Your art is one which most of us, dry, fat, and dreary, are ill-equipped to seek.
You are but a stupid child to lead a lifestyle infantile in a world you know from dreams. Simple, pink, and wild is the mark of your pedigree.
Give us your intoxication; your art nouveau; your fornication; your silly little games; impetuous, impatient, impossible to beat.
We want to see your melancholy, your messy grin, your sin and folly. We want to see you slay the giant, ugly, varicose, unholy, and make a spoil of his spleen.
Or better yet, dear cherubim, go and try to rescue him; seek the maggots in his soul, unsightly and Precambrian; cure him of disease.
Save the princess from her tower and wed to her within the hour. Or save the prince from battle broken, bloody, disemboweled, and help him flee the scene.
And all at once, Fool, lose your chains, cast off your wits, let out your brains. Guide yourself instead with love, hot and cosmic; unashamed of ever fleeting pain.
Then manifest, innocent thing, your plot of earth and diamond rings, trapping flies in your gaping throat. Sacred, unrelenting, and blessed is the pilgrim.
Can you say if the mountains grow? If sparrows fly alongside crows? If the wretched heart in breaking sings up or down, high or low? Many say and do not know.
Knight of Wands
There is more out there; I can see it with every step I take and the trees whisper there is more. I mean to grab it with my hands as soon as they are free.
Queen of Wands
And what if it is so?
You so crimson scarlet,
So, Fool, where do you hide?
I saw you last Friday at fifth and forty-first devouring the king alive, stealing his crown, mounting his horse, and riding away into the sun.
You didn’t have to leave without saying goodbye. I know you were in a hurry and scared as all get out, but you left some things behind: two broken watches, your swan song, and love in velvet.
Sometime when the earth again meets the stars you will be I and I will be you. Find me there, friend, and then— my hands may be of fire, my mind made of the moon; who then is the Fool?
IV Cups
Thought is a plain sobriety. Dive out of your fragile flesh. See surely you are spaceless. It cannot all take form; not with a universe to fill.
Artist’s Statement: I have read Tarot ritually and semi-professionally for years. These poems represent my intimate understanding of each card. The Tarot has 78 cards, 22 of which are Major Arcana character cards, and 56 of which are Minor Arcana suit cards. In these three-card readings, the two shorter Minor Arcana poems are meant to complement the longer Major Arcana poems to show a through-line demonstrating the specific epiphanies of these often misunderstood symbols of everyday life. This, too, is representative of my experience with Tarot as a holistic practice.
In the athenaeum, Its shelves are filled With recycled breath.
Madame Librarian hoards Her hollow clairvoyance.
Sorting unused guidebooks.
Burning romance novels.
She’s afraid of getting caught in the web, So she’s started smashing screens, But now she’s wrapped up in wires.
“I say there is no darkness but ignorance” So Madame supposes she is light, Despite the fluorescent corpses that hang above her.
It’s closing time. A long walk home. She says she’d have no use for a car.
Artist’s Statement: The “paper doll” series is meant to subvert the typical white and thin look of vintage paper dolls that you typically see by representing a thicker Black woman with various hairstyles to choose from.
1.
Strange girl, shunned and sensitive, go down to the river, run clothed into the cold water, drown a little, scream it all out over the rapids.
Strange girl, odd body, odd name, wash your footprints from our floorboards–what manner of manners are these? Dirt calls to dirt, and the mud misses you, dear.
Strange girl, weirding witching girl, three molars in the palm of your hand, still bloody, still clinging to mouthy nerve, still
Unstranged girl, don’t you miss it, being green and wild and raw?
but there’s nothing to dig into. Now you have a phone number. Now you call Cassandra when you need your meds refilled.
How quickly the story of others turns into an “I”
It doesn’t much matter if the piece moved you to tears
If your cheekbones got damp
I saw the The Black Triptychs, my stomach turned in knots
An exterminated man’s flesh had lost its sanguine character.
I’d lost something, I couldn’t place it
I went home, lost a night of sleep thinking about where I could have dropped it
Then the sun rose and we forgot all about it
Medium Statement: digital (Procreate)
Medium Statement: colored pencils on black paper
In my backyard there is a tree as old as me
It’s just beginning, and I’m about to leave
The limbs I used to hold now reach the sky
In their steady swaying I can almost hear goodbye
I hold your hand through plastic now
I can’t feel her, but the earth remembers her gentle vow
I keep calling God’s phone
I know he’ll take me off hold soon
So say hello to looking forward for me
I hope it puts your mind at ease
We’ve got them preaching that we’re hell bound
But I don’t believe it unless you do
I just want to be a kid with you
Scream your name loud
But I’m everything they said I would be
And you know you’ll be a shadow on my grave
You’ll remember longer than you knew what it is you’ll crave
We both know now the strength it takes to put down something heavy
There’s a body in the garden. I didn’t put it there
Maybe she knew what it felt like not to be a placeholder
Maybe she learned the right way how freedom is sometimes just loneliness
When I was five I thought I was very near death; this was all life would be, I thought.
I was so old for so long, and have been young for so little
I can hear the leaves rustling in the wind
My skin is sunkissed and unscarred;
I can almost see the sapling out the window in the house I’ve forgotten
If I close my eyes,
My father is carrying me to bed, and I haven’t learned how to hurt yet
I can feel the soft embrace of an old friend, whose roots spreading out into the beyond, remembers.
I once stood high above the Earth, and My shadow fell upon you. across your deep valley and high peaks.
I fell for it all, I needed to slip My fingers into your grooves, ascend those mountains, lap at the ocean. yet.
when You reached up for me, all i saw was the Moon.
beauty, yes. charms, yes. a great lack of Life, yes.
Life, so absent in those rivers which upon closer look are bone dry. like that now shriveled core of mine, which has a name long forgotten.
the tides are pulling me up to You, up up up away from my home. You aren’t beneath me, no no no.
this isn’t the forest i envisioned. You touch me with a white embrace, and frost spreads, crystallizes into ice.
No longer looking down, i am eclipsed by You. and now, no more than a hunk of rock, i’m just like You.
Medium Statement: 35mm film
Ella Forsyth
i have been alone for a while now with three bags and a baby (i am not a dad)
it smells like plastic at the base of my favorite jean “can we escape the noise” medicine cabinets are underrated when drunk arms fly and two big hands cover my sweaty ears i find a way to be rescued it is not uncomfortable to be held by a blue bucket seat like it used to be but the car park only allows loitering for twenty and my case needs at least twenty-four the hair wheels make it hard to control i need to get into the gym like the cat i know they find solace in weight not sure i feel the same but maybe the strength i’m looking for is buried beneath a striped thermal and hours of recorded conversation to fill my divots tight pants never suited me “delays are expected” not even your palms can save me from augmented intercom voices emblematic of a journey without a handle
i miss the kettle and the couch
i know sheep keep the peace when the thoracic spine weeps and a heavy sacrum folds metal but nothing will numb the surface
i wait for the right time live
i really hope that god is as forgiving as they say he is
that he’ll overlook my many years of snubbery
and really see me; a girl who’s scared, and doesn’t know what she needs.
i found myself in chapel one sunday
hoping that the bruises on my knees would convince him to give me whatever it is that i’m missing.
since i clearly cannot give it to myself.
i tell him that i’ve forgotten how to pray that i don’t think i ever knew how in the first place. they taught me that to love was to give up my sense of being completely.
but, if you saw me at the foot of your altar, rotting, would you love me? or, would you pick me up? hide me away?
patient zero for the most unholy disease.
the lord’s prayer morphs into a spell of my own design; forgive me father, for i have sinned, suffered a temporary lapse of judgment, allowed the devil to lead me askew. oh, but don’t worry father. i think i will forgive you.
Medium Statement: paper collage
Editors-in-Chief
Emma DiValentino
Sydney Hsu
Creative Directors
Abby St. Jean
Kendall Spink
Design Assistants
Lily Lemme
Zoe Moga
Copy Editors
Charlotte Van Schaack
Olivia Citarella
Copy Assistants
Abigail Martinez
Julietta Orciuoli
Blog Editors
Oread Frias
Thomas Weaverling
Blog Assistant
Daniela Spino
Prose Editors
Hope Hamerslough
Tyler Davis
Prose Assistant
Teo Nouvé
Poetry Editors
Abby Tredway
Elena Hollis
Poetry Assistants
Ani Costa
Lia Duncker
Art, Photography, and Film Editors
Alexis Frorup
Ava Bagdasarian
Art, Photography, and Film Assistant
Larysa Krueger
Social Media Manager
Alexa Berman
Abby St. Jean has found her calling as a cat mom, complimenting her role with grandma tasks such as crocheting, cooking for people she loves, and going to bed as early as possible.
Abigail Chase is a theatre artist from Boston, MA. She studies Terrorism and Security Studies at AU and is the Artistic Director of the Rude Mechanicals. Instagram: abigailjchase
Alexis Frorup is an artist who always struggles to get ink stains out of her clothing.
Andrew Gardner is a student of philosophy and audio, he writes poetry.
Ben Austin is a sophmore. He used to take a lot of photos.
Bennett Lane is rolling his boulder.
Bridget Slakas is a poet at American University. She loves long walks on the freeway, dystopian sci-fi novels, and burning her tongue on tea.
Charlotte Van Schaack is picturing the cozy loveseat she will sit in when she finally finishes her capstone and is allowed to write prose again.
Clair Sapilewski is a sophomore. She wishes she lived in a treehouse. Or boat. Or maybe a castle. She hates hippos.
Eliza Silletto was a pleasure to have in class.
Evelina West is sending hidden messages through the song posts on her Instagram stories.
Hannah Sjovold is thrilled to be graduating this semester because they get to go home and see their dogs all day every day.
Hayden Mills is a senior with perfect back squat form.
Hope Jorgensen enjoys long, brooding walks on moors and taking naps in patches of sunlight.
Jacob Jones is a junior at American University.
Julia Wirths is a first-year International Relations student who has been word-ing for 19 years and counting. She is excited to study in Japan for the next two years and to explore more foundations of poetry.
Katja Matter is a senior CLEG major from Colorado who writes in her free time. On campus, Katja can be found drinking oat milk lattes at the Dav or checking out French philosophy books from the library.
Kendall Spink has had a lot a fun taking photos recently and is super excited to share them with Amlit! Spoiler alert, she also creatively-directed the magazine. :)
Larysa Krueger is an artist who, when not hunched over her iPad, is probably getting attacked by her cats.
Lily Nold is usually petting her cat Stevie or reliving the horrors, but also enjoys writing poetry and practicing photography to the soundtrack of Big Thief and boygenius.
Lowe Turner (they/them) is a first-year majoring in sociology from Maui, Hawai’i. They’ve experimented with many mediums and been recognized as Juror’s Choice in past art exhibitions. Check out @lowe.turner for their expanding portfolio!
Luke Stowell is a certain mode of aestheticism that is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.
McKenna Casey is ready for the sun to come out.
Miranda “Mars” Braemer is a Studio Art and Creative Writing major who likes to work with uniquely human experiences in their pieces. They try to capture inexpressible feelings through the human body and make the abstract concrete.
Molly Stites is from a small town on the coast of Maine. She loves thrifting, her friends, and pitbulls.
Naomi Skiles is a junior studying Anthropology and Creative Writing, whose passions for writing, art, and human connection allow for no escape from what she studies.
Noah Gocial is a junior who loves to read, write, and learn!
Noelle Sommerville is a passionate artist who finds her creative outlet through drawing, painting, and photography, capturing the world’s beauty with every stroke and click of the shutter.
Reagan Riffle is a junior at AU studying African American Studies and Art History. She likes to write, be outside, and chit chat.
Rose Glickstein began writing poetry for fun in the Fall of 2023. She soon found out that she loved poems and the creative process of writing them. She believes poetry is a gateway of all things art, literature, self-expression, political justifications, and feminist advocacy. Poetry in all forms is fluid and speaks to the little innuendos embedded in our daily lives.
Sydney Hsu has been let out of her enclosure and is making it everyone’s issue.
Sophia Nayyar is a senior in the School of Public Affairs, originally from Wayzata, MN. Sophia captured “Tonight” while hiking in San Francisco, CA. “Tonight” represents the incredible feeling of liberation that Sophia finds on the winding trails of nature. Sophia photographed “Blue” in Mexico while parasailing!
Teo Nouvé loves to watch as the world reminds him why living is worth it. He really wants to bring things to life and give them names and make them fall in love and follow their dreams. Teo is an open soul making music and laughing with his friends.
Thomas Weaverling is a freshman at American University studying Journalism & Spanish. He loves to read, write, and laugh as often as he can. He also loves to crochet!
Tyler Davis is a long time writer and even longer time self-critic. From journalism to poetry, they’ve spent an entire lifetime within the pages of various notebooks. Always Moleskine, lined, middle of the page.
Zahra DeShaw is a senior majoring in Psychology and a self-taught poet deeply rooted in her community. Her academic pursuits center around the intricate dynamics of human relationships, with a specific focus on sibling and romantic bonds. Similarly, Zahra’s poetry serves as a reflective exploration of her significant connections and the profound impact they’ve had on shaping her identity. Zahra is motivated by her family and ancestors, expressing gratitude for their influence and enduring support in her creative and spiritual journey.
Abby St. Jean is currently hunched over her computer editing this very magazine with her cat Louis sitting in her lap while he aggressively bathes himself.
Abby Tredway is a Literature major who convinces herself she is in the 1700s after writing poetry in her notebook instead of the notes app.
Abigail Martinez is a Literature major who loves rewatching her comfort shows over and over and over and... you get it.
Alexis Frorup’s simple pleasure is an iced mocha with hazelnut.
Ani Costa ?
Ava Bagdasarian is an artist, writer, enthusiast of sunny days, and is ready to graduate!!
Charlotte Van Schaack and that is all.
Daniela Spino is a Public Relations major with a Studio Art minor who has blue hair.
Elena Hollis likes morally ambiguous characters, iced caramel lattes, and psychoanalyzing athletes. She is an amalgamation of cities and people she grew up with and subsequently still feels homesick for places that no longer exist.
Emma DiValentino has fallen into the black hole of bad reality TV and smutty romance books and she isn’t coming out.
Hope Hamerslough has mastered the fine art of sitting outside in the sun...if you catch her doing anything else, she’s probably eating pickles in bed, watching bad television, and redefining the depth of mediocrity.
Julietta Orciuoli is a sophomore at AU with an unhealthy obsession with Sally Rooney books.
Kendall Spink is hopefully sitting in the sun and crocheting a blanket while listening to her favorite queer artists. In reality, she is probably hunched over her laptop designing and writing various things.
Larysa Krueger is an occasional artist, usually being crowded by her four cats.
Lex Berman has a five second response time. clock me.
Lia Duncker is currently a second-year student studying International Relations and Literature. Lia is originally from Munich but spent a good amount of her childhood growing up in Northern California. She is an assistant poetry editor for AmLit and in her free time she love exploring new places, writing poetry, photography, and reading.
Lily Lemme is a Communications Major and Graphic Design minor probably looking for her chapstick somewhere.
Olivia Citarella is a sophomore Legal Studies and French double major with a minor in Creative Writing. She loves editing, the arts, and all things foreign language!
Oread Frias needs a gosh dang nap.
Sydney Hsu is probably mumbling “not my circus, not my monkeys” while clutching her knees and rocking back and forth.
Teo Nouvé spends most of his time learning about art and avoiding real work. He once got thrown out of class for “reading too much.”
Thomas Weaverling is a Journalism major that thinks he could figure it all out if he laid alone in a field for long enough.
Tyler Davis is a junior studying Journalism and Literature and is officially too far in to switch to a more “lucrative” field.
Zoe Moga is a sophomore studying Sociology and a lover of cats, bookstores, and long walks!
