AmLit Fall 2022

1 • Fall 2022

Inner Cover

American Literary Magazine • 2

Mission Statement

The American Literary Magazine, affectionately known as AmLit, is American University’s student-run literary and creative arts magazine. Striving to showcase the best student creative works, AmLit’s review process is anonymous and democratic, with genre editors leading open discussions. The AmLit community, also known as the AmFam, comes together each semester to share their love for the creative arts, host events, and design the publication. All copyrights belong to the artists.

Acknowledgements AmLit couldn’t happen without our dedicated staff members and our beloved AmFam. Thank you to all who came out to meetings, joined us for events, and submitted pieces. Because of you all, we are able to proudly display students’ creativity. Due to the unwavering support of the AU community, we are incredibly excited about the future of AmLit. A major thank you to our creative director, Hannah Sjovold, who worked tirelessly to bring the vision to life through their dedication and innovative techniques!

Shoutout to the art team and Nate Livingston for organizing our successful tote-bag painting event!

We had a wonderful time designing tote bags, listening to music, eating yummy snacks, and enjoying each other’s company. This event encompassed the spirit of AmLit! To our executive board, thank you for representing AmLit in the best way possible and approaching your tasks with the utmost positivity and ingenuity. We are appreciative of each and every one of you!

3 • Fall 2022

Longhorn Cow Julia Kane

Medium Statement: Linoleum print on paper

American Literary Magazine • 4

Letter from the Editors

It has been an honor to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of AmLit for the past two semesters.

We are so much more than a literary magazine; more importantly, we are a community. This magazine has become my home and safe place on this campus ever since the day I joined. I have witnessed the strength of the AmFam community in how we not only support one another, but foster love and creativity. Our welcoming and inclusive environment is the aspect I’m most proud of and it couldn’t have been possible without our devoted team members. AmLit will always hold a special place in my heart.

It has been such a pleasure watching our magazine grow and I cannot wait to see what the future holds!

With love, Jinger Callwood

… record scratch…

Nine months after the intended deadline for this edition of AmLit, you finally hold a copy in your hands or on a screen before you. We (the new trio of EICs of AmLit) would like to begin by apologizing to you for the great length of time you have waited, for the lack of communication at times, and general disorganization surrounding the publication of Fall 2022. While we can not speak to the stress or pressure that the previous Editor-In-Chief may have been under during that semester, we can take ownership of our decision to persevere with the Spring 2023 magazine before Fall 2022 was complete.

It was a hope that the continuation of the organization with the “next thing” would enable us to catch up without falling more behind. This may have come as a shock to all of those who had contributed or were staff in the past, but we hope you can understand. Now finally, we have filled in the gaps of work that AmLit has left in its wake. We tenderly offer you the Fall 2022 AmLit magazine, and thank you for bearing with us through the struggles of tying it all together.

With love, Anjoleigh, Charlotte, and Emma

5 • Fall 2022

“Escaped Balloons”, by Isabelle Ritz, pg 10-11 “A Sunrise Over the Horizon”, by Noah Heffernan, pg 13 “Isolation”, by Noah Heffernan, pg 14 “Unawares”, by Madeleine Roth, pg 17 “lofted summer”, by Lindsey McCormack, pg 22 “summer’s still, summer’s sky, summer’s storm”, by Emily Bass, pg 26-27 “little miracle”, by Emily Bass, pg 32 “Running to Ruggles”, by Isabelle Ritz, pg 42 “Abandoned”, by Madeleine Roth, pg 49 “i fell in love with movies”, by Lindsey McCormack, pg 55 “Untitled”, by McKenzie Taylor, pg 56-57 “Listen”, by Emily Bass, pg 63 “A Life of Angles”, by Isabelle Ritz, pg 66-67 “the one less traveled”, by Emily Bass, pg 71 “repetition”, by Emily Bass, pg 72 “Making Dreams a Reality”, by Isabelle Ritz, pg 78-79 “The Coming Storm”, by Emily Bass, pg 89 “Characters in Nature and Characters in Architecture”, by Fengyuan Chen, pg 92-93 “Before the Storm”, by Noah Heffernan, pg 96 “love for this place”, by Emily Bass, pg 99 “A Letter to My Younger Self”, by Nicole Flanagan, pg 12 “Pixelated Limbo”, by Anna Steinmeyer, pg 20 “12 AM at the Delacorte Supermarket”, by Brennan Woolley-Larrea, pg 28-29 “there’s good in goodbyes”, by Lindsey McCormack, pg 31 “Maracas Make Unsuitable Lullabies”, by Emma DiValentino, pg 35 “Entering the Garden”, by Bailey Hobbs & Madeleine Bartin, pg 44-45 “Mother I have Nothing”, by Fareha Abid, pg 51 “The House”, by Molly Stites, pg 54 “Season’s Unforgiving Hold”, by Olivia Traub, pg 62 “The Muse”, by Anna Steinmeyer, pg 74 “Himlen Elleve”, by Hannah Wines, pg 80-81 “Longhorn Cow”, by Julia Kane, pg 4 “Sloth”, by Hope Jorgensen, pg 9 “be that girl again”, by Macy Doll, pg 18 “In Spite of Sadness”, by Katherine Chang, pg 21 “Hydrangea Season”, by Audrey Magill, pg 25 “Still Life From Home”, by Abby St. Jean, pg 30 “Kore”, by Audrey Magill, pg 34 “tomato season”, by Heather Roselle, pg 37 “Figure Study”, by Abby St. Jean, pg 40 “Regatta”, by Julia Kane, pg 46 “How do you feel?”, by Katherine Chang, pg 50 “Pride”, by Audrey Magill, pg 53 “Judith Butler”, by Heather Roselle, pg 59 “Enjoy!”, by Julia Kane, pg 60 “Aura”, by Macy Doll, pg 69 “Auricle”, by Emmalynn Beck, pg 85 American Literary Magazine • 6

“body dysmorphic illuminations”, by Lily Nold, pg 8 “Uneventful Sorrow”, by Isabella Paracca, pg 8 “It is done.”, by Emmalynn Beck, pg 11 “Valhalla”, by Sara Wiser, pg 15 “Hunting.”, by Isabella Paracca, pg 16 “Girl”, by Sara Winick, pg 19 “End of July”, by Molly Stites, pg 23 “feral”, by Fareha Abid, pg 24 “REPLACE”, by Sam Rodilosso, pg 24 “Centuries”, by Anonymous, pg 33 “Somewhere Else to Know”, by Emily Bazin, pg 33 “a space-time message to my twelve-year-old self (9/8/22)”, by Liah Argiropoulos, pg 36 “Luca II (7/14/22)”, by Liah Argiropoulos, pg 38-39 “Blood Libel”, by Sara Wiser, pg 41 “Facades”, by Emily Bazin, pg 43 “horsefly”, by McKenna Casey, pg 47 “bound”, by Sara Winick, pg 48 “Eyelash Wishes”, by Olivia Traub, pg 52 “Poltergeist,” by Sam Rodilosso, pg 52 “soft peach,” by Stella Thé, pg 58 “Mind Palace”, by Emily Bazin, pg 58 “Marie’s”, by Katherine Bongiovanni, pg 61 “dearly departed”, by McKenna Casey, pg 64 “The Perfect Family Photo”, by Anonymous, pg 65 “At my funeral, there will be no flowers”, by Anna Steinmeyer, pg 65 “Inventory”, by Luke Stowell, pg 68 “Midnight in Friendship”, by Hannah Wines, pg 70 “Seasonal”, by Emily Barnes, pg 73 “stellarium”, by McKenna Casey, pg 75 “Lighthouse”, by Miriam Yarger, pg 76 “Untitled Poem, or I Suppose You May Call It A Love Letter”, by Charlotte Van Schaack, pg 76 “Summer of the Divine Feminine”, by Annika Rennaker, pg 77 “My Own Savior”, by Sara Wiser, pg 82 “nasty nineteen”, by McKenna Casey, pg 83 “Nobility”, by Luke Stowell, pg 84 “Please”, by Anonymous, pg 86 “Pomegranate”, by Emma DiValentino, pg 87 “If Comparison is a Killer”, by Nicole Flanagan, pg 88 “seven fish”, by Stella The, pg 90 “Hope at 11:38 PM on a Wednesday”, by Hannah Wines, pg 91 “Sophia (9/3/22)”, by Liah Argiropoulos, pg 94 “The night the moon smiled”, by Miriam Yarger, pg 95 “summertime love story”, by Stella The, pg 97 “Allow me to paint you a landscape”, by Miriam Yarger, pg 98

Content Warnings: Please be advised this magazine contains content that may be triggering to specific audiences and persons. These include: “body dysmorphic illuminations” (8), “Valhalla” (15), “be that girl again” (18), “Girl” (19), “there’s good in goodbyes” (31), “Blood Libel,” (41), “dearly departed” (64), “the perfect family photo” (65), “at my funeral, there will be no flowers” (65), “Aura” (69), and “Nobility” (84) 7 • Fall 2022

body dysmorphic illuminations Lily Nold

Content Warning: Body Image, Disordered Eating

A singular look Is all it took To crush my soul today.

I swear I’m not vapid Just sometimes I panic ‘Cause my eyes tend to gravitate to my waist.

It’s just a bad habit One of my secret talents Where I hide down the hall and don’t eat for days.

It might seem alarming But really it’s calming Noticing my ribs more and more every single day What does the audience think?

Why don’t we ask, “Who cares if I stare while my stomach is bare?”

The lights go out and we are met with deafening fanfare.

Uneventful Sorrow Isabella Paracca

I feel dreadful A sick kind of melancholy That races through the nerves Demanding to be heard Uneventful sorrow, it speaks Languish in me Lament in this restful solitude Into its arms I fall Such beauty enraptures me Earthly opulence feeds my misery For what can be beautiful without decay And what happiness Comes from complete despair?

American Literary Magazine • 8

Sloth

Hope Jorgensen

Medium Statement: Graphite and white gel pen

Escaped Balloons Isabelle Ritz

American Literary Magazine • 10

It is done.

Emmalynn Beck The trees broke open to expose the earth’s wound, a large abyss they called Lake Lago. Its small waves glistened yet barely made a sound.

Shadows of large pine trees were stamped into this flesh of water. Approaching I could feel the warmth radiating off its surface. The water was now at my knee, I stabbed my face deep below its surface, all its warmth had died, my body tingled as the cold crept over me.

11 • Fall 2022

A Letter to My Younger Self Nicole Flanagan

Meet me in the garden, where you planted sunflower seeds which refused to grow. Where you cried when Hurricane Irene wrecked Mom’s garden. The moment of pride at the sight of the first sunflower that survived.

When you learned to tie your shoelaces, the world must have stopped for a minute. Your joy illuminates my thoughts, memories of your smiling face grant me the comfort I so gently seek.

You struggled to whistle, pouting in frustration and eagerness. Eventually you got it, and I can hear the tune you recited with your father. He would start the melody, a known signal for you to finish. Sometimes you would giggle too hard at the silliness of your dad.

You would attempt to plaster on a straight face, but you would simply laugh more wildly.

You would frolic on the playground; it was called The Castle. Your favorite was the monkey bars, the ability to hoist yourself up there and swing your body around.

Joy was an innate part of your soul. An infectious disease to all around you. Emotion spilled out of your eyes, mouth, hands, and feet.

You were never one for subtleties or level-headedness. You jumped in headfirst, fearlessly, and smiled the whole way down. But most of all, your heart was twice the size of your body. You always knew what fulfilled you. The gift of loving and being loved. Even then, in your Sketchers and polka dot skirt, you just wanted to hug your mom and plan playdates with your friends. Get your big sister to play with you and snuggle with Ginger. Jump into your dad’s arms as he got home from work. Love oozed from your big brown eyes. Living never felt so easy.

Now I sit here glancing at the kids on the playground as I did last summer and the summer before. Surrounded by pleased flowers happily swaying in the summer wind. To swing on the monkey bars with no thoughts. To be naive without consequences and impulsive without judgment. To love freely and wholeheartedly without heartbreak. To soak in the times before love had a negative connotation and games were American Literary Magazine • 12

just hide-and-go-seek. Before I realized the world was not a playground but a war zone. Before my mind became a constant battlefield. I long for a life you have already lived, one we will not get back.

But still, I feel you on a sunny day when there is nothing to feel but content. I hear you whisper “it’s okay, we’ll be okay” on the days I ache for the lost people and time. I sense you cheering me on when I am nervous to speak up.

You remind me how wonderful I am when I hesitate to believe there is any meaning to my life.

Life became much more complex, ambiguous, and dark, and I may feel distant from you at times, but somehow, you are always with me. And finally, I can recognize your voice within the clamor of my thoughts.

Your vivacious heart still beats in me. Your big expressive brown eyes are with me as we watch the world together. Your hopeful spirit is in there somewhere, even if fear and insecurity hide her. I know my mind is harsh and the world is harsher, but we face them in unity. We grow older, we evolve, we change, but every version of ourselves resides within us. Every version of us has wisdom to guide us through. You are a sunflower seed of hope within me, and I will be sure to water it, give it sunshine, and fertilize it with my love. And we will blossom. Thunderstorms may flood our soil, hurricanes may damage our leaves, and tornadoes may tear us up entirely. Yet our roots will remain intertwined deep into this earth. And you and I will flourish again, my sunflower.

I still whistle that same tune with dad.

A Sunrise Over the Horizon Noah Heffernan

13 • Fall 2022

Isolation

Noah Heffernan

American Literary Magazine • 14

Valhalla Sara Wiser Content Warning: Death

If I die with a pen in my hand, I think I can make it.

All I ever do is write and write and write and write.

I know I’ve been bad.

I’ve prayed to other Gods, I’ve sinned, lied, cheated, and faked it more times than I can count.

I’ve let my body, my mind, and my soul be abused, Hated by both myself and others.

I’ve pumped my veins full of drugs and chemicals in the hopes of easing my pain.

I’m no saint.

I’m no martyr.

God, I hope I make it to heaven.

But if I can’t, maybe there’s another place for me.

If heaven isn’t the answer, maybe Valhalla is.

Lord knows, I’m a fighter.

I’ve lived my life clawing at my demons and crawling my way back from the brinks of the River Phlegethon, my eyes blazing with an inferno of heavenly fire.

If I die with a pen in my hand, I think I can make it.

My only weapon, my only refuge, the only thing that makes me feel alive.

I am a warrior of the Muses, a mistress of Tragedy, an effervescent apostle of artistry and creation.

I am heir to a legacy of pain and strife.

I am the daughter of Hell.

I am the product of sin between satin sheets.

I never stood a chance at being a girl good enough for the white pure place.

But make me a hero, Take me at my worst, And we might just make our fathers proud.

15 • Fall 2022

Hunting.

Isabella Paracca The predator shall become the prey Stalking in the fool’s domain Assured in wit, bold of heart A deer approached you in the dark It bit your soul straight out of you With blood that drips like rain on leaves The arrow shot into your ribs Bones of bliss and ignorance I could have sworn it was a man But you were just a fawn, a pawn Idling in complacency Your spotted back, unyielding youth Unbridled age, ancient rage The gambit’s slide into your mind A poker face of ideology The master’s play keeps you at bay While the stag lives on and wanders free its crown breaks through the mist and you’ll find it was you that was hunted So journey on into the storm Resist the tides that pull you And if godly power your soul to desire Then raise thy sword fan the flame to a fire

American Literary Magazine • 16

Unawares

Madeleine Roth 17 • Fall 2022

be that girl again Macy Doll

Content Warning: Profanity and hand gun symbols

Medium Statement: Acrylic on canvas Artist Statement: This painting is based off of the song “STFU!” by Rina Sawayama, which is a response to microaggressions.

The song parallels the desire to not rock the boat or cause problems by addressing the comments, but still feeling an incredible level of anger at the disrespect and wishing that you wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore.

American Literary Magazine • 18

Girl

Sara Winick Content Warning: Violence

Girl; Space buns at the rock show You tuck a knife in your back pocket, hold your best friend’s hand Girl; The man behind you, in front of you, beside you You drown out the voice in your head saying run with the echo of the guitar Girl; Grasping for a question you can’t pose, her palm warm in yours It’s the closest you may get to an answer Girl; A mess of sharply born words You only know how to cut—no one ever taught you to heal Girl; Anger is the closest thing To what fulfillment may feel like Girl; The pepper spray in your back pocket, brush past the bouncer You hold your best friend’s hand the whole way home Girl; Eyes misty with tears on the N4, Grateful for a softer night Girl; Knowing you got lucky, You got home Girl; Going to sleep knowing It could’ve been Much worse

19 • Fall 2022

Pixelated Limbo Anna Steinmeyer

There’s no clock that tells my time. My internal ticks grow quieter and quieter until time slows to a halt while the rest of the city sleeps. The blues of my screen effortlessly mix with the purple strip lights which line my walls. This neon-lit quiet wraps my body in its warm embrace as the night’s media of choice fills my ears. Tired becomes the thing of myths and legends and exhaustion is a close companion. I am resting, in a way. Lying down on my bed, comfy clothes on. Absorbed in the refuge of my polyester blend sheets. It does seem at times to be a stepping stone to sleep, but it’s the antithesis.

The artificial light of my beloved laptop transports me to a new realm. One where I have no obligations to anyone but pixelated fiction and all my dreams become reality. Every night I tune out the world and further break my clock.

Slipping out of time and into my screen. Willing the characters to whisk me away to anywhere, anywhere they want, anywhere else but here. I watch others achieve new heights in their fields.

Stories of top chefs and sports stars. Reality, comedy, heart-wrenching drama, whatever it takes to satisfy my fixation. Call it stress release, call it avoidance. I’ll call it pure bliss. Heaven, maybe but heaven would equal perfection, and this space is not without its flaws.

Though I know no time here, the real world still moves without me. One moment the sun is setting, the next it begins to rise, the shining

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beams illuminate the cookie-cutter dorm room that my roommate and I have so carefully curated to give the illusion of home. Then without a wink of sleep, I must trudge forward. It’s never fun the morning after. Dark circles are my latest indulgence and the ache for sleep is only pushed away by a variety of intensely caffeinated beverages. It’s like moving through molasses, the hours of sunlight. They tend to drag on with seemingly no relief. It’s the same room though.

The place where endless hours of Zoom and assignments call home is the same as the one I lust after in the dead of night. It’s the same twin-sized bed. Same poster-filled walls. Same scratchy rug. Yet everything changes in the daylight. Sanctuary becomes a cell. The bright sun seems to dim the vibrant hues of my nighttime oasis. And there’s no escaping the harsh realities of my life in this version of the space.

Maybe that’s why I go back to my digital limbo each night. It hurts me and takes a toll on my mind and my body, but I crave it like an addict craves a hit. When your reality is a harsh wasteland of empty dreams and unachievable goals, you take what you can get. So, against my better judgment, when the moon appears in the sky, I plug in my headphones and fall away from time.

In Spite of Sadness Katherine Chang Medium Statement: Digital painting

21 • Fall 2022

lofted summer Lindsey McCormack

American Literary Magazine • 22

End of July Molly Stites

A screenplay written out in words With directions for where to be What her face looks like A girl Waking in bed, the setting is morning Sun poking through gauzy curtains Stomach pain and pain and pain And walking to the bathroom The cold floor bringing her out of the trance of sleep Interrupted by red blood Nodding her head under the sink Swallowing the pain killers Scene break and pause for subtitles End of July End of the middle of the summer The warmth no longer feels like a sandwich No longer something to live inside But something that will come to an end Cut to Bathing suits drying in the bathroom Dripping with salty water They probably should have been rinsed Cut to Three girls in a bedroom Sleeping one by one by one Their dreams tying knots together Leaking from one brain to the next Camera pans to the ground And a pair of feet and legs Music comes on The melody familiar the words not And there’s dancing Bare feet in the grass Bare legs in the grass Beat Bare stomach lying amongst the flowers One ear pressed to the earth The other on the phone A boy on the line Whispering naughty thoughts Laughs echoing in reply A sunset The dimming of the day’s light End scene.

23 • Fall 2022

feral

Fareha Abid damp moist earth with a dark bitter taste packed in our throats all our words gone to waste cruel hands press down choking marks on our necks the language of silence as we’re put to rest lay us down shallow we’ll be back soon you’ve committed your crime can’t get away with it too we’ve been here before put out and cut down made to shrink and submit or we’re shoved in the ground another fist in our chest another knife at our spine dying’s just another way to pass along time the trick you’ll never find thanks to ego and conceit our graves should’ve disappeared you should’ve dug deep we may be used to dying but our deaths don’t come free the cost is rage and spite in spades mixed in with vicious glee knuckles burn bone white as we claw and tunnel through screams tear and rip the air as we’re born anew dirt caked under fingernails and flaking off our feet we smile with deadly flowers blooming in our teeth it’s the last thing you’ll ever see

REPLACE

Sam Rodilosso You were stripped Of that bountifully-fruited tree; Watchful eyes, and with them, A shelter. You hid within his gaze— Now blinded by eternal light.

And in the absence of your God, Fires burn around you. And, Where the heat twists the Earth A pair of hands outstretch. These hands, They know not of love, but lust— These hands are sheep, guided by A lonely shepherd.

The flames will never subside.

Sooner or later, you will see These fires cannot be extinguished By any Earthly being.

American Literary Magazine • 24

Hydrangea Season Audrey Magill Medium Statement: Digital art

25 • Fall 2022

American Literary Magazine • 26

summer’s sky summer’s storm Emily Bass

summer’s still 27 • Fall 2022

12 AM at the Delacorte Supermarket Brennan Woolley-Larrea The monotony of the mopping was getting to Steve. Into the bucket, out of the bucket, across the floor. Into the bucket, out of the bucket, across the floor. It was a Friday night and here he was, stuck working at the grocery store. All his friends were probably out getting drunk and vandalizing public property, but he was just plain old Steve. Nothing exciting ever happened to him.

Gary stood in the parking lot, giving himself one last chance to convince himself not to rob the store. He didn’t want to become a criminal, but he didn’t see any other choice. It was only a victimless crime, he told himself, and he had to feed his family somehow.

“Man down!” The cry rang out over the battlefield of the dairy aisle, as Sergeant Cheddar of the Bakery Rat Brigade was locked in fierce combat with a member of the Deli rats. Cheddar showed off his rat-years of experience by whipping the enemy in the eyes with his tail, blinding him long enough for Cheddar to run towards the source of the distress call.

Steve’s phone died, and the music in his earbuds stopped along with it. Great, now not only was he stuck mopping on a Friday night, but he would have to mop in silence. There was no way this night could get any worse. Finished with the snack aisle, he took his mop and bucket towards the dairy aisle.

Sergeant Cheddar reached the fallen soldier, Private Whiskers. Cheddar held Whiskers close,

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trying to put pressure on the wound, but it was too late. Why did it have to be him? He had a litter due any day now. War is hell.

Gary popped open the trunk and retrieved the crowbar he’d wrapped in a towel. He’d give anything to live in a world where people like him weren’t driven to do things like this. But he had people he was responsible for, so leaving this world wasn’t an option.

What the hell was this? Steve stumbled upon at least a dozen rats fighting over an opened package of cheese in the aisle. He batted his mop at them a few times to get them to scatter, and threw the cheese in the garbage where it belonged. Gross, but at least there had been something to break up the monotony.

One of the Titans of Old had disrupted the battlefield, replacing bloody order with a bloodier chaos. Sergeant Cheddar had managed to regroup with three of the newer recruits, far from the aisle of warfare. They looked so young, so shell-shocked. Cheddar wouldn’t let what happened to Whiskers happen to any other soldiers.

He had to break this cycle of violence. He would need to take these men beyond the Fluorescent Realms.

Gary felt the strain of the door frame as he pried the backdoor open. He tried to clear his mind and focus on what he was doing, because if he thought about what he was becoming then he’d want to puke. He silently prayed there was no one inside, and wouldn’t have to use the

crowbar for anything more than forced entry.

There was a loud noise as the lock gave way.

Had someone opened the door? Steve clearly remembered locking it earlier, which is why he walked so quickly through the aisles, gripping his mop. Yes it was open, and there was a man standing there. A man holding a crowbar. A man who locked eyes with Steve. Did Steve see fear, or malice behind them? Before he could find out, the man’s attention was drawn to something else.

ran. No time to go back for it, that acne-ridden teen in the store had spotted him, and was probably calling the cops. This was a sign; he’d have to find some other way to keep his family afloat.

Steve closed the broken door as best he could, then got in his car and headed home. The next day, he would ask his boss for better hours.

“Charge my brethren! The gates have been breached!” Cheddar shouted as he led his men out of the linoleum prison where his kind were birthed and killed. There was a Titan guarding the New World, yet the intimidating sight of the Cheddar Brigade forced him to flee. Only after several rat-hours of running did Cheddar finally allow himself to stop and breathe. They had done it, reached the place which Cheddar hoped knew nothing about the horrors of war. As he looked up at the expansive sky he saw that for once he was seeing light not from an electric facade, but from an extraterrestrial ball of cheese.

Rats. Why did it have to be rats? At the sight of the vermin, Gary dropped his gear and

29 • Fall 2022

Still Life From Home Abby St. Jean Medium Statement: Acrylic on canvas

American Literary Magazine • 30

there’s good in goodbyes Lindsey McCormack Content Warning: Grief

The day I called you for the very last time I was already in a state of mourning. Maybe it was for the best that you could only fit a few words in. Otherwise, I would have risked telling you the truth about my current state. Instead, our final exchange was an “I love you,” a privilege I had not been accorded in what still felt like the recent past. It was the grayest time of year and the darkest point of my life. In the month that followed our final words, I waited anxiously.

The impending doom that I was about to take yet another blow was looming. It filled me with fear and selfishly perhaps I did not want to let you go. When I could finally feel the weight of my sadness again, the phone rang. It was like the cliché and I knew before words were spoken that you were gone. The mourning process would begin again, stacking itself upon layer after layer of grief. Temporarily, I would be over my head in bereavement. How could I carry so much weight when both the start and the beginning were lost?

The night before your funeral I sat on the porch catching up with the cousins. They were all so much older now. Proper adults. I was hit with a pang of guilt. It had been so long since I saw them. It had been so long since I saw you. Still, we laughed, and as noise filled the home small pieces of you floated among us. Usually, reminders of the past two years were overwhelming,

but on the eve of your funeral they crept into every conversation and somehow none of it felt heavy.

The following morning, as I faked my way through a Catholic service, my lungs were slow to fill. I missed you. I missed many people and many things. I do not remember any of the hymns sung as the hour ticked by. Nor do I remember the words that fell off the priest’s tongue but I do remember the feeling that came with missing. Afterward, a group of firefighters met us outside. They had heard of your death and wanted to pay respect to one of their own.

Their bell rang out three times. With each chime, a lump made its way further up my throat. You were truly gone. The third chime of this procession is meant to represent the end of a firefighter’s service. It is a closure on their life and career. As I walked back to the car I would smile.

A formal goodbye had occurred and for at least a moment, things were finally coming into focus.

31 • Fall 2022

little miracle Emily Bass

American Literary Magazine • 32

Somewhere Else to Know Emily Bazin

Embers rise, floating in the sky.

Wind carries them, swirls the faint light. I let my body sink slowly into the snow, and begin to hone in on the crackle of the fire as voices around me blur. For the peaks of the mountains are perfectly shrouded by trees.

I imagine a village within them waiting for me. It’s easy to leave, to be captured by The Starry Night.

To look up at the sky and become mesmerized by the bright gleaming lights. To pretend that my body is melting into the snow. To find myself yearning for somewhere else to know. Perhaps one day I will make it to the village, and look at these same stars.

Centuries Anonymous

I wish I could push you towards the sky so that you might fall down again and land upon my breast and drive me so deep into the soil that we lay undiscovered for centuries.

33 • Fall 2022

Kore

Audrey Magill Medium Statement: Digital art

Maracas Make Unsuitable Lullabies Emma DiValentino

At the breakfast table, while my family slurped their cereal, I told them how her wings fluttered so fast I could hardly see them like a hummingbird’s. I told them how her hair appeared strategically uncombed as it landed lightly on her shoulders; how it bounced slowly as she moved, as if she was entirely unbound, even to time.

When I was young, my family anxiously awaited the moment they’d hear my footfalls, landing in offbeat skips as I made my way down to the kitchen. Now, I hesitate to tell the stories at all. By seventeen, I am no longer my parent’s creative, adorable storyteller. By eighteen, I am their daughter: a “potentially crazy” troublemaker that despite their efforts, simply cannot get a grip. My brother that once beamed excitedly and leaned in as close as possible to me, hoping that if he clothed himself in my presence, the fairy would visit him too; now makes a point of avoiding his embarrassing, delusional sister in the hallways at school–only speaking to me to ask me to buy him cigarettes or to aid his cover story to our parents. I tell him cancer will kill him. He shrugs and we walk the five minutes to the corner store. It’s become our Friday night routine.

I have a drawer that rattles with each opening–stocked to the brim with prescription drugs; it’s become a makeshift maraca. Most of them are from outdated treatment plans, but I keep them. I like how they’ve become a part of my mornings: throw on a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and open my drawer of maracas to remind myself that I am not crazy. Despite attempts made by my parents and my doctors to drown out the fairy with prescription drugs, each night I see her through eyelids heavy with sedation, sitting on my windowsill––a tiny being of resistance.

Lately, she’s taken to singing the blues. On the days when I am awake enough to listen, she tells me stories of her travels and of the extraordinary people and beings she has met. She’s the only being that still treats me like a human and not like some feral thing to be dealt with and endured.

Each morning, I get dressed and take my medication because at the end of the day, I know she will still be there.

At sunset, I will prop open my window and wait in the darkness, letting the cool air caress my skin. Before long she will flutter in on the breeze. And when the two of us are only shadows lit by starlight and her sweet lullabies, we will be together as two things that should not exist.

35 • Fall 2022

a space-time message to my twelve-year-old self (9/8/22) Liah Argiropoulos

In case you were wondering, I still listen to sad music on public transportation Especially when the weather starts to dip Into orange lamp and throw blanket territory I don’t really care for snow anymore, I do still cry on most holidays, though I’m sure it’s not for the same reasons you do I wish my parents could still hug me exactly when I need it (Seriously, take advantage of that) And I often do still feel like I’m too funny for my own good, Like there’s a cellophane screen Between me and the world around me.

(Can anyone else see it?)

I still listen to Franz Ferdinand And I hear your goofy laugh in the drum-n-bass intros Before we’d trained it away into a conventional giggle The way you’d “forget” to take your makeup off on Friday nights So you could pretend you’d spent the night clubbing, or whatever the big girls did Really, you’d just cried yourself to sleep I go to parties dressed as you now, trying To make up for whatever we thought we’d lost Sloppy braids and messy eyeliner, Slamming back shots and still feeling twelve You wanted to be a rhythm guitarist with a candy apple red Fender Stratocaster Footsteps crunching in the two-day-old snow as you pretended you were running away I still don’t know what you were running from I don’t think I’ll ever know what you were running from But in my dreams, you’re still running.

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tomato season

Heather Roselle

37 • Fall 2022

Luca II (7/14/22) Liah Argiropoulos I July 14th, 2014 I wrote the date On an unopened can of Coca-Cola Share a Coke with your soulmate.

It’s still buried deep in my childhood closet Somewhere, in the hopes that I’d become a twentysomething bombshell, Or at least not that klutzy twelve-year-old anymore, Obsessed with soulmates, the idea that Some Man, somewhere, would Consider me the only girl on the planet, And dance with me in the kitchen, And I’m really not sure I got any further than that in my description.

And now I’m twentysomething but I’m no bombshell, Still klutzy and no longer twelve but Permathirteen, Long-surrendered Dreams of growing up to be a Beastie Boy, Some dumb girl held together by Liz Phair and knee braces, Subtweets juxtaposing my friends saying you got this, Veruca Salt and pink sunglasses.

We’re not sharing that fuckin’ Coke, Half ‘cuz it’s probably fuckin’ moldy by now, Half ‘cuz it says In the Instruction Manual To Being My Boyfriend We’re not sharing drinks.

And you don’t touch me, Apart from shoulder taps and Pulling me by the arm out of harm’s way, And maybe an affectionate gesture On weekends and holidays But only when I initiate it.

‘Cuz my therapist I ghosted said Love is friendship caught on fire But I think I misinterpreted Because I’m not burning alive And actually I’m not even warm, It’s kinda like when you were little and You were really cold at recess or whatever And you’d visualize a fireplace In that part of your imagination Right behind your eyelids, Some nondescript brick walls and a pile of logs, A mantle with faceless photos, And it would trick you into thinking you were warm.

I think that’s what’s going on.

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II The first time it happened, I was seventeen, Fresh-faced, a baby Enamored with some other seventeen year old, Luca, the boy who sat next to me At my three-day Model UN conference, An Italian basketball star on crutches, He’d make the league one day, you know it.

We galavanted around Dupont Circle, Lost in DC only because I didn’t live there yet, And I couldn’t tell the world was going to end Because his eyes were really, really blue and His jacket was really, really green and He went back home to Verona that Sunday night And I forced myself to cry about it.

And there was something in me that was still like Luca, I’m gonna call you after school every day Luca, I’m watching tonight’s Clippers game Luca, I want to visit you in Italy, Luca I think we’re tooootally endgame (I didn’t send that last one) Even though I saw the other girls In his Instagram comments, topless on beaches, The girls he flirted with when I wasn’t looking, and I know I wasn’t looking quite often, I’m klutzy, Like I said, but anyway,

It’s three years later now, and Luca II, from Mykonos With a different name, still A star basketball player (I think my feigned fire at least has a type) There are girls in your Instagram comments And topless on the beach you work at And I don’t know why I’m trying so hard I’m permathirteen, after all, and you’re A Man, attainable I’m forcing myself to watch Mario Hezonja highlights, even though I hate him And I can’t really place why And I can’t really place why I’m doing any of this Feigning fire again, Trying to deify him, Luca II, And telling myself I’m trying not to, How romantic?

And I know you’re gonna play me, Screw me, But my parents high-five ‘cuz I’m burning alive, and My sister smiles smugly because I finally Figured out how to start a fire, After twenty years, god damn it My friends are cheering me on From international sidelines I’m the Olympic Torch, immortal But you can’t feel any heat radiating off me, can you?

39 • Fall 2022

Figure Study Abby St. Jean

Artist Statement: This piece was painted of a model from life over the course of 6 painting sessions.

Medium Statement: Acrylic on canvas

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Blood Libel Sara Wiser

Content Warning: Genocide, Violence, Death

I can’t be kind to myself. I don’t have it in me to be kind, not when the images haunt my mind of six million of my tribe buried alive with gunshot wounds in their sides. I see these at age five and think: This is my purpose in life. These images of bodies torn apart and human bones protruding through moving sacks of skin and shit and blood and fluids and ash.

I burn my curls to a crisp and grow horns and I change my name and kill your savior because if all you see is a monster then how could I be anything else? How could I ever dream of anything but blood?

We are Gd’s chosen children who inherit pain. We are Gd’s chosen children who inherit suffering and indignity and who have our bodies stripped and flayed alive and hunted and haunted and burned. We are Gd’s chosen children who inherit nothing but a prayer in a minor key and the scorched feet of forty years of wandering the desert.

I shake with rage and I quake with pain and it’s all I can do to keep myself alive because for five thousand years my people have been exiled and killed and raped and the victims of genocide and for five thousand years we have been denied the right to be seen as human beings and have been called witches who eat Christian children and maybe I want to eat you maybe I want to suck your blood and make all the libel true because if they insist I practice host desecration and consume men it might as well be you.

41 • Fall 2022

Running to Ruggles Isabelle Ritz American Literary Magazine • 42

Facades Emily Bazin

Insomnie On every street lamp, on every corner, a large gray speaker. The same song echoes, crescendos, amplified by the imposing height of the buildings. People dance on the rooftops, dance in the street.

For they know it’s the allure of their city.

Even if it means blaring melodies and no sleep.

Feare At the peak of a mountain, with a snowy top, buildings are clumped together, compact to preserve space. White puffy clouds serve as the only scenery. The inhabitants are told that they live in the sky. Supposedly, if they were to leave, they would plummet to the uncertain ground.

Some grow weary and depart through clouds, never again to be seen.

Hideene Tourists remark on the golden sidewalks, how every business is lined with flowers.

In the middle of the city lies a forest where deer and rabbits frolic in seeming harmony. No pollution to be seen.

The discarded are sent down chutes, beneath the city. Where the garbage piles high.

Longinege Giving way to the city’s center, a cascading waterfall flows into a large reflecting pool.

Its centerpiece, a grand fountain that emulates the very waterfall that feeds it.

Silver, clean, pristine, polished, just as perfect as the window-lined skyscrapers that allow onlookers to watch as children toss their coins in and wish.

43 • Fall 2022

Entering the Garden In the garden, the plants grow thick in a jungle of twisting vines and tough stalks, shading a community of hunters and parasites in the earth below. Weeds and other invaders creep up from the ground and suck the nutrients and life out of the coarse dirt.

The creatures of the garden hide in the leaves and the brush, careful never to reveal themselves. As insects and critters gnaw away at the flesh of the plants and weeds, predators wait patiently for them to get greedy or complacent.

Birds circle overhead cawing shrill war cries before feasting on unsuspecting worms and grubs.

Mother Nature is no friend to the garden.

Those organisms that mistake the sun for a patron wither away in scorching heat, those that mistake the rain for nourishment drown in angry storms. The smart creature recognizes a gentle wind as a whispered warning, the foolish topple or break in heaving gusts.

Competition is fierce; the tomato plants must race desperately towards the sky to catch a ray of sunlight. Opportunistic seedlings never hesitate to smother or starve their mothers and

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fathers, while plants that are too slow or too weak falter and then fail, struggling until the moment they get swallowed up by the same earth that birthed them.

The garden has no master and no guarantees. Plants that flourish one season fall victim to fungi and disease the next. Delicious fruits are ravaged the second they ripen. Even the iron wires that hope to contain the garden allow fleeing seeds to escape and creatures to come and go as they please.

The battle never stops, the predators, the prey, the plants, the elements, all locked in an eternal struggle for dominance. Civilizations form and then fall to stronger ones, temporary allies become enemies, and years of progress are erased in a moment. The second life is created, it is threatened, and yet, it persists; the weeds and the pests always return, new seeds become towers of vegetation, eggs hatch, and rotting fruit becomes fuel for future soldiers. Life becomes death and then life again, over and over.

Bailey Hobbs & Madeleine Bartin Looking at the garden was stepping into a painting. Careful brushstrokes were framed by the border of the fence, broken only by a gate that swung open smoothly on well-oiled hinges.

The path of the garden was swept of stray dirt, the weeds were snapped away with roots intact and the tomatoes shone without bites or bruises. If a work of art is organized, so too was this garden. The fence maintained this organization, not tall enough to block the sunlight that filtered in over the leaves of the plants, but sturdy enough to block any view of the blank wall beyond the painting.

Bowed branches danced in the breeze. Like the breeze, their dance was gentle. They stepped in tune, never passing beyond the little wooden borders that divided their section of the garden from the others. They quivered in harsh winds but any heavy fruit that dropped to the path below was quickly removed. Through squinted eyes, verdant boxes blurred but did not touch.

Looking closely, shadowed by the plants, delicate insects crawled over the soil. Some beetles were small enough to whisper up stalks without

bending them.

This garden was an oasis. It was bright in its abundance, an ideal image, built to contain only wants and nothing more. When the fence was unlatched and pushed open, there was immediate peace in the security of the space. Noises outside were muted, leaving only the chirping of small birds, the buzzing of bees. The plants lavished in their own security, a life free of hungry animals.

To enjoy the space, the bench near the gate allowed a broad view of the scene. With their back to the frame of the fence, a viewer could see only the strokes of green and rich brown.

Designed with purpose and maintained as it aged, the garden was forever alive. Each manicured detail pointed only to delicate balance. Attention prevented chaos.

45 • Fall 2022

Regatta

Julia Kane

Medium Statement: Line etching and aquatint on paper

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horsefly

McKenna Casey A horsefly lands on my towel and I watch as its wings twitch, how it angles its meaty body this way and that, its dance dangerous to me only because I know what it is, only because I’ve been bitten before.

I remember the game we played on the blowup trampoline: someone shouts “horsefly!” and we run, scattering like prey animals – the trick is don’t think just jump – clearing the edges by a foot or more then gravity remembers us and suddenly there’s the cold clear shock of the lake.

We would pull ourselves back up the ladder, slimy with algae, laughing.

I had this overflowing pride that I did it, that I was like them, despite our growing differences: my hair, my bathing suit, my hobbies, my confidence.

When did the boys stop expecting me to be like them?

No, that’s not fair, that’s not the right question.

When did I stop trying to prove that I was?

I didn’t want to be like my mother and my aunt, on the dock while everyone else was in the water.

Yet here I am, only my mom and my aunt are gone along with the others.

I am alone, the horsefly and me, and it’s not because I’m a girl, it’s not because I’m the youngest, it’s because I’m me.

I want to play horsefly again. I want to be ten again, getting stung for the first time and refusing to cry because the boys never did.

I watch without moving as the insect zips away, leaving me behind.

47 • Fall 2022

“this was bound to happen,” they say and my christmas tree coloring page sits pretty next to the menorah at home the teacher didn’t have time to find the “non-christmas” type drawings and i figured, it’s hard to color the candles in anyways “this was bound to happen,” they say and i’m hiding in the bathroom, sixth grade, sixth period i didn’t know what a holocaust was until then and the teachers didn’t waste anytime launching into it i took baths for months afterwards, staring at the showerhead from the tub faucet my mind couldn’t help seeing gas where there was only water “this was bound to happen,” they say but it’s typical to be on the receiving end of Hitler salutes and penny jokes during the world wars unit sophomore year no, i don’t have a “shekel to spare” “this was bound to happen,” they say where there’s a swastika carved into the wall of the bathroom stall in one of my university buildings under the freshmen dorm — they use it for classrooms, i had my fiction workshop there every wednesday — anyway admin. says; possible antisemitic graffiti “this was bound to happen,” they say and by now, i guess i should know that like i know how many times everyone looks back, how many times, i ask myself why i bother i can only find comfort in looking forward “this was meant to happen” they say and i guess that must be true i find that, lately, i’m bound by all the things i never thought i could be American Literary Magazine • 48

bound

Sara Winick

Content Warning: Anti-Semitism

Abandoned Madeleine Roth 49 • Fall 2022

How do you feel?

Katherine Chang Medium Statement: Digital painting

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Mother I have Nothing Fareha Abid

my friends come over and i have nothing left to give them mother you always said i had to serve my guests with water to start with. then fruits. maybe some nuts and tea and biscuits if i could. mother you always called it good manners. and discipline. and that it doesn’t look nice if you have nothing in provision. then my friends come over. and i ask if they’d like anything. i don’t expect them to say blood. i don’t expect them to pick through parts of my anatomy and choose the organs they specifically like. and abandon the ones they don’t. and eventually just leave. with the front door ajar for all the neighbors to see. mother my arms are too short to gather all this bodily contamination. in time. and always in vain. it feels like i am looking for a needle amidst a haystack on fire. it feels like the fire is looking for me. or my fragmented body. or a structured silhouette of my senescent memory. mother if you saw me for more than a minute you would never want to hold me. so maybe it is a good thing you never looked at me at all. because when i pick my abyss off your rug tonight i will sing your favorite lullaby. and when you return i will continue to appall. my friends came over and i handed over the last of my pieces. the neighbors ask me to stop singing a lullaby that has no meaning. mother why didn’t you teach me the words? in a premeditated downfall of my inherited surname i beg them to tell you it hurts. my friends come over and i have nothing left to give. except a rotting corpse on a splintered porch sputtering the language of your worst sins. mother when you return home could you please leave the words to the lullaby on the fridge? mother when you return home would you please close the front door i don’t like the way those neighbors look at me mother - mother please i have nothing i have nothing i have nothing i have nothing i have nothing i have nothing i have nothi 51 • Fall 2022

Eyelash Wishes Olivia Traub

One day I’ll forget about what could have been If our eyelash wishes came true Painting our fingers red with raspberries Touching each other’s face like napkins in our laps You’d flip the pages of my book with those same stained fingers Dyeing my pages red to make a relic of this moment When we were young and inseparable and the air was warm We embraced our sticky skin and tired eyes My dear, the space you left is still thick and ruthless

Poltergeist Sam Rodilosso When you die, Will you speak to me Through lines in the dust?

Or how about A flicker light, or A brush on the shoulder?

“What we have— It’s beyond a cartoon Airing in late October.

I could hold hands With a ghost For the rest of my life.”

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Pride

Audrey Magill Medium Statement: Digital art

53 • Fall 2022

The House Molly Stites

It was the deepest part of the winter. February, or early March, in Maine. For some reason, Mother Nature had decided to hold off snowing all through December and January, but her violent dumping began the minute the four of us moved into the rental house. Four teenagers, living in an Airbnb together. No experience, limited street smarts, and at least a foot of snow every week. It piled up around us, making the already dimly lit house even darker. We played in it, frolicking around like kids, forgetting about the constant sadness that filled the news and flowed from our screens at a scary pace. We buried our hope for the future, for headlines about vaccines and colleges reopening, under piles of fresh powder, not ready to face the possibly for the optimism that could bring just yet. We were hesitant to imagine joy in the world outside the four walls of our safe haven.

So we shoveled, and scraped, and painfully rearranged our cars in the now perpetually frozen dirt driveway. And our boots tracked in snow, and our coats were left hanging to dry.

Soup was cooked, and eaten quickly. Tea and hot chocolate were drank. And we weathered the storm. The nights were late, and the mornings were early, waking up to log onto online classes, to pretend some part of us had moved on from high school. To feel like we weren’t stuck.

Reading, and writing, and drinking a bit too much champagne. Laughing with friends. And sometimes there was more than just friendship. A kind of bond forming secretly, away from watchful eyes. Feet tucked under legs at the end of the blue velvet couch. Heads resting on shoulders, eyes closing, pretending to be asleep. Touches that lingered longer, hugs that felt like they were begging for something more.

I spent that month living in an attic room. It was a bedroom, but really felt more like an attic. I had gathered a few belongings from home to decorate as if it was a blank dorm room

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for me to personify. In reality, it was an attic room with stuffed animals and dolls shoved in the closet, and photos of another person’s kids on the dresser. I watched the snow out the window. I laid in bed next to my friend, her words mirroring mine, us laughing at nothing. I watched my other friend wave goodnight in the hallway each night. I opened my journal, and wrote about how even in these close quarters, I still felt like I was fighting for his attention.

The nights in the house are what hold the most weight in my memory. Valentine’s day, we threw a little party in the evening. Pink drinks, and candy hearts, and cute outfits that no one but the four of us would see. Or the night we played hide and seek. Turned off all the lights, so the house that already teetered on creepy, turned into straight horror. I followed him in the dark, our hiding friends an excuse to touch his back, grab onto his hand, sending signals I wasn’t sure he could understand. Or the night none of us could sleep because anxiety took over our thoughts and filled the house like smoke, and the three of us girls piled into the big bed on the first floor and talked about how we were convinced the dryer was letting off toxic fumes.

It wasn’t. We called home, they said it wasn’t.

Or the night that we stayed up til 3 a.m. talking about nothing, talking in circles, taking breaks to close our eyes, because we just didn’t want it to end. That night I closed my eyes on his shoulders, because it seemed like the minute we left the house, we would be no longer.

The month passed the way time always does, snow melting along with the cushion of our frozen reality. And we were sad. For once during that still year, we had been thankful for the stillness. It felt purposeful, within our control. But now it was time to go. We packed up our things, cleaned out the fridge, and hugged each other.

Careful not to slip on the icy driveway as we walked out, we stepped back into the world that had been waiting all along, heading back home, or into masked residence halls. Him and I were the last ones out that morning. We hugged with hesitation, and locked the empty house behind us, wondering how much was left inside, and what we would take with us.

i fell in love with movies Lindsey McCormick

55 • Fall 2022

Untitled

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McKenzie Taylor

57 • Fall 2022

There’s a softness with the way I am the way I appear to exist.

I want it to seem as though I am a peach, with skin so thin someone could take a bite.

But when I am without my heart and my breath has been taken from me, I am hard and I am strong.

soft peach Stella Thé

I will wait for you to come again and you must wait until I soften because for you, I will.

At first, I think of glass.

The kind that is tinted with the faintest shade of blue.

Its beauty provides the illusion that with one press of the thumb, the glass would begin to tremble and break into millions of fragments.

No, humans are more complex than that.

The palace has a steel foundation, sturdy, strong, supports what is so fragile.

Mind Palace Emily Bazin

Mine is built with old worn planks and cracked sheetrock.

In the middle of the foyer, there’s a pond with dead fish. Beneath the murky surface leads to an endless abyss. A sign warns: Be Careful Not to Fall In. Somehow, I always do.

Like the sound of a cello string snapping, when I’m here I am being split in two, ripped apart from room to room.

Trapped in a space with endless corridors and rickety stairs.

I do not exist in a world of glass palaces and clear ponds.

There is no steel foundation that combats my fragility.

But, what brings me comfort, even as I navigate the halls of my unusual home, is the gut feeling that many live in places just like mine.

That I am not alone.

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Judith Butler Heather Roselle Medium Statement: Acrylic on canvas

59 • Fall 2022

Enjoy!

Julia Kane Medium Statement: Line etching and aquatint on paper

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Marie’s

Katherine Bongiovanni Young skin tickled by salty air, Sunburn cooled by cotton.

Scent of green apple wafts from wet hair, Smooth plastic toys and gritty sand forgotten When Mom calls.

Shirley Temple spilled on the wood, Popcorn chicken dunked in barbecue sauce.

Ice cream promised if behavior is good, Apples crushed until all shape is lost Smell like cinnamon.

Sandaled feet swing above the floor, Kids’ menu crayon wrappers scattered beneath.

Water reflects the setting sun once more, Flashes of cold sting our teeth As sprinkles fall.

Disintegrating paper straws, Stained by pink grenadine.

Time and loss now cause The more melancholy scene Awaiting her now.

Feet firmly placed, Napkin pressed in her lap.

A wide smile faked and she is braced, Staring at the obvious gap Where he should be.

61 • Fall 2022

Season’s Unforgiving Hold Olivia Traub

Today I laid down next to a rolling tide.

With my eyes closed listening to heavy waves, I savored the sun caressing my body in places that only come out during the summertime. I adorn my waist with rocks as big as my fingernails, rising and falling with the breath of relief.

Relief that winter is a memory and I can feel the sand between my toes. I feel naive and beautiful, foolish enough to believe that I can hear seagulls inside of seashells and the sun would never betray me so long as I let it touch me. ...

I’ve never gotten along well with seasons.

She is strong and unforgiving, showing up in ways beyond my control and never apologizing for the inconvenience it may cause me. I think it’s understood that we’re only friends in the summertime, when she doesn’t mind my bare skin and I don’t mind hers. I let her hug me without warning and she takes her time holding me.

Her warm hands feel familiar and I never want to let go, I think maybe she’ll bring me home.

On our way, she skips the street of solace that I’ve seen a million times, the one I swear we pass every year while she argues there’s a better one ahead. Almost instantly her limp wrists drape over the steering wheel and season’s hands turn cold. Every time I move, she’s there to remind me of her power, grabbing my shoulders relentlessly. It takes what feels like years to heal from those bruises; marks from a season that struck me hard and held me firmly.

It seems like she’s always taking me on these trips, amusing herself with the amount of times I begin to cry because I can’t handle the change no matter how frequently it comes. I miss the age when the seasons weren’t scary, when I felt safe in her arms and I didn’t have to brace myself for a dark winter that would force

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me beneath my sheets and strip my body of impressions from a sun who loved to kiss. Afterall, there was a time when I was young where I refused to put sunscreen on my cheeks. I’d say that the freckles on my face made from careless sunburns were proof the sun loved me and this love only comes once a year.

I want to bottle up the feeling of sunlight against my skin, put it in the pocket of my favorite jeans to sit there with old wrappers, receipts, and other things I hang onto for too long.

I want to save it for the days in the winter when the wind bites my cheeks and only the sun’s kiss can cover those scars. To pull out and remember to savor the seasons. But we all know the leaves fall off, become dry, and renew themselves all over again. The seasons aren’t meant for saving ...

Today I lied down next to the hum of my washing machine. I’m on top of sheets just pulled out of the dryer, crisp and warm like a towel on the beach. I pretend the rocking of my laundry being cleaned is the same rhythm as ocean waves, surrendering myself to the pull of the tide. I turn to my side to watch the snow falling over me, but if I squint hard enough I can see the sun reaching for a hug. I pick at the black polish over my fingernails while I think of the times when winter was a memory and I believed the sun would never betray me.

Listen

Emily Bass

63 • Fall 2022

dearly departed McKenna Casey Content Warning: Death

I feel like I’m haunting my own house.

My mother jumps when I speak, says I scared her. Says I’m sneaking around.

I was here the whole time.

Maybe I died in my bedroom, got tangled up in my heated blanket and hand-me-down comforter and suffocated. Maybe I fell asleep in the shower and fell and hit my head.

Maybe I overdosed.

I don’t know why I would still be here. The only unfinished business I have is an English essay.

I wander the halls. I decide whether I want the floor to creak under me or not, and step accordingly.

I cry in my bathroom. I cry in my mother’s bathroom. Perhaps she’s a skeptic now, maybe that’s why she doesn’t notice.

I wonder about my own funeral in a way I haven’t done in years. I dream about it. I get angry and slam things, another vengeful spirit with nowhere to put her anger.

If I’m dead, someone should donate my clothes.

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The Perfect Family Photo Anonymous

Content Warning: Body Image, Eating Disorders

My grandmother lost twenty pounds and doesn’t she just look so good and my cousin is built from bird bones and ripped paper skin and I once went a whole year without eating salad dressing and my auntie has a little black band that tells her to walk more more more and some people say hunger feels like success which I never understood because hunger is the bleach-smell in the hospital and the rubber band around your wrist instead of hair because your hair just keeps thinning and hunger is your mother’s shaking hand as she tells you to eat, please all while she uses calorie-free avocado spray and leaves the olive oil untouched.

At my funeral, there will be no flowers Anna Steinmeyer Content Warning: Death

At my funeral, there will be no flowers, No more life cut short to mourn my wilted body.

At my funeral, there will be no epitaphs, No sugar coating my sinful soul, relish the truth, and know I died as I lived.

At my funeral, there will be those who outlived me, No more age will mare me, I live in on in the wrinkles of their skin.

Those who die young have no will to leave.

No instructions to follow, no legacy left behind.

Too young to gather any possessions, too young to realize any meaning, But wasted potential hurts me less than squandered opportunity.

65 • Fall 2022

A Life of Angles Isabelle Ritz

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67 • Fall 2022

I have no idea how to mind my own business.

I am much more interested in your or her business than in my own business: Why did you wear that last night and who were you trying to impress did you impress them and will you love love love them dog-human-wise, how kind we are to dogs martian mannequins of animal imminence, and will he she they recognize your imminence or the animal only?

I have all of this sorted out, in your business I am much more interested: Did you shit the bed last night and why won’t you say, are you embarrassed because you shit the bed, or are you embarrassed because of the shit shit shit you’ve been putting to bed all your life and is it impolite to speak of shit?

I have this all sorted out, I am much more interested in your business: Were you naked last night for even a brief moment did you get to see what you look like and could you tell me what you look like, or does it merely register?

Luke Stowell

Inventory I have all of this sorted, his or her business is much more interesting: How did you call last night when you were occupied out of will, or will you call when you are in jail and did you commit your crime at last, have you forgotten to bend so much that now you break, we should have bent together, will you pick up what are your plans for the summer would you like to pick up every once in a while?

This I have sorted out: Put on the softest, reddest, fastest shoes you can find and find me in the middle: no business in the middle, you, only kindness and apathy; you, I will be kind to you, dog, he, she, they, you, me, middle; only kindness and apathy to sort you and to unsort me!

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Aura

Macy Doll Content Warning: Guns Medium statement: Acrylic on canvas

69 • Fall 2022

Midnight in Friendship Hannah Wines

I remember him rounding the corner in the late hours of tired, damp night rough wood and smooth iron juxtaposing beneath my legs as I sat stiff with the pit in my stomach and courage sticking to my heart— film on a battered organ, atmosphere diluting radiation I remember the uncertainty of those days and how his slippers scratched pavement while we came to terms with a hard past— the one I soaked in each night until my fingers pruned and dead cells lifted, seemingly weightless when submerged That night was a midway point outside my door infusing gentle peace offerings with love and forgiveness and a few too many tailored excuses to last sugar melting off of promises until sticky fingers felt sick, trapped, sore from trying against all odds to hold tight to sand that night was soft, and meaningless, and I was powerful in my defeat, allowing the pillow of winter air to guide me home—away—to safety

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the one less traveled Emily Bass

71 • Fall 2022

repetition Emily Bass

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Seasonal

Emily Barnes When pale stalks begin to bow and lay their weary petaled temples to the dirt I surrender too.

I kneel obligingly, knees damp by first frost, and throw my wilting head back to catch wings streak south through the gray.

I keep my hands clasped at the feet of an unyielding calendrical trick as leaden lids battle indigo, wasteland havoc whispering through battered rotten crop rows delineating flesh and bone and earth.

But tonight the edge of the cooling air cut the crescent moon sharp and awake, a beacon guarding acres of brittle meadow off the interstate and she pulled me closer to truths beneath the topsoil: my skin, my limbs, all mine and ever-present.

They were there, I knew, I was there too.

73 • Fall 2022

The Muse

Anna Steinmeyer To watch him sketch was to watch an animal hunt in the prime of its life. The culmination of all nature’s evolution shoved into a human vessel. You watched his hands and knew that his body was built for this. Every muscle was refined and in tune with the charcoal delicately balanced between his thumb and index finger. Though his body was refined, if you looked at his eyes that’s where you found his primitive hunger for art. They searched the subject for inspiration.

Pulling out the flaws and life in every muse, and dictating his hand to translate his mastery to the page. When he sketched you, it’s like he saw every part of you. The good, the bad, the ugly. He saw your scars and rather than smoothing them over, he made them shine. That was his talent, portraying real humanity on a page. Having him sketch you was like having the best sex of your life. It left you feeling complete. That’s what it was really: when Nico sketched you he was making love.

Though he never even thought of me once as a subject, he was my only muse. I would sketch him without his knowledge, usually when he was drawing something or another, too engrossed with his work to care for my presence. I drew him so much that I became far too acquainted, infatuated even with his face. Even now I remember the concave of his cheeks, so hollow you had to press a little firmer with charcoal to get them right. The tiny scar above his left eye he got from a broken palette knife. My favorite part of him to sketch was his lips. The top lip was ever slightly smaller than the bottom.

I could only imagine what it must feel like to touch them with my own. How soft they would feel. Tender yet firm, I imagined. I would become jealous of his muses. The men and women he

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paraded through our apartment. I ached for him to draw me because if I could never have him physically at least I could have his mind.

I knew though I would never have that. To be friends with Nico was to be barely hanging on at all times. He always felt like a flight risk, that at any moment he would vanish. And vanish he did. The morning he left was like any other, a slightly cloudy Tuesday in late March. He said, “Richard, I’m leaving.” I wouldn’t have looked up normally, simply waved him away then awaited his return late at night, probably with another muse in tow, but something in his voice compelled me to. He had two suitcases and his easel tucked under his arm. Inside, I just knew, just knew that whatever this departure was, it was a permanent one. I asked him where he was going.

“I’m not quite sure.” He said, “But I’ll send you a postcard.”

He never did send that postcard, and I never saw him again. I assume he just forgot, how important to him could I have been? Life for him would go on without me and I would become nothing more than a story to tell to new friends in new places. The uninspired roommate who made a muse of him. Somehow I was okay with that, at least in some way I was painted into his ever-morphing life. Even if only as a long-forgotten outline.

stellarium

McKenna Casey Record nights in your bedroom, that peculiar magic.

Lying on our backs on your bed or the floor, depending on the song, Watching little lights trace the tails of the stick-on stars, the ceiling a sky.

I hope you think of me high.

A listening party of three - you, me, and the cat. Being tired but not wanting to go home.

The Polaroids from those nights are all dyed purple from the LEDs and the walls, violet on violet on violet.

Your bed is comfortable, and no one can ever have too many stuffed animals.

You and I know this.

Eventually we reach the end of the B-side.

You’ve got one of those fancy players that takes the needle off for you, so for a while we just lie there with the staticky silence, watching the stars turn.

That has to be magic, right? Nights the color of wisteria, nights the color of this song.

You and me in the center of our own little galaxy.

75 • Fall 2022

Lighthouse

Miriam Yarger

The heartbeat of a lighthouse brings good people home.

She strobes against black sky and keeps lovers afloat.

Witness to reunion, the beacon knows of strength when days turn into months and souls withstand the length.

In silence she finds comfort and I think how lucky to quietly be hope while living by the sea.

Untitled Poem, or I Suppose You May Call It A Love Letter Charlotte Van Schaack epistolary remnants of love on the page breach the distance from me inhale memories, taste her seal, and feel caressing calligraphy while inkblots stain me to faint breath, letters inebriate me. and yet, for her stylus– i conclude with wax

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Summer of the Divine Feminine Annika Rennaker

Living between moments, always longing, my chest holds tight to what was— I was never in solitude sitting next to you in overalls, criss-crossed and eyes glazed with the end of day, air heavy with the scent of peaches.

Juice dripping down your chin, you wiped the nectar with the back of your hand.

Your skin glistened, in the light of a sky burning softly, like the backs of my arms and the pink of your cheeks.

A humid breeze curls baby hairs into face-framing ringlets, and the sunlight kisses your eyelashes as gently as grasses graze past each other.

On nights like this, raising a glass of plum wine to my nourished lips, I believe in reincarnation— You were plums in a past life.

Overhead, swallows swarm in murmuration like the smoke from your cigarette, and I understand why the impressionists never dared to mimic nature in her intricacy.

Oil on a canvas will never know wind through curtains on a summer evening; Existing at its simplest, reminding us to breathe— At last, I exhale.

77 • Fall 2022

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Making Dreams a Reality Isabelle Ritz 79 • Fall 2022

Himlen Elleve Hannah Wines

Heaven is warming in the neon lights of Vestergade’s 7-Eleven. It is hard to see the halo’s glow when bikes shuffle past, but when the fountain wakes and soft molecules merge into mist, when laughter skims cobblestones and hair meets hands, the reds and greens meld into gold.

I have painted my fears to look like doors in this place, molded earthy love to be fleeting and light.

And yet it feels like home, to be this new. I feel I belong when the axis shifts and I can sprint with it.

Four years have passed since I first stepped foot on the humid marble and Anderson carpet of home.

It felt like this. It felt like I knew something I couldn’t yet say. And that girl, who hid the knowledge I am still waiting to find, has been excavated from my spirit.

She still lives in that time, playful and obstinate and well more aware of danger than I give her credit for. She longs and aches and clangs and delights, she rushes and flows and trickles and sputters, she pushes the men who push her and counsels the woman who will tear her down, and she lives.

She lives in the pastel green journal on my shelf, where life pulls her away from half-written entries and sticky notes covered in bullet points that might one day get the memory—the feeling—across.

She is up at midnight and catching feathers of sleep in the early afternoon and eating the same food with different sensations every day.

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She loves the feel of his arm around hers, the way others want to mimic it, the way she knows they won’t be able to until she flushes him from her system. She loves late night chats in the rare privacy of the laundry room, two hearts perched on opposite machines that flood and tumble and somehow make a whole. She loves the quiet when everyone else is asleep, when she can try to focus on Plato or art but in the end just gives herself the lush space to sit in the joy of it all. She is learning that loneliness is the antithesis to nature, yet critical to its function. She is learning which contradictions she can hold on to without feeling herself slip.

The untapped power in her eyes strays a little too often towards airplane ads, glossy lips and lacestrewn shirts, memories, but she saves them as a treat for when all of this has burned away.

And it does. Time burned at the edges of that life when she wasn’t looking, like a love note sewing orange and black on its corners to see if the message felt more urgent when it became fleeting. Run away with me, it said, Meet me at the station at midnight. I caught a train in the other direction when the letter’s heat reached my fingerprints, but I still looked back out of deep-held respect. I could let the flames blur my sight—just not my identity.

My train cradled me to Copenhagen Central Station, where misplaced tracks now take me to Sweden instead of dinner. Where we curl up in groups of 10 to split AirPods and sneglebrød still gooey from the 7-Eleven lamps. And in these moments I know what I knew then, what I’ll know in 4 months, and 2 years, and so on: that my home is where I am, where fast friends meet at intersections of chance and change, where fast cars are traded for bike rides and puffy coats and swing dance and gardens.

Home is the feeling of peace amidst growth. And it has been a long time coming, but it has been neon—it has been heaven.

81 • Fall 2022

My Own Savior Sara Wiser

With lines from “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

I want to be my own Savior.

I exist now as a fledgling choice, a mere possibility, an unsolvable mystery.

I want to make myself faithful.

I want to make myself brave.

I turn myself inside out and resurrect my own rotting flesh and bring myself back from the brink of death.

I lay myself bare and with awful care I rise with my brown hair and I eat men like air.

I erupt, I abruptly emerge, I make a fool of the Rabbi’s dirge.

I drink my own blood and consume my own flesh and become my own Savior, an upside-down Eucharist, a defiled cannibalistic aesthetic inversion of the Holy sacraments.

‘Tis a consummation, devoutly to be wished.’

The difference between the sacred and the profane is pain.

The difference between us is some call me insane.

But I know what I want and I know what I will be, I am my own Savior, the Savior is me.

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nasty nineteen McKenna Casey

I’m so exhausted by being nineteen and already half dead.

I’ve wasted my time and my breath on doing nothing at all, and now I’m spending the last days of my youth worrying that these are the last days of my youth.

I was supposed to be someone already.

Or I was supposed to be having fun figuring it out, at least.

There is nothing lazy about being young and hopeless.

Childhood is a rush to a deadline, except no one knows when the deadline is or what you’re supposed to be doing until then or why we’re all so eager to get there until it’s close enough to touch.

All we know is it’s certain death, the kind everyone has no choice but to live through.

I’m so afraid that the second I turn twenty I’m going to die, just keel right over into my birthday cake and ruin everybody’s January, which is such an easy month to ruin anyway.

I don’t feel older, and I haven’t since I was twelve.

I wasted all my wisdom on being a kid and now I’m running out of time to find something else to be.

I’m so afraid that the second I turn twenty I’m going to live, and the deadline will be extended on and on and I’ll still be exhausted and halfway dead and I’ll have spent my last year as a teen sitting in another twin bed writing about the death of my youth while still wholly alive and not smart enough to realize it in time.

And life will go on after twenty and thirty and forty and I’ll do that horrible thing and get old.

Here it is, the kicker: Nineteen is a death sentence until it isn’t, and I’m not somebody but I kind of am, and maybe I’d feel more alive if it wasn’t goddamn January.

83 • Fall 2022

Nobility

Luke Stowell Content Warning: Profanity

Oh, I want to be a father as I wished to be a farmer; I will always love to help things grow.

Oh father, I have too much debt to be a farmer, oh mother, what debt, oh sister, What is Noble!...

Put everything away!

Put everything! Put your head down and close all those boxes – (filled with light, which weighs much – you only need a thought to turn it on – a dream, a touch, an ocean – yet, too, the dark in its absence) – do not talk about what fills them!

Open your mind! Keep on going, do the work, noble, take, take, take, noble, the more you take, idol, the more you may output.

Oh son, to be noble is not to farm, but to reap, to extract, to be noble like a housecat is no sin worth shirking, to be noble be a bureaucrat or officer.

Open your mind to boxes and boxes and closing and sealing every one:

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Nobility, it is noble how your very earthly body must give into the sky-hurled mobility: Fuck this body, which is the most violent and rapturous weapon ever contrived!

Relinquish and disturb your body as long as you can.

Oh daughter, it’s the body will kill you so you must make something to show you put up a fight and fight and fight for years to die.

You are noble only after never living.

Auricle

Emmalynn Beck Medium Statement: Watercolor on paper

Please

Anonymous There was this little green plant in a too little gray pot And I placed it in a spot where the sunlight left blemishes I watered it on schedule and I replaced the soil on its half birthday And one year after I got it, it died The frustration was not a churning of my chest nor an imbalance in my stomach It was an antsy-ness in my fingers And a need to fix what I could not fix Through a screen and half a world away My best friend wipes tears from her eyes when she tells me he is sweet when he is sober But my breath is stuck three paces back When his aggression leached out in the hunch of her shoulders And the red of his lips bled out onto hers And she wonders if there is something wrong with her As if the panic in her stomach and his hands on her throat might be her fault Somehow And she might visit him this summer And I tell her there is nothing wrong with her while I understand that nothing is okay And my fingers dance along the palm of my hand and leave little half moons And the sting of them does not let the antsy-ness escape Because the roots of myself can only stretch so far And I need to fix what I cannot fix

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Pomegranate Emma DiValentino

I want you to split me open, For my ribs to lay cracked and bloodied Like two halves of a pomegranate On a dinner plate.

I want you to study each seed— To watch you place each ruby bead lightly On your tongue With fingers stained red.

I want you to savor them, The juices gathering in your mouth As you crush them between Your teeth.

I want to see you swallow.

87 • Fall 2022

If Comparison is a Killer Nicole Flanagan

Inspired by “Scott Street” by Phoebe Bridgers

I move so fast You can’t even tell I’m at least halfway around Scott Street Before I’ll ever tell Myself the truth And especially you The sun remedies my mistakes When she’s vanished there’s too much to take Just want to sleep it away Or maybe dance, leaving it in my wake As the rain pours At last I let my tears pour too A flash flood consuming me An open heart, exposed wounds Again I think a thought of you If comparison is a killer Consider me dead A victim of it’s poisonous indignation Can’t get it’s toxicity out of my head Sitting here in the coffee shop And you’re probably partying You said “You only live once” I laughed and said “How do you know?”

My head is everywhere at once You and your one track mind

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Yes, I’m envious Yes, I almost hate you for it The silence remains uncomfortable Seeking sound to drench the spaces Leaning on others to ease my apprehension Am I ever really satisfied?

Running away to reach a dead end As if the road never led me here before And then it becomes hopeless to ignore The sky rumbles and frowns at me again And I lower my head Turning my feet around on this beaten path I sink to the ground, relenting my return back Escaping is no longer a viable option I begin away from my dead end Going backward yet going forward Facing what I try too hard to avoid I walk the same route I ran Confronting the pain in who I am I move so slow now you won’t even notice I move so slow

The Coming Storm Emily Bass

89 • Fall 2022

seven fish Stella Thé

me and the cousins and aunts and uncles too everyone had their own important job to do we set the table and they drank the wine and Nanni cooked up a dinner so divine that it took up not one but two wooden tables and overflowed onto the kitchen counter with dishes unstable we sat down each year to a feast made for twenty but at least we had food upon food aplenty seven fishes she said would keep him happy and that’s what we did with our saltfish and ackee we also had anchovies both red and white types fried smelt and tuna and clams and fish tripe of course, there were more than just these fish but it would take me far too long to list seven was the number of fish to ingest for the seven sacraments and deadly sins we would be blessed although she is gone there’s no need to grieve as long as we cook seven fish on Christmas Eve

American Literary Magazine • 90

Hope, at 11:38 PM on a Wednesday Hannah Wines

take all your singular strands of hope and from them create sails of breath you who have known me are ever confounded that I have seen joy in this death words fly on kites to their disparate breezes, soaking up Truth in their fun, and you, ever sparkling, are glowing in promise of parceling out half the sun the hope in my chest is not found in this earth, not infused in my own nimble bones, it’s bigger than us, and this place, and this time, it’s larger than life, but it’s known. and if we, lucky souls, were not meant to be found in the same sheltered love that we hold, then I thank you and heaven and miles in between for giving me strength to be bold 91 • Fall 2022

Characters in Nature and

Fengyuan Chen

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Characters in Architecture

93 • Fall 2022

Sophia (9/3/22) Liah Argiropoulos

The last time I saw you was Wired earbuds and sobbing Into my formerly baby pink carpet, Then beige.

Now gone, replaced by Dark chocolate hardwood My orange and blue walls painted over Periwinkle, like yours But I heard my mom say she wanted them white When I went home over spring break I’ve been thinking a lot about Winter 2018 The Eagles won the Super Bowl I cried hard the morning of the parade I don’t know why you kept me around another two years I cried hard when you got a boyfriend And I third wheeled in town and I felt like a ghost I still feel your bony finger poking my calves At morning meeting in third grade The funny look you gave me when I took two slices of pizza at Brynne Riley’s pool party The way you were effortless and I was an effort You made me want to crawl out of my own skin I was never all the way good enough for you And I should have known it But mostly, things were Vintage comics and making music videos on your laptop David Bowie and multicolored skinny jeans Grade school journals and poking fun at How stupid we were Sticky ice packs of frozen mango pieces The shortcut from your cul-de-sac to the supermarket Honestly that stanza was pretty hard to write I’m forgetting all the things that made you you And I hope you feel the same way about me But I know you don’t Like I know the way to your house Like the back of my hand

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The night the moon smiled The night the moon smiled Miriam Yarger

Miriam Yarger I ate ravioli and took a picture of it.

It stared at me.

I ate ravioli and took a picture it.

A jubilant, yellowofgrin It stared at looking me. down at airplanes and summer trees.

A jubilant, yellow grin I could make outsummer no stars,trees. looking down at airplanes and I could makejust out anosunshine stars, colored sliver just a sunshine colored sliver in the middle of the night. in the middleThe of the night. most wonderful distraction.

The most wonderful distraction. knew it was beautiful because And I knew itAnd wasI beautiful because you said something. you said something.

You don’t often much, Yousay don’t often say much, but the happiness of the universe but the happiness of the universe may at some point may at some point move us all to words. move us all to words.

95 • Fall 2022

Before the Storm Noah Heffernan

American Literary Magazine • 96

summertime love story Stella Thé

scraped knees and iced teas cool breeze on tall trees late nights and low lights bright whites and clean tights long walks and long talks we lean up against the rocks late at night along the water we certainly are our mothers’ daughters worn couch and warm mouth every summer spent down south soft like velvet and warm like the rain from you I could never abstain the flesh of your lips finds its way to my hips I’m blinded by your solar eclipse long days and jobs that pay big delays and life in grey years pass and nothing asked our friendships turned thin like glass forgotten stories and empty quarries now you lie in a laboratory tired souls and no more goals I don’t check, I fold

97 • Fall 2022

Allow me to paint you a landscape

Miriam Yarger

A flower field at sunset.

Every bright and brilliant color imaginable.

The sun melting into fiery clouds.

The sky opening into a symphony of pigments.

Deep reds and purples intertwined.

Blazing orange throughout.

It’s warm and electrifying.

The grass below is tall and emerald.

It sways with the invisible rhythm of nature.

And the flowers.

There are millions in this valley.

Petals like blooming confetti.

Innumerable soft explosions.

It is a boundless, vivid rapture.

It is outstretched arms to the fresh air.

It is blissful vulnerability.

It is a deep breath of life.

It is love.

American Literary Magazine • 98

love for this place

Emily Bass

99 • Fall 2022

Editor-in-Chief Jinger Callwood Creative Director Hannah Sjovold Design Assistants Kate McAllister Abby Shumway Lillian Lemme Leena Hanson Poetry Editors Sarina Patel McKenna Casey Charlotte Van Schaack Poetry Assistants Alexia Partouche Olivia Rossman Emily Kreher Art Editor Alexis Frorup Art Assistants Abby St. Jean Grace Hill Julia Kane

Masthead

Prose Editor Isabella Paracca Prose Assistants Emma DiValentino Sydney Hsu Zoe Moga Photography Editors Nnadozie Adanna Janet Lindsey McCormack Photography Assistants Lily Nold Olivia Jones Sarina Govindaiah Copy Editors Kaya Hencke Hope Jorgensen Copy Assistants Kaitlyn Chesleigh Isabella Smith Blog Editor Delanie O’Neill Blog Assistant Lily Billotti Events Coordinator Nate Livingston

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outer cover

Final Editing Team Emma DiValentino Hope Jorgensen Anjoleigh Schindler Hannah Sjovold McKenna Casey Charlotte Van Schaack 101 • Fall 2022

amlitmagazine.com

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