issue one by ant vs. whale

Ant vs. Whale literary magazine

issue one

summer 2014

fisayo adeyeye, editor-in-chief amanda oliver, prose editor shawn quintero, prose editor rachel nicholls, poetry editor cassandra kilzer, poetry editor ruben delgadillo, visual editor/illustrator

prose contributors: dennis brinkworth, julianna head, grace li, caitlin george, collin varney, tj reynolds, nina v. rye, heather oldfield, james moffitt art contributors: ivan camarena, jessica fisher, nicky rehnberg poetry contributors: angel acuna-robinson, bob schofield, trevor allred, alyssa cokinis, alexia derbas, caitlin doty, miles scanlon, rhett henry, ellen jin, simon g. lewis, megan long, nicky rehnberg, molly silverstein, sam ortiz, lucille potocnik, tj reynolds, samantha mallari, eric silver, aj urquidi, maggie williams

front cover ruben delgadillo issue art ruben delgadillo

ce on nt ts 4

7 editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s note 9 the scientist 10 diary 11 irregular and understood 12 city limbo 14 jessica fisher 15 jessica fisher 2 16 blue 17 rain, odyssey, love, boom (?) 20 when we named the world 32 dawn 33 i want to fly 34 the elephant graveyard does not exist! 35 ode to janitor 38 in the night barn, clairvoyance, i was the big bang 39 persephone complex 40 present lives of boyfriends past 42 wanderlust [found in transit] 43 tadpole 46 freckles of the universe 51 image 33, image 41 52 song at midnight 53 human tragedy

54 ivan camarena 56 poem beginning w/ lines by john wieners 57 jupiter whistles 58 opening night 59 ghost in the machine 60 a brief history of my interactions with the sea 64 letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fly 65 and so youth bled out 66 same sad old story about the sun and maggie driver 68 the americans of martinsville 73 word choice 75 h.a.u.n.t.e.d 78 the whale queen 79 elephants do not exist 86 contributors bios

Editor’s Note

I don’t do it often but sometimes when I see the word “mouth,” I replace it with the word “mandibles.” I like to think it’s the grip of it all. The “clawed-keeping” that seems connected to holding onto something with your teeth. It’s always easier to think of things in insect/ animal or nature parts, always easier to find a balance between things like “flight” and “fear,” and “horns” and “determination.” What you think of one most times directly correlating to the conclusions you can draw and track in the other. The “cosmically large and the infinitely small” was our way of challenging the idea, what seems to be one of the oldest, that anything has to be specifically “anything.” That large always means “earth shattering” and small always means a focus on things almost unnoticed or “insignificant.” An army of ants can destroy an entire village probably. But an army of words can cause a person to think, however briefly, about something much larger than themselves.

—Fisayo

maggie williams

The Scientist I know a man who pins blue butterflies to a corkboard and peers at them through thick glasses balanced on a preposterous nose. He leans in closely, tabling each antenna, each spot of iridescence, each vein entrapped in fragile wings. On occasion one twitches, and he must push a pin through the place where its heart must be.

molly silverstein

Diary these days Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m out as much as possible in front of the store and behind the store blowing bubbles at the boys I like and the boys I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like. when I stay inside I forget Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a person. it is not so easy to stop forgetting. yesterday I drank a glass of beer and wrote about bees. the line between the two activities became blurred. every time I sipped the beer there would be another bee. I seemed to be sipping the beer and imagining the bees in an unstoppable loop. this feeling was ok for the taste of the beer, but not so good for the bees who turned out small and lopsided in my notebook.

molly silverstein

Irregular and Understood I woke up went to the store went to church cut washed vegetables and ate them boiled eggs cut them mixed in mayonnaise fed the cat her Fancy Feast There are times the force of life will bend you. There are times you will crave a food born of suffering. What is more understood than this? What is more American than this? To eye the governing inequity. To long. To bring forth a community and thrive in it. To eat often and cleanly. To use words in fresh and irregular ways. Tonight I’ll remember my dreams I’ll use my sleeping fingers to pry wide my sleeping eyes. I’ll look at everything about the night. Things lined up neatly have always looked pale to me.

dennis brinkworth

City Limbo He walks through the listless city gazing at shadowy silhouettes. Some of them are stretched and have sharp points as arms and legs, others have tiny little stubs jutting out of robust bodies. Some have no face at all just the body of a mannequin like woman. While others are giraffe and elephant like creatures melting to the brick walls in the fog. Unlit lampposts line the street. He pauses in front of an empty plot of overgrown grass littered with summer chairs. In the middle of the lot is a screen playing a black and white video of memories. He recognizes the woman on the screen. Her jet-black hair is perfectly straightened. Her eyes are like stars that shine when she looks at the camera. A poppy electronic song plays from her iTunes. She’s waving her hips back and forth, stroking her hands through her hair in her black dress. The lights are dim in the video and it’s hard for him to make out the other people in the room. Everything around her is blurry but she is as clear as spring water. He remembers her. Someone he knew from another life but the name doesn’t come to him. He can feel her but doesn’t know why. The moon lights the street. The surreal shadows get larger. He moves along. The first building next to the grassy plot has a shattered window. The moon lights the empty hallways. Cobwebs engulf all the tattered furniture. A giant shadow begins to block the moonlight. His head slowly tilts backwards and he looks straight up. The skeleton of a massive blue whale hovers overhead, silently waving its gray stained tale to coast above the vacant buildings. The man keeps on walking, trying to ignore the skeletal blue whale and the shadows that get closer and more vivid. One is a pale white woman with frizzy blond hair that covers her face. She is laying on a velvet rhinoceros two stories tall with stilt like legs. He can make out the lines of thick skin on the rhinoceros that looks like a suit of armor. A tank of an animal he thinks. Another shadow holds on to a street lamp to keep from buckling under its bruised and swollen legs that look tied together. The man slows his walk and looks at the frumpy shadow. He searches for an expression on the face but only finds beady black eyes and a mouth stitched

dennis brinkworth together with blue string. A pointy mustache that whisks off his face is the only prominent feature he can find. He keeps on walking down the foggy street, avoiding the potholes and cracks in front of him. The moon has a slight tint of orange in it. About 100 feet in front of him, a neon light glows out of a building. His pace quickens. Soon he is jogging. Then he stops in front of the building and stands at the bottom of the stoop. What looks like a man in a gray suit with a bowler hat looms in front of the door. The neon light edges out its body as if it was in front of a green screen. A rotten apple covers its whole face. He can make out the source of the neon light behind the apple-faced shadow. In bright green cursive, sitting on an empty wall, are the words “Satan.” The man feels a primal sickness in his stomach. He wants to run but can’t move. The skeleton blue whale hovers overhead. The shadows ooze out of the wall and surround him. They sway each time a gust of wind rolls through the street. The apple-faced shadow moves its arm and points down the street toward the moon. The man begins to walk again. The shadows shrink back into the brick walls and the blue whale floats away. The man walks down the street. He makes out the shadows on the wall. The more he walks the more vivid they become. He keeps on walking. He stops in front of an empty lot full of overgrown grass and weeds to his left. A black and white video is playing. On the screen is the woman he can and can’t remember. She is dancing in a room. He can’t make out the things around her. The shadows on the surrounding walls become more vivid. The same poppy electronic song is playing. He looks forward. Begins to walk again.

tj reynolds

Blue My father sat on a cedar stump a few feet from a dry creek bed. The blue jay had fallen, as they sometimes do, and we’d picked it up to live with us. The first night is when they go, they say. He didn’t though. It lived through the next night too, and soon a week had passed and we thought of him, for it seemed like a him, as one of the family. We fed him creamed wheat with milk and put a lamp over old cardboard to keep him warm. Then one day we found the box silent: no scuffle, no hop. His face smarted, tears making him shiny.

“Oh man,” he said pinching off the words, afraid of them.

“I wanted that one to live.”

I watched him hold his forehead in rough palms, blue eyes wide below, and blinking.

sam ortiz

rain

Everything is grey Amidst giant roaring clouds A patch of blue shines

odyssey

roly-poly walks in an infinite wasteland blue-tile bathroom floor love

I want to hold you The Universe inside me Pulses in my chest

boom(?)

somewhere out in space a thousand Hiroshimas are silent and small

collin varney

When We Named the World My father and I drove along the Western Kentucky Parkway towards Elizabethtown, where his shipment of cocaine waited with a new supplier. He had insisted I come along. “This is income,” he said. “You should be helping me out.” I did help. I put half the money I earned as a waiter in Memphis towards the essentials. My father spent his on drugs. Simple words couldn’t do my mother’s leaving justice, so he named his hurt with things he could snort, inhale, inject. He drove anywhere to find that hurt and to sell what he didn’t use. The farther away the shipments were, the more he needed me. On longer trips, he would drive for the first hour at the most and ask me to take over for a while, turn up the radio until it hurt my ears, sink into the passenger seat and snort a tiny mound of white dust from his palm—one for every new song, two if a prolonged guitar solo tested his patience. When his baggie was empty, he would dial the music to a hum, close his eyes, and mutter some impulsive copout that falsely identified his dependency on blow. Always conscious of the directions written on sticky note, I’d ask for the paper and pin it next to the speedometer before he’d pass out. But in Kentucky he kept driving. A couple hours from Elizabethtown, he still hadn’t asked to take a break. I laid my head against the window. “Stars are bright out here aren’t they, Danny?” my father said. I turned, one eye open. He stretched his head over the steering wheel, his eyes brightening in the vividness of constellations above miles of ebony freeway. “You’re high,” I said, both eyes open. “Pipe’s at home.” I didn’t know if it was more foolish that he wasted breath to lie or that I almost believed him. “Let me drive.” “Just looking, alright? I mean look at ‘em.” He pointed like I didn’t know where the stars were. “On a road like this, it’s like they’re out there just for us.” Thinking of how he looked in that moment—eyes fixed—like he was contemplating the curve of the Earth, its ability to allure a projected meaning from his mind, his effort to name something too large to understand. “Beautiful,” he said. “Watch the road.” I lowered my head again. This was no different than all the other epiphanic crap he never remembered saying, like his theory on the stars. He once said they were the countless mistakes with which he cluttered the sky and that a clear night

collin varney was nature’s way of saying to him, learn from it. “It is life,” he had said while high on crack, “and the things we can’t take back. Mistakes shouldn’t have to be dark your whole life, ya know? Nature gets it, gives us black with bright dots to connect— infinite interpretation.” He took a hit. “And if the stars are like my faults, mistakes— right?—then the shapes I build out of them make meaning of what I am.” I woke up to our headlights illuminating a slanted, grassy median. We were feet away from crossing the adjacent freeway. My father came to, and a smoking crack-pipe flew from his hand as he braced for impact. Lights blinded me from the right. My head hit the window. My shoulder hit the doorframe. The airbag left my mind faint to endure the tug of gravity and to sense the car’s drift as slow and vague. We stopped. Things were silent. Bitter dust from the airbag forced a cough I couldn’t hear, and it was cut short by the pain in my sternum. I folded over. Straightening, I looked to the other car next to my window, molded to the guardrail, spouting smoke into the stillness of the night: a man’s bloody face against the steering wheel, and a girl, unconscious, against the passenger door. I woke up in the hospital. I couldn’t hear. The state trooper prodded with written questions. No, I hadn’t known about the drugs in the car. Yes, I’d fallen asleep before the crash. He asked for an emergency contact. I wrote for more painkillers. I still couldn’t hear two months later, and a doctor revealed my condition’s permanence on a pad of paper. I threw it against the wall. He flinched at the sound of my scream, and it felt bittersweet to know I could still make noise. With his blood sample and the killing of the driver, my father was bound for negligent homicide. I didn’t ask anyone the tyears he faced. I didn’t want to care. After the arraignment, I handed him a piece of paper explaining that I’d never visit him in prison. Five months after the accident, I had almost finished my physical therapy in Louisville, where I had been staying at a Super 8. Without ties in Memphis, there was no point in heading back. I figured I’d complete my physical therapy in Louisville before I thought about having no one else around. I took a bus to therapy every other day. Hindered by the loss of sound, my balance had again developed, but a torn rotator cuff still made many movements a struggle. I could almost push with the back of my hand against the therapist’s palm without having to sit and wait for the agony to die.

collin varney Walking out of therapy, I saw a girl in the room across the hall battling each step as she leaned on the rails beside her. Her therapist, a middle-aged woman, spotted her from behind. The girl stopped, leaned on her painless side, turned towards the door and motioned at another woman in the room. I couldn’t move: the girl from the car. I lost my breath and stood against the wall out of sight but couldn’t help but look back in. The girl furiously signed to the woman, creating shape after shape in midair, each gesture erasing the one before it and creating something new out of nothing. Had my father made her deaf like me? No, she moved so fast, too fluently to be a new learner. It was mesmerizing. I had ignored the need to learn any sign language by stubbornly awaiting the return of sound. But the longer I denied its absence, the more things mocked me in my room: the TV, the shower spout, the opening and closing of the door. I had been aching for her ability every day, waiting to wake up one morning and be able to sign everything by its name. She stopped motioning. Her interpreter said something to the therapist, and the two of them helped her into a chair. The women left the room, and I pretended to tie my shoe. The girl sat with her temple on her fist, eyes closed, a drained face. I took a small step forward. I didn’t know how long our cars had waited for the ambulance that night. She could have seen me, and if she had, she wouldn’t want to see me again. Touching the doorframe, I flirted with the allure of chance. I walked in. She opened her eyes, and their composure startled me. She straightened her head, and curly brown hair fell just below her shoulders. I pulled a pad of paper from my back pocket. “I’m Danny. I recently went deaf and saw you signing.” I handed her the pad. She looked up and nodded. I was relieved to communicate with someone that wasn’t a doctor. She handed it back. “Kai. Welcome to the club.” I smiled. I asked her how to sign my name. She raised her hand in a fist and slowly formed every letter, repeating them until I perfected them in order. “It’ll take a long time. You have to practice,” she wrote. A truth I’d been avoiding every day. It scared the hell out of me, learning everything around me all over again, a toddler being told the names of things I’d known my whole life. I felt alone in the absence of sound and avoided any instance where someone could mistake my ability for small talk. But I craved conversation.

collin varney It troubled me how my mind could no longer eat words, digest and churn them into a response. Silence made me dissolve into the ruckus of the world. It taunted me with an eeriness of things unheard and reminded me of an inability to hear my own sound fight back, to prove I was still there. Kai grabbed the pad from my hand. “What’s hurting?” she wrote. “Rotator cuff, you?” “Broken femur. Car crash.” Her insistent eye contact made me nervous. She had striking, green eyes that seemed to speak for themselves. I thought about what needed to be said: my father drove that car, the car that killed your father, shattered your leg, changed your life. I wrote, “How do you say I’m sorry? Sort of blew up on my therapist today.” Kai smiled, put a fist to her chest and made a circle. I should have driven through Kentucky, I thought. “I’m sorry,” I motioned before her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” “It’s funny,” Kai wrote. “I’m like you in a way. I have nominal aphasia. Head trauma from the crash caused me to forget certain words and names. I don’t realize I can’t say something until I want to say it.” I asked her for an example. She took a deep breath, looked around, and focused on a nearby window. “Lights in the sky that make up constellations,” she wrote. She smiled, and I wondered how often she’d done so since the crash. It felt wrong for her to do it now. I didn’t deserve it. The interpreter walked back into the room. She and Kai motioned back and forth, and awkwardly, I waved goodbye and left the room. I regretted walking in, wondering if I had carried away the words that needed to stay with Kai. Questioning my ability to reveal the truth made me dread another encounter. I thought of skipping my next visitation, and the rest of them, trying to convince myself that I was ready to go back to an empty home. But I decided otherwise. Despite the grind of solitude, silence had become my social buffer, and what used to be anxious avoidances—staring at the ground, reading closely to my face, wearing headphones—were now effective ways for me to avoid yet coexist with others. With Kai, it would be no different. Two days later, Kai was sitting outside of the clinic on a bench. I acted like I didn’t see her. As I reached the door, she stood up on crutches, touched my shoulder and stuck a blue notebook in my face. On it she had written Stuff in black marker. I grabbed the book and she pulled a pad of paper from her purse.

collin varney “Been waiting for you to show up,” it said. “Told them we wouldn’t be in therapy today.” I asked her where we were going. “To name stuff,” she wrote. Her smile widened. “Name what?” With heightened brows, she shrugged her shoulders and swept a crutch in a half-circle, tracing the sky above us. We took a bus through Louisville and stopped near a park. Kai led me to a bench, pulled a Polaroid camera from her purse and took a photo of me. She smiled, exposing the image with a shake, my face appearing awkward and confused. She took out a roll of tape—I wondered what else could still be in her purse—and taped it onto the first page of Stuff. She wrote About me next to my face and nudged my elbow, prodding me to write. “I’m 21—from Memphis.” I handed it back. Kai pushed the book back into my lap, teasingly shaking her head. I took a deep breath. “Went deaf in a car crash. Father’s in jail. Mother left four years ago. I want to be able to talk, but sometimes I don’t even know what I would talk about, or with who.” The silence made me feel immensely close to her, though her ability to pull things out of me made me nervous. Kai nodded and handed me the camera. She dipped a shoulder and softly smiled before the flash. We stared at each other for a few seconds before she grabbed the photo, shook it, and taped it next to mine. “I’m 20. Born deaf. My father died in the car crash—some junkie hit us. My mom left when I was little. I can’t stand my condition, having to be told the words that everyone else knows. Things I can’t name trouble me, even if they seem small and insignificant.” “I’m sorry,” I motioned before her. She waved it off as pity, and I wondered if anyone since the accident had talked to her about anything other than pain or death. Watching two young boys run away from a golden retriever, she began to laugh, or so I could tell. I tried to imagine the sound of it: a high or low tone, or somewhere in between, or one of those infectious, full-torso shakes that hardly renders any noise at all. I hoped for the latter. That way I wasn’t missing out as much. The dog tackled one boy, and the other wrestled it on its back in the thick grass. Kai’s gaze shifted from one thing to another like she was thanking each image for its simple beauty. “I’m sorry,” I said aloud, feeling a slight vibration in my chest.

collin varney She continued smiling, watching the boys run off. “I’m sorry.” It felt louder. “I’m sorry.” She turned and looked at me curiously. I looked away. Kai grabbed the book. On a blank page she wrote The Alphabet. She had me take a picture of her hand 26 times, 28 including the trial photos for letters J and Z, which both came out blurry, me having not anticipated movement. She smiled and drew arrows on the new photos for where the finger had to move. When we had labeled and taped each letter inside of the book, she turned and quizzed me on every one of them, her heels on the bench, knees tucked beneath her arms, her eyes peering from behind the turned book so I wouldn’t cheat. Kai touched my arm and pointed to a flying disc gliding back and forth between two young men. “Frisbee,” I wrote in the book, intrigued at the randomness of her condition. She walked from the bench with the camera and approached one of the men. She had him stand still with the disc and took a picture. Walking back, she stopped beneath a hanging tree bough, stood on her toes to pluck a large leaf and returned to the bench. She held it before me inquisitively. “Leaf,” I wrote. She held it with her fingertips, gently turning it in her palm, as if staring at a newfound delicacy. The giving and receiving of words became addictive. Kai took a picture of anything she didn’t know, taped it to a page and labeled it. She taught me how to sign every word, first by taking a picture of my hands in a position that reminded me of how to sign it, then by motioning slowly with a smile as I struggled to mimic her. The process was exhausting, but her smile kept me invested. She needed me to replenish the words she no longer knew. I owed her language. She owed me nothing. Every word that came to life was a reminder of why we were together, and selfishly, I adopted each of her smiles as another reason to neglect the crash. I feared the meaning she would put on my name if told the truth. It began to grow dark. Her eyes fixed on the evening’s first stars. Kai wrote, “You never told me what those were the other day,” and pointed. “Stars,” I wrote back. She sighed like I had lifted a thousand pounds from her shoulders, and tears began welling in her eyes, faintly glistening in the pale renewal of dusk. “And what is it that you dig?” she wrote, and continued to stare at the sky as if waiting for something to appear. “A hole.” Kai traced the word with an elegant touch. She wrote, “My father said the stars are the holes the sun shines through,

collin varney that the black is a mesh blanket draped over the sky.” I pictured her father against the steering wheel. Blood in streaks down his face. I thought of my own father and wondered if he was waiting for me in prison. I grabbed the pad. “My father once called them his mistakes, said he shaped them to make meaning of his past.” “Must be hard on himself,” she wrote. “That’s a lot of mistakes.” He wasn’t hard on himself at all. I couldn’t remember a time when he thought anything was his fault. If he ever had regret—just once—I wouldn’t have been deaf, and Kai wouldn’t have needed others to find words. “He’s made a lot of them,” I wrote. Back on the bus, Kai tested me on every Polaroid. Most I failed miserably. She didn’t seem to care. “It was a good first day,” she wrote. I nodded. A few blocks before her stop, she scribbled on the pad, “In two days, it’s my father’s sixth-month anniversary. I want to bring something special to his tombstone. I’d love for you to go with me after therapy.” I envisioned, as if she could hear me, grabbing Kai’s shoulders, looking her in the eyes, and telling her why I couldn’t go, why she wouldn’t want me to go. I held the pen and contemplated writing my secret and at the next stop tossing the pad in her lap and escaping the bus and running nowhere in particular. But instead I wrote, “Of course.” I couldn’t sleep that night. If I were to go with Kai, I needed to know what to say and how. The blunt version wouldn’t work: we went to pick up cocaine and I let my drug addict of a father smoke crack, fall asleep, and change your life? It was the truth, but I wanted to give her more—that my father was sorry. But if I couldn’t speak for myself, how could I speak for him? He had a trademark ability to excuse himself of any faults: “I didn’t leave Mom; your mother left us. I didn’t find drugs; drugs found me.” For all I knew, he thought the drugs had crashed the car and the only thing he truly regretted was that he hadn’t driven us safely to his precious blow. With no ability to imagine his apology, I needed him to give me the words I couldn’t give to Kai. In the morning, I took a bus to downtown Eddyville, back along the Western Kentucky Parkway towards the state penitentiary. I surveyed landscapes as if sure to find remnants from the crash still littering the freeway or sure to recognize the portion of median that woke me to a world never to be the same. I closed my eyes and pictured Kai next to me signing the things I didn’t know.

collin varney The old building, known as the “Castle on Cumberland,” greeted me from on top a grassy knoll near Lake Barkley, an inlet to the Cumberland River. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a prison: white paint charmingly highlighted with fern-green stripes that framed castle-like contours. I wanted so much less: flat roof, drab-grey, a building that called for no more than a glance from the freeway. But it stood tall, arrogant, and poised, and I wondered if my father inside was built the same way. A guard took me to a room partitioned by a wall of glass. In my seat, I clutched my pad of paper and thought about leaving. My father, dressed in a khaki uniform, was escorted to his chair and he sat down. I couldn’t look up, but I wanted to break the glass, hug him, and scream. He pulled the phone from the wall, holding it to his ear, and I looked at him with an anger I didn’t know was in me. He realized his mistake, and with glossy eyes, put the phone back. There was a folded piece of paper in his hand. “I met the daughter of the man you killed,” I wrote. “She asked me to visit his grave tomorrow. She doesn’t know I was in the car. I want to bring her your words because I plan to tell her and apologize.” I opened the drawer panel and slid the pad to the other side of the glass. How blunt, I thought. Months without communication, and this is how our conversation begins. I was compelled to take back the words and start over, but I knew the silence between us called for being stern. He read the pad and slowly ran a hand through his hair. He began writing on the paper in his hand. “Had this for months hoping you’d come,” it said. “Have her read it too.” He couldn’t look at me. I wanted to yell at him for leaving me alone in the world and taking sound with him. I wanted to hug him as a kid who lost a father. “You ruined everything,” I wrote. “For what? One more hit, right?” “If I could go back, I’d change it all. You’re all I have, Danny.” The words didn’t have enough sincerity to nestle inside of me, enough force to smother what I dwelled on. I needed more. I needed to hear them. I unfolded his paper, desperate to find words I could carry with me from the prison. I have the same dream every night. I’m standing knee-high in the middle of a river. The stars are out, and I’m holding an empty bag the size of a pillowcase. I reach inside the bag and try to stretch it out, try to make it bigger than itself. But I can’t. It’s the size it has to be. Suddenly, the stars gather together without touching, like birds in flight, and curl around the moon and shoot across the sky. They won’t stop moving. I yell, “Excuse me!” holding my bag up to the sky. “Don’t I have a chance to

collin varney use this?” And as soon as I lower my bag, the stars cluster into an enormous ball of light, and a line of falling stars begins to stream down like sand through the middle of an hourglass. They disappear behind a wall of trees far upstream. When all the sky is dark, the water ahead begins to glisten. The stars have fallen into the river and are floating towards me. “This time,” I say, “I’ll choose the right ones.” But that’s the problem, Danny. I think I have a plan, but I have forgotten how complex it all really is. The smallest stars come first, and the biggest stars come last. So I start letting the small ones run by, content with my sacrifice. But every night it’s the same. I start to think of all that’s passing, all the mistakes I’ll never be able to take back. I can’t stand it. I start grabbing every star I can, ashamed of all the light. Then it hits me. I need to leave room for the big ones. So I begin to let stars drift by, and each one that passes returns to its spot in the sky. “It’s alright,” I say. “The big ones are coming.” I empty my bag to make as much room as I can. Even if I can fit just one, one big star, then fine. And I do. It fills the bag to the brim. But another floats by. And another. Another I never knew existed. Another I thought was hidden deep in the darkness of my brain, forgotten. And up above, the sky grows brighter, almost as vivid as before. I’m overwhelmed with what I allowed to go by. I convince myself there’s a way to collect the stars differently, a way to feel at ease with what I choose to take back. “Tomorrow night,” I say, tilting the bag upside down, “I’ll pick the right ones.” Out comes the star, and it rises to a fully lit sky. It’s beautiful, Danny. But it’s so damn bright it hurts. Then I wake up, and I’m clutching my pillow, lying in my own sweat. I spend the rest of the day thinking what it means to be filled with regret. I looked to my father through tears. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and leaned close to the glass. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed. He mouthed it again, and again. I ached to hug him, to break the barrier between us and watch its transparency fall to the floor in shards. He wrote on the pad and sent it through the drawer. “Please come back,” it said. He stood, and without looking at me, leaned a hand against the glass and pounded it with his palm. He walked out, hanging his head.

collin varney Outside the prison, I let out a scream that startled some birds from a nearby tree. Without touching, they flew together tightly, darting from point to point in the sky and returned to their perch as if mocking my noise, unafraid that I’d do it again. I yelled until they didn’t come back. On the bus to Louisville, it grew dark. My chest tightened with every soft bend in the road and with every car streaking in the opposite direction. I met Kai outside the clinic after therapy. Poking out of her purse was a small bouquet of sweet Alyssums. I grabbed her purse so she could walk easier on her crutches. She smiled. On the bus, Kai wrote that her father used to line his garden beds with Alyssums every year, which she helped water in the afternoons. I inhaled their scent and wrote that we should add them to the book. A narrow path of pebbles curled us around rows of protruding stones. Kai led me to a small hill, and at the top was an enormous oak tree, its branches looming over us. She leaned her crutches against the trunk and knelt down before a tall, marble stone, black and marked with thin veins of gold. I handed Kai the flowers, and she placed them on the ground. Sitting behind her, I closed my eyes, afraid to put a name to the loss I knew something of, but nothing about. James Harris The crash repeated in my mind. The thought of his face made my breath quiver. I hoped Kai wouldn’t turn around. Below his name was an epitaph carved in white: We may wait a lifetime to find the passion that will free us in our endeavor to name the world. For those that find it quickly, mock not those waiting anxiously with wayward commitment. Learn it. Mold it. Break it in a million pieces and put it back together. Now it’s yours. So with haste—go. What you make of it may be what those waiting anxiously need to make their own. Kai wrote, “He kept that passage above his desk. Said he wanted to use it in his first published novel. Writing was his life.” She turned and saw me crying. I thought about the world from which I had distanced myself. I had allowed silence to emerge transparently into my life, to stand before me as a wall I dare not shatter, content with looking through. How much time was I prone to waste if I never met Kai? Would I have ever visited my father? Would I have ever approached the silence? I believed the world had taken everything from me without offering anything else in return, and here I was, looking at a man’s name—whose inscription was the only evidence of what

collin varney he lived for—and his daughter—whose impairments were no match for the loss before her. The world owed me nothing, and there I was, waiting for it to give me something to live for. I had been consumed by the wonders of how rather than by the opportunity of when. I pulled my father’s paper from my pocket. Stars were settling in the sky. I wanted to be able to sign everything for her. Instead, I handed her the paper. “Kai—my father was the man that drove into you. I fell asleep in the car, and when I woke up, we crashed. I waited to tell you because I had to visit my father to bring you his words. I couldn’t give you the apology you deserved.” She put a fist to her mouth and began to cry. I reached for her shoulder but pulled my hand away, haunted by my inability to hear her. She sat against the tree, closing her eyes, the hard pulse of her chest making me want to disappear. She unfolded the paper and began reading, repeatedly wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. When she finished, I had to look away. I stood to walk off, but she pulled at my shirt. “I’m sorry,” I motioned before her. She pulled at my shirt again. I sat down. Kai looked up through tears. The sky was clear, and the stars were vivid. It looked as though she was searching for her father’s outline, where in the black my father would have shaped his biggest mistake. She wrote, “What’s the word we use to describe something that moves us in ways we can’t explain, the things too large to understand?” “Beautiful,” I wrote, thinking of my father. She signed the word, a slow hand sweeping across her face. I copied her and looked to the stars. She was absolutely right.

angel acuna-robinson

Dawn In the time before time And in the place between places, I was just a speck of dust-A misguided piece of debris, Chipped from an Orange Moon. Nearby I could see you A few light years away; A fallen nebula, Glowing crimson and violet, And slowly dimming in the distance. I could not turn a blind eye To your sullen tint-I could not allow your luster to burn out, So I crashed into you. Like a lit wick, you shone And in the midst of this Cosmic ignition, our Matter became the same. We came together and dispersed; We excommunicated ourselves From this solar system. Our newly formed element Ventured through the vacuum to Start life beyond the spiral of the Milky Way. We would become Immortal sun stars, Forever remembered as A part of the universes legacy.

angel acuna-robinson

I Want to Fly I want to fly. I want to run and jump Off of a cement park bench And leap into the blue Of the atmosphere. I would close my eyes And allow the soothing wind To be the therapy That calms my frantic interior. I would spread my wings, Catch a passing updraft And join the majestic eagle In his circular dance, Looking down at Our chaotic harmony. From a birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye view Everyone is an ant. Everyone is merely scuttling along The pheromone trail of the Generation that preceded it. But, Not I. No. Not me. Not I, For I am in the sky. I ride the highways Of the air masses and travel The avenues of the jet streams. Up here nothing matters Because there is little matter up here.

eric silver

the elephant graveyard does not exist! death has snuck up on their gigantic bodies and it is never planned like always, that unannounced party guest. the elephant graveyard does not exist! Legend says they designate a burial mound, a valley where the whole parade comes to die. the elephant graveyard does not exist! the lion king lied to us! I know! Who woulda thought? the elephant graveyard does not exist! tusks the savannah’s pockmark of leanest times the elephant graveyard does not exist! we fleshy uprights are the only ones who care where we fall. the elephant graveyard does not exist! so you best step back from that subway platform, human boy. you’re not dying random like a tragedy. like a scattershot. like an elephantine plague. you pick your dust bed correct. the elephant graveyard does not exist! and if you needed a reason to go on here’s one. for the elephants.

ellen jin

Ode to Janitor I woke up and the sky was green. Everything green and muted, wrapped in the woolen blanket of infancy. The sheer curtains are green, but today, especially green. The air, musky and heavy. I was infused with the confusion of whether it was the interval of dawn or dusk, and so tiptoed across the wooden floor to keep in her morning slumber, my mother. I do that quite a lot so I can have the sad and barren morning painting to myself. I stood by the window and looked down to the street, wet from last night’s rain, cold from last night’s howl I saw a man in yellow. Sweeping the streets, two hands with the fissure of the brown bark and a cigarette, he swept. Streetlight motionlessly blinking in still-dewy air it was red and no cars moved. I went. Legs crossed, perched on the corner curb of Drive Nine. Furry grass, rose like stubble behind my back, I sat. Brisk-filled lungs, and I watched the leaves twirl and dance down the centerline and under waking street light suns, he swept. See, on abandoned mornings when the fume of daybreak scarves itself around his neck, the wind takes crisp fallen leaves to his rocking chair bones, and that’s what he sits on, crisp and fallen

ellen jin

words of yesterday’s promises. The kindling lights in his skeleton flames flicker back and forth, back and forth, as the old man broom swept back and forth, back and forth, he swept. As organs bellow, his lungs shutter, belching out mangled chords through the harmonica stuck in his throat. He is the eyes and the ears of this institution, and we live in the oblivion that he feels so we don’t have to. He’s got pockets full of weather, of spring, of winter, of summer of fall yes, yes it was and he swept. Bringing his hands like a blind man working a mop much too familiar, much too old, much too forgotten. Lips heavy exhaling the streams of Sunday smog dreams. His coat jingles ancient answers to past recollections and wonderings. Yet with ears like ours we can not hear. His skin leaks nightmares You should be having, and as a grandfather clock arthritis arm is, like a crucified hour glass was, how the callused hands of a pocket-watch are, his eyelids are the dams holding back ten thousands years of could have been’s and would have been’s. He reached into his pocket and relit the dying cigarette. I can’t help but notice that nobody’s crying except for he and the air.

ellen jin

So, on a morning like this, if you listen with the hairs down the back of your neck, you can hear the tears scream across the space between iris and pavement, leaving speckles in the deep infinite. So, see at dawn, if you listen you can hear the tail of yesterday slithering away from one more present into todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s salt and vinegar sun.

bob schofield

IN THE NIGHT BARN I have much to say about horses the size of planets. About how they always jump through space. Vaulting hoops of solid ice. And landing on my roof before I sleep. Mouth breathing that terrible fire. I’ve learned to quiet them with sugar cubes. Tiny glass dish on the nightstand. It works, because they’re stupid. Because they don’t know how our bodies work. They’re just too mangy. Too cosmic. Can’t see us lying here sipping starlight from a tube. Mouths open, and highly pink. Forever sleepless. Full of spit.

CLAIRVOYANCE I wallpapered the bedroom with tarot cards. That was my first mistake. Now the future is at my window. I see it and it sees me. Argyle socks and plaid wings. Black teeth flapping against its leash. The future won’t go away, even when I feed it breadcrumbs. That just makes it bigger, more inflated. Always so vast and predetermined. I feel ten pinstriped roots in my pajamas. My one-way future, jiggling like a redwood on a bee.

I WAS THE BIG BANG I am writing this from the horizon. My seat glued in place. The usher releases a grasshopper from his hat. Everything is made of light. I catch the grasshopper in my fist. My fist is a kind of light that eats grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are a kind of light that pukes music. The movie will be silent, except for the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers, searching my empty pagoda for a fuse.

nicky rehnberg

Persephone Complex Your twocoppered eyes fester under Lethean locks that I lose myself in again and again and again and again and again. A shadow passes between us, and then a flame of understanding: a mutual disdain for the unbearable light. We do not want Elysia.

Pomegranates of life and death to my lips, I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t taken; I left.

m.d. long

Wanderlust [Found in Transit] Feet forward; firmly planted on the ground. Organdy dreams in an outgrown yellow dressher eyes wide -dancing among the cracks in the crowd. Curtains draw on the dark corners of distant memories -the fear of uncertainty beats within the four walls of her mind. Shortness of breath. Heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s confinement. Void. Be still, the all-encompassing hue. Diverging roads empty into the white light of her infinite sky while blue windows grace the open air with chance. What hopes lie in this world to be? The vibrant wreckage of mortality.

grace li

Tadpole She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue, but some words she couldn’t get back, words that needed that extra bit of flesh. It fell into the breast pocket of her t-shirt and hid there, like a tadpole had swum out of the Raritan and decided to make a new home for itself. She imagined it wriggling in there along with the attached piece in her mouth whenever she spoke. Wriggling until it stained the front of her shirt like fruit juice or a wound. She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue, with the missing piece permanently taking residence in her pocket (This way, she explained, she would always speak from the heart). She got five stitches across her tongue, which she can still trace with the roof of her mouth today. One two three four five tadpoles swimming around in her mouth whenever she spoke, along with the bastard in her pocket. She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue when people told her that her tadpoles weren’t tadpoles, but “scars.” She smiled and nodded and kept her mouth shut so her tadpoles wouldn’t hear and try to swim away because she loved her tadpoles and didn’t want them to leave her. She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue when the police officer came to her house. She told him about how her dad always took her to the park and would help her look for tadpoles in the river, and on that day she found five. The more she spoke, the harder the tadpoles in her mouth swam, and the harder the tadpole in her pocket wriggled. It wriggled and wriggled until it burrowed into her chest and swam into her heart. She didn’t tell the police officer about how her dad would tell her to get a beer from the trunk and while he drank it, she waded into the river looking for tadpoles. That day, she found five. She filled up one of the bottles that her dad had finished with river water and poured her treasures into it. She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue when she sat in the back of her dad’s car, when the car slammed into the truck in front of it, and when she bit down so hard that her tongue had fallen out of her mouth and landed in the breast pocket of her t-shirt. She would teach herself how to talk with half a tongue before the police officer showed up, when her dad told her to say that she found five tadpoles that day in the river, and had hidden them in her mouth, and couldn’t open her mouth anymore

grace li because she didn’t want her five tadpoles to escape. Six, she wanted to say, six tadpoles, but she told the police officer she found five, and as she said this, she felt the sixth emerge from her heart and crawl up her ribcage like ladder steps. It grasped onto her lungs as it made its way up, and sat on the dip of her neck. She sat with the police officer for a long time, protecting her tadpoles as river water began to leak out of her eyes. The police officer’s eyes softened. “What’s the matter?” he asked, smiling. “Frog in your throat?”

julianna head

Freckles of the Universe “Why is the sky dark?” she asked. “Olbers’ Paradox,” I replied. “He said that it conflicts with the assumption that – ” “You’re wrong,” she said, eyes trained on the night sky. ~o0o~ The hole-in-the-wall bookstore was nearly empty, but I found her reclining near the back, staring out of the window. There was a pile of books stacked around her, sunlight glinting through her chestnut hair, and a smile spread across my face. She glanced at me when I sat down at her feet, resting my head on her knee. “Tell me,” she said. “Why do the stars shine?” “Because of the heat they emit and the multitude of – ” “You’re wrong,” she said, gaze on the bookshelves in front of us. My brows furrowed. “But – ” She shook her head. “Wrong.” ~o0o~ Rain fell from the sky in sheets hard enough to hurt. That didn’t stop her from venturing out, dimpled smile deflecting the grey atmosphere. I followed her blindly, trailing after her glowing steps with clunky shoes and a dallying klutziness. “Why, do you think,” she began, eyes on the clouds. She stopped, lips parted, rain trailing across her skin as if attempting to cleanse the freckles and acne from her face. But the cold drizzle did not stop the warmth hugging my heart or the smile that bloomed unbidden across my face. “Why do I think what?” She glanced at me, forget-me-not orbs glittering. “Pluto.” I raised a brow. “What about it?” Her lips turned up into a fledgling smirk. “Why isn’t it a planet?” I scratched the back of my neck. “It’s too small?” She chuckled and grabbed my hand, pulling back towards the house. “Wrong!” ~o0o~ It wasn’t unusual for her to come home bruised, lip bloodied and ribs purpling. But still she smiled when she saw me, allowing me to take the lead and wrap up her damaged wrist. Her hair was always bound, flyaway strands sticking to sweat slickened skin, a high blush on her cheeks. Her lissome fingers danced through the air as she talked, heedless to my scowl as she described the fight in brilliant detail.

julianna head “There are other jobs,” I murmured, lips brushing against her forehead. She shook her head. “I like this one.” When we were tangled in bed sheets and the darkness closed in, I traced her bruises and freckles, mapping out haphazard shapes with my fingertips. Her eyes sparkled in the low light, body warm against mine. “What constellations can you see?” “We’re inside.” Her eyelids fluttered and she hummed, her voice less than a whisper. “Wrong.” “I don’t understand.” “It’s because you don’t see,” she said, legs folded under the seat as her pale hands grasp the old wood. “No, I do see,” I said, ambling over and trying not to trip. “There’s an old boat in the middle of a field.” “Aye,” she replied. Her smile waned. “But can you truly not see?” Lifting my legs I scrambled over splinter riddled wood, sitting beside her with a huff. “I still don’t understand.” She shook her head. “It’s not misconstruing that plagues you, but the veil you cast upon your eyes. You see it, you do, but you don’t let yourself believe it.” Her words skirt around my outstretched palms, just out of reach as all things were at the time. “Then tell me,” I said, enfolding her hand in mine. “It’s not something you can learn.” “I see a boat in a field. A boat that is dilapidated and probably a little dangerous, a boat that’s covered in splinters and rust and other things.” Her shoulders slumped. “Wrong,” she whispered. “Wrong.” ~o0o~ Water dripped from her fingertips as she reclined in the bathtub, her head tipped to the side as she gazed at her hand. I leaned against the threshold of the bathroom, watching as the low light flickered across her skin. Bubbles concealed her pearldripped flesh from my day-worn eyes, and my lips pulled upward. She grazed the tops of bubbles, hands dipping in and out of the water. Her brows furrowed, sending my stomach fluttering. There was something about the way she concentrated, something about the way her fingers danced and her freckled shoulders glistened from the heat. This was a girl that would never be fully understood, a girl whose mind was leagues away from the plebeian’s dithering thoughts. She was ensconced in mystery, this woman. And perhaps it was then that I realized she would never be mine; that her heart

julianna head belonged to the cosmos, her body to the stars. The comets were her lovers, not I. She did not revolve around me, but instead the ethereal discourse of the universe. I let these thoughts slide across my brain, allowed them to be thought but not to take root. I brushed them away – stuffed them into a corner that I’d never visit again. Sighing to let her know I was near, I crossed the threshold, the heat of her bath blanketing around me. “The event horizon,” she said, riveting eyes grabbing my attention. Her voice was soft, floating through the haze as I stepped closer and settled myself behind her, hands reaching to her shoulders. “Black holes?” She laughed. “Aye. What do you think of it?” “It’s interesting. Supposedly, you can see past, present, and future while you’re stuck in time. Something like that.” She gasped. “You’re almost right.” I pouted. “How am I wrong this time?” She put her head back, resting against my chest. “You’ll find out one day.” ~o0o~ My feet drummed against the tile, fluorescent lights all but blinding as I skidded to a stop in front of a glassed off room. It was as though my nose was plugged and I was breathing through a straw – there was no oxygen and my lungs threatened to collapse in on themselves. I stumbled backwards until my back hit a white wall, sliding down to the floor and pulling my knees to my chest. My vision tunneled, greyed, as my head spun. “Sir, are you alright?” a doctor asked, kneeling next to me. I banged my head on the wall, laughing. “No, in fact, I’m fairly certain I’m not.” “I’m sorry for your loss –” “She’s not dead!” I yelled, color returning to my vision as I leapt up, rounding on him. “She’s not dead because you are going to get your ass back into that room and save her life. You are going to use that fancy medical jargon you spent however many years learning and put it to some actual use!” I grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up, ignoring his squawk of protest. “Bottom line, pal, is that you’re going to fix her up as though this never happened.” He shoved my hands away and straightened his white jacket before clearing his throat. “The airbag didn’t deploy. Her chest hit the steering wheel too hard. Her heart is failing.” He shook his head. “At this point, it’s only a mater of time.” Hands clenched into fists, I resisted the urge to sock him in the jaw, opting instead to stride into her room and shut the door with a deafening bang. My lungs froze in my chest, the anger draining from my body with dizzying quickness. Crimson stained

julianna head the bandages and blankets, and the heart monitor tracked her feeble heartbeat with soft beeps. Walking over I grasped her hand and brushed the hair from her pale face, fingers lingering over the myriad of freckles that painted her skin. “You’ll be okay,” I whispered, lips grazing her forehead. “You’ve weathered worse, darlin’.” I sniffed, eyes burning, and tightened my grip as though the force could ground her soul to her fading body, but in truth it was she that was grounding me. My body quivered, brain lashing out against the thought of her dead. She was too brilliant for such a paltry thing as death. “You can’t go quite yet,” I continued. “What about your grand adventure? The one you always wanted to go on?” I let out a harsh breath, tears slipping from my eyes. Money had been tight and I had tried so hard, had thought we’d have so much more time but time was a tricky thing and slipped through my fingers like the roaming constellations. “If not for you, stay for me,” I said, hating myself for the selfishness of the plea but if it would help then I would do so. “I still don’t know how I’m wrong about the stars and space, and you promised me you’d tell me.” But she was not one for idleness; preferred gallivanting into the unknown, impervious to the darkness. In her wanderings I always followed but now I was spiraling away from her warmth, the tether broken, and it was with a dull sense of panic that the monotone beep registered. I did not feel it when she died, but oh, did I try.

trevor allred

Image 33 Purple night sky Hugs the city; Under its slumber I dream Of rainy day kisses

Image 41 To stand under a tree Beneath stars and abyss, Red meteor streaks: I learn to shout

trevor allred

Song at Midnight The stream below trickling lights from the houses around The cricketsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; echo like quiet applause And stars spiral up toward the moon; On the old neighborhood bridge He closes his eyes below the midnight sky And counts the things he knows: I am still here I am enough though I am missing pieces I have good friends and have met very fine people There are countless stars above me I am small but I am great This night is cold but I am still here I cannot erase the past but I can grow I can take a role in this world if I choose I want it is my right I live with my heart open wide I choose to live with my heart open wide I am still here

aj urquidi

Human Tragedy The soil-mist afternoon of an unclear trail in Henry Cowell State Park marks a moist mosaic floor of redwood needles and leaves of eucalyptus. Long yellow crescents caught in fibers of midair dew swing at chest-level, marionette smiles, frowns. Down in the riparian ravine, a circle of children in parkas gather on the shore around their chaperoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still body, which moments before was a body locomotive with laughing students on the elevated trail. Long yellow crescents sink on their strings and they are not eucalyptus leaves but iridescent candles in a sylvan vigil, and they are not candles but concerned slug citizens lowering slime ropes to view the human named tragedy of afternoon, and they are not concerned but equable human-named banana slugs suspended from redwoods who would regardless of any presence of humans descend from these redwoods on fibers of dew.

lucille potocnik

Poem Beginning w/ Lines by John Wieners Something to do / against staring at the wall, blankly is the finest definition I know: nothing more than this & sickbed medicine & an ancient recording of you reciting a litany of everything now gone: your loss of love & taxicabs I want to build something foolish in the way itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built for no one outside of myself I fight w/ myself like I fight w/ the sunlight Frozen sunlight descending from the mountains predictably cold w/o memory or your frequent invocation of fire

rhett henry

Jupiter Whistles Opening eyes and... the lamplight attacks!! Noise comes onto me, my dead arm grows back and I rupture from the sofa. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 3 AM and space ants crawl across the screen. Dinner, then tidying, then a movie, then bed. Harsh broadcast whirs stirred my aching belly, a velvet tongue swells in the mouth. Walls glow in the spacelight, this skin is grayed and greened. The television pours radio screams from the Big Bang.

alexia derbas

Opening Night A thunderous applause came too early Toes and nose pointed light-years away Sleep was evasive Nurturing our nocturnal relationship, I lay head to toe in view of the sky Most nights here I see the stars and Venus flicking me fiery twinkles of love This night here I scoured a charcoal sky with comfortable eyes In especially comfy moments The fly screen pixelated the scene The calming glow of the Moon And glimmers of Venus’ Morse code loving Were missing, missed Clouds weren’t the best choice for the Universe’s stage curtain Light from the stars and planets seeped through the cracks and thinner folds Radiant teasers for the beginning of the show Backstage stars stretched their bodies and Venus had dramatic makeup applied Occasional glimpses of a star Peeking out the curtain and into the crowd He must be nervous, so I planned to Scrutinise his performance in shows to come I wanted to unearth flaws in the night As the drumroll began and the crowd stiffened with suspense My muscles relaxed and all sound dissipated into silence The curtain revealed darkness.

simon g. lewis

The Ghost in the Machine I am a nameless being, but you could call me ‘Earth’. Father bears no name. Just call him ‘Canis Majoris’. I am so unique, so full of personality. I was always a disappointment, ever since birth. My father is like Saturn, the man with many rings. And I am like one of his moons, one of his problems, Eighty percent of the unbreakable barrier, Between him and Mother, one boy among many things. Like Venus, my meagre existence is a mistake. I’m no twin to the perfect Earth, so far from it. I am the ghost in the machine, a malfunction. I created a black hole, ending what I can’t remake.

heather oldfield

A Brief History of My Interactions with the Sea I was young enough the first time I saw the sea that I couldn’t even see it properly. My new baby eyes were too worried about finding a parents’ face to be able to focus on anything more than ten metres way, let alone something as vast as the North Sea reaching out to a distant horizon. When I was a little older we used to holiday in a caravan on the coast of Wales, my two older brothers, my mum, my dad and me. I know that the sea featured in those holidays because I’ve seen the grainy photos, but I don’t have any memories of it at all. I remember hard, narrow bunks. I remember wet grass & enormous cows. I remember rain on a thin roof. I remember ice cream & sand in my hair from the wailing, tangy wind that must have been blowing in from that vast expanse of saltwater, but I do not remember the sea at all. I guess it just didn’t register as being very important. My earliest real memory of the sea is from another holiday when I was around 7 or 8. We were in Poole on the South coast of England & all of my memories of that holiday have something to do with crabs. There was a crab-apple tree in the back garden of the house we had rented for a week which was infested with ants. The ants became mixed up with the fruit they were so intent on consuming & they became some kind of tiny land crabs in my young mind. I was fascinated by them, & my middle brother & I spent many hours watching them in the hot afternoons while our big brother & our parents were reading in deckchairs nearby. We spent the mornings in a more active crab-based pursuit - pursuing crabs, fishing for them off the pier a few minutes walk away. I remember looking down into the shallow water & deciding where to drop my line. I remember thinking how lucky we were that the crabs had decided to be near the pier where we could meet them when they had the whole of the Channel to be in, but I don’t think I thought about just how big that stretch of water must be to a crab. I was mainly focussed on hauling up the largest ones so I could watch them running across the salt-soaked, sun-smeared boards before throwing them back down to their friends in the shadowy water. It seems odd to me now that when I was littler, I did not have much understanding of how little I truly was (and am) in comparison to the huge domain of sub aquatic creatures that was right next to me. Even on “sun and sea” holidays in Portugal or the South of France when I was in my early teens, I didn’t notice the sea very much. I remember cheese wrapped in pink wax, I remember driving for hours to get piri piri chicken before Nandos was

heather oldfield a ‘thing’, I remember a French man who would change coins in the arcade who looked a lot like Mr Bean, but I don’t have any memories of the sea at all from those holidays. That’s typical of me as a teen though, only noticing things that would satisfy my immediate cravings for salty food & flashy entertainment. On the holidays during my mid-teenage years when I was feeling a little more introspective, the sea looms much larger in my memories, like a manatee in cloudy water. I remember snorkelling in the clearest, bluest water I’ve ever touched in Majorca & thinking about how it was good that it was an overcast day & the beach was quiet that afternoon. The creatures in the shallows that would generally be scared off by the noise of humans were out in force & I haven’t seen such a variety of marine life in so small an area since then. I remember sitting on a hill in a fishing village in Wales with a boy I was half in love with, sharing a tiny plastic bucket of olives & admiring the sun on the water because we didn’t dare to look at each other. I remember telling my best friend about having had sex for the first time as we huddled on a beach towel in the evening & stared out to sea in Polperro in Cornwall. I remember the mixture of pride, shame & uncertainty that I associated with sex in those early years, feelings that are now inextricably linked to a navy blue windwhipped sea. At seventeen I developed a sudden fear of the ocean with no apparent explanation; no traumatising events, no increased knowledge of the horrors that abide in the deepest of deeps, just a new appreciation for how utterly enormous those bodies of water are, & how little they care for me, a medium-sized land-based mammal. So far as the ocean is concerned, I have only ever been the smallest of unwelcome guests, never invited & certainly never acknowledged. In the intervening years between then & now, my interactions with the ocean have been few. At 18 I got hit in the face by a breaking wave on Butterfly Beach in Santa Barbara. The friends I was visiting took photos of me; green swimming costume, white limbs, red blood. At 20 I scraped vast swathes of skin off my legs trying to scramble too quickly out of the water that I’d only just entered onto the concrete ledges around the bay in Split, Croatia. At 23 I dropped my lit cigarette into a rock pool under a crumbling cliff at Staithes, North Yorkshire, while a friend’s Labrador splashed around my feet, sad that I wouldn’t play in the waves with her. At 25 I decided enough was enough & I braced myself to swim in the refreshing water of Jurien Bay, Western Australia. A few days earlier while at a lookout point just South of Kalbarri National park, my middle brother had parked up the camper van & we stared out to sea in silence, facing down an eerily solid-looking wall of

heather oldfield sea fog that was inching towards the coast in the early morning. After a couple of minutes of silence my brother said “It’s really big. You’d have to be so unlucky to get eaten by a shark.” That kind of hit home with me. So when we got to Jurien Bay, in I went, walking out until the water was up to my chin, then swimming a few lengths of the beach. I was terrified the whole time. I’d somehow forgotten that I’m not afraid of the sea because of sharks, I’m afraid of the sea because it’s so damn big & I’m so insignificantly tiny. I got out of the water & walked the short distance through the dunes at the end of the beach to the lookout point. The lookout was on a slight outcrop so when I was at the end of it, I was surrounded by water on three sides. I sat on my towel in the hot sun, cooled by the wind from the sea & realised that I am okay with not interacting too closely with something so much bigger than I am. I feel like we reached a happy medium that day, with my decision to enjoy the ocean without getting too close to it.

alyssa cokins

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fly Put all your faith into the machine with wings and it will carry you past the clouds but not quite to the stars

Sometimes itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s okay to realize you are small

tj reynolds

And so Youth Bled Out And so youth bled out in parking lots and basements our pain still new to us - we stacked paper plates next to red cups of foam amid the jangle of small awkward birds none of us sure of our feathers or faith we spent nickles on nightmares and laughter so that others would see our bodies too - young and tall but not yet full bloom the fruit half wounded and still wet from creation we drove for the driving away - we slept only in refuge - we closed our eyes when the stars sung Emanuel - we closed our eyes when the caves inside burned sulfur - we found twine and agelessness in our pockets youth bled out in bedroom closets and under streetlamps freeing us from the casual comforts of roof and parentage - we traded our scarves for butane lighters our hearts for clumsy fingers and polaroids

caitlin george

Some Sad Old Story About the Sun and Maggie Driver There was this one girl I knew growing up. Maggie was her name—Maggie Driver. Maggie’s big thing was the sun. All during recess, she’d spin around and around on the tire swing, her hair flapping free in the air, staring up at the sun. Everyone told her she’d go blind one day doing that, but she did it anyways. One day, she said, “I’m going to go there one day” and pointed up at it. Me and a couple other kids looked but couldn’t hold it for more than five seconds, it burned our eyes so bad. So we all just laughed at her instead. She was always kind of funny like that, and when you’re kind of funny, people laugh at you a lot. Her favorite color was yellow—sun-yellow. The same color as her hair. The same color as the second-hand dress she wore all the time. She was pretty much gold all the way around except for the bruises. Her dad liked to beat her at home. He beat on them all: her, her mom, her brother. The brother even killed himself the week before we started high school. I guess he just couldn’t take it anymore. I was always waiting for her to snap, too—to just blow her head off with a shotgun like he did—but she didn’t. She just kept looking up at the sun. During lunch, during gym, during the bus ride home—she was always looking up at it. And then one day she really did start to go blind. The doctors said it was some disease that ran in her family—something her grandma’d had, made her go blind, too—but we all know what it was: it was staring into the sun all the time. And pretty soon, she’d never see it again. She’d never see anything again; the light would fade into darkness that not even the sun could penetrate, no matter how hard you stared at it. That’s about the time she started saying it: that she was going to go after the sun. No one really paid her any mind since she was going blind and the idea of funny little half-blind Maggie doing something big, let alone chasing the sun, was, well, funny. Like this one day she started talking to me on the bus. “I really am going to do it,” she said. (She was wearing those dark glasses by then.) “While I still can see. I’m just going to go out one day and start following it.” “Huh,” was all I said back. “And I’m going to follow it until the light in my eyes dies or I die,” she went on. “The day won’t ever end for me.” “Huh,” I said again. The whole time she was talking, I just kept thinking about how sorry for her I felt: for how funny she was, and for how awful her home life was, and for how soon she’d never even be able to drive a car and go somewhere where it wasn’t so awful. I didn’t think she’d actually do it. The report, according to the paper, said she died on impact. She was driving

caitlin george a yellow Beatle she’d hotwired and stolen from the corner dealership (I never figured out which one got me more: the fact that she stole something, or the fact that she knew how to hotwire a car), going 90 on the Interstate, when the car veered to the right, hit the ditch, and flipped about four times before it landed top-down. Completely flattened the whole thing. She’d just crossed the state line into Florida. The coroners said it was a number of things: the speed, her vision, the wear on the tires and machinery from driving so fast for so long, her exhaustion from not stopping even for a short nap. They clocked the time of death in at around 5:00pm, putting it right at sunset. I think if she’d made it to the coast, she would’ve kept on driving right into the ocean. And then there was the big smile that they said was on her crushed face when the EMTs pulled her body out of the wreck. No one got to see it, though, because the funeral was closed-casket. She was buried under a big tree right beside her brother. There’s a hedge row to the east and a big hill to the west so the sun can’t ever touch her grave. I always thought that was pretty shitty, but her dad didn’t care. You got the feeling her mom didn’t either, just as long as she didn’t have to deal with one more person getting beat on in front of her. It doesn’t matter anyways because a year later she blew her head off with a shotgun, just like Maggie’s brother did. Then while she was still at the morgue, Maggie’s dad skipped town. Headed to Montana, I heard. And Maggie’s mom was buried alongside her smiling daughter and headless son. Sometimes, when the sun’s high on winter days, I wonder if maybe her mom and brother would be smiling too if they weren’t headless. And sometimes, when the sun’s high on summer days, and spring days, and fall days, I visit her. I never liked her much, mostly because I didn’t know her, but I know she had guts. That’s what I tell her, too: “Maggie, you had guts.” Someone planted a marigold on her grave—a big yellow one that keeps growing even though it can’t reach the sun—so I figure I’m not the only one. I figure that there are others, maybe a lot of others, who tell her, “Maggie, you had guts. You got out. Even if it only lasted a day, you got out. That’s a hell of a lot further than most of us will ever get.”

james moffitt

The Americans of Martinsville

Goddamn suicide cats are everywhere.

We tear across the gravel roads, careening in and out between fucking tumble weeds and burned out cars and goddamn kids with literally nothin’ better to do but find and huck glass bottles from their pop’s funeral pyramids, built up on cracked and weathered porches. We tear through side streets, past Dirty Debbie’s house, the girl with the ass so good you want to grab one cheek while you bite the other and bury yourself in her sweet warm something or another but she’s so sixteen it ain’t worth trying and I swear to God I can see her dad cleanin’ his shotgun from here. Ain’t no fucking metaphor there either, as Mrs. Lewis from English class would call it. It’s a real life shotgun and more than one time I’ve seen her pops bustin off shells of rock salt at any dumb mother tryin’ to get close to that double wide. Jesse turns up the radio and I take a rip on the tube as he does donuts where a couple of double wides used to be. Aint nothin’ here now but over grown grass and some fucked up two by fours all fulla nails in the ground. I pray he doesn’t bust a tire, cuz then the funs over, neither of us have the money to fix that shit, we were already up half the night siphonin’ gas off the neighbors because it’s summertime, and fuck all. Another cat jumps outs in front of us and Jesse swerves trying to avoid it. The little purry fucks have even less to live for than most of the other sad sacks in this piece of shit trailer hell hole. Nothing but burned out hosses and their old ladies, stash houses, poor working sacks that think they might move up to somewhere better one day. Everyone knows they’re kiddin’ themselves, but themselves. Then you got the goddamn Mexicans turning the back half into little Tijuana. It’s all good except for when them bendejos come looking for their little Frito pies, but I don’t give a fuck. I need a cigarette. I can feel the weed smoke burning holes in my brains. It’s a different kinda high then when we chug Robotussin, different then being drunk. Way different than the time one of the cookers down the way gave me an’ Jesse a little taste of some new meth he’d been doin. This is a mellow, chill high, my throats drier than three day old cat shit and my whole head is foggy. I blow smoke in Jesse’s face, and he jerks the wheel like I imagine that jackass in that book Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas does.

james moffitt Mrs. Lewis is always givin’ me extra shit to read, ever since I accidentally left my notebook with all my not-for-school writing in it. She says sees something in me, but I don’t know what to believe about that. All the books she gives me are full of drugs and fuckin and violence because she says I’ll be able to empathize. I want to know where she’s keeping the Proust, the Rilke, the Nietzsche, but I know better than to ask because it’ll hurt her feelings, and the free books will dry up. What she doesn’t know is I can’t let the guys see me hanging around after class. They already give me enough shit as is for spendin’ half my time scribbling away in my notebook. Last week, Jesse called me Heminggay and they all had a good laugh at it and later 3 guys had to ask Jesse what hemming had to do with being gay. I started to explain that Hemingway was an author, but Joel threw a beer at me and I shut up. She insists on talkin’ bout my future and this pedantic bullshit, but what she doesn’t realize is I don’t have a future, and I know that. I’ll wind up in a bottle just like my fuckin’ dad and I’m okay with that. It’s how it’s meant to be. People from the park don’t fuckin’ get out. We just replicate. Jesse tears through another gravel patch, and I tip the bong on accident, spilling the filthy, rank brown water all over my pants. “Goddamnit,” I say. “It’s getting dark out, oughta head home soon.” My head is heavy from the day’s heat and smoke, and Jesse speedin’ through the lot and shootin’ over speedbumps likes he’s drivin’ a fuckin’ racer sure isn’t helping. “Whatever pussy.” He says, but I can tell he’s pissed cuz this means he’ll have to go home and risk his Pop beatin on him or go sit by himself somewhere and risk scufflin’ with the Mexicans, He can’t seem to get near any of ‘em without having to fight. “Why’s that bitch Mrs. Lewis always keep you after class?” bad.

I have no reply. To discredit her seems a disgrace, but to tell Jesse is just as

“Can’t say man. She just keeps me after class a lot.”

“Ya’ll fuckin’ or something?” He asks. “She’s a little old.”

I can’t tell if he’s jokin or not. More and more, I can’ tell when any of my friends are jokin’ and when I should take ‘em serious. It’s like we operate on different wavelengths. Assholes.

james moffitt “No.” I shoot back a little more quick than I shoulda. Jesse latches on just as quick. “You is too you fuckin’ pervert, I can tell.” He lights another cigarette, and slams the car into a gravel patch in front of his trailer. “What the fuck’s wrong with you anyway?”

“What you mean?” I ask

“You act different. Everyone sees it. My dad thinks you’re turning queer. Andy thinks you’re gonna off yourself.” I’ve known Jesse since I was five. He can tell when I lie. He sits across from me, taking a long pull on his smoke. The day’s whiskey is making my head fucking pound, and my throat feels dried out. I’m still nauseous from tearing around the lot. Jesse knows I get car sick, but he does that shit anyway. On our third grade field trip, I puked all over this fat shit next to me on the bus because I couldn’t hold it anymore. Jesse still laughs about that. But that’s really the fuckin’ problem. He’s still laughing about shit that happened years ago. It’s still funny to him. Drinkin’ is still all he’s fuckin got. He sits across from me fuckin’ smoking, dimmed eyed and as goddamn stupid as the day he was born. He’s never goin’ to change, and I think somewhere deep down even he knows that. I want to pity him, and I want to beat the tar out of him at the same time. Fucker doesn’t even know he’s dead yet.

“Well?” he says.

I punch him.

At first he doesn’t even know what the fuck happened, his now crushed cigarette falls still lit to his lap. There’s a little snip of tobacco stuck in the blood I just opened up on his lip. I hit him again, and he reels back. My seatbelt’s already undone, and I lean across the center console and send more jabs into his face, reeling back with everything I’ve got and just slamming into the center of his head. I’m hittin’ him with every fucking thing that’s ever been unfair to me. I beat the piece of shit with my dad’s drunken crap. I hit him with every time my mom was fuckin’ some other guy in some other trailer. I pound into his stupid, wet fucking face with every goddamn opportunity I know I’ll never have because no matter what fuckin’ stupid book Mrs. Lewis gives

james moffitt me to read, I know I’m never going to leave this place. I know I’m gonna end up just as burnt out and sour as every other piece of shit that lives here. He whimpers, crumpled against the steering wheel, and I see my best friend, a bloody mess, barely unconscious, and I see him carrying me home on his back after I broke my arm slipping on a rock at the creek when I was nine, and he was ten, already a head taller than me, and twice as strong, from taking all the violence his dad poured onto him every night. “Goddammit” I scream as loud as I can in what used to be his face, and it reverberates the way loud things do in a car, contained and explosive, and I know that everything I’m doin’ can’t be heard even five feet away, and he moves slowly, back against his seat, defeated and forgiving all at once, coming around, and crying, the tears mixing with his blood and diluting it, making it fall faster into his lap. I get out.

miles scanlon

Word Choice late September angry, starving, unslept and unshowered I stumbled late into my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Nervous, Anxious Never Again, Higher Powers willing, will I ever subject myself to such torture. “sorry I’m...tardy.” what, like they’ll think I’m pregnant? they read me correctly, pass me a list of men’s phone numbers to call when tricky demons whisper temptations just one more time... memory carved like razorblade scars in the back of my mind, restrained against inclined hospital bed shot up with sedatives despite my useless “stops” and “reds” I needed sleep, yes but sleep is cheap and easy while personal autonomy is priceless. walking through the world hear strangers’ conversation: Inane, Vacuous certain words and sounds accented through repetition “The weather sure is wet today!” “Yeah, it’s hard to deal with.” sex is omnipresent I stand in line at a sandwich shop and order my sub. after putting down the drugs, with nothing left to control, thoughts too fast and words too slow obsessively polite and accurate careful to avoid those dangerous words, dangerous letters I enunciated for the first time in my life avoiding numbers, particularly the dangerous ones and twos, fours and fives, fifteens, nineteens, and seventytwos

miles scanlon

words with too much meaning, any tie to double entendre I’d rather beat around the bush than embarrass myself letting anybody into my linguinstinking pun-fueled, sex and drugs-fixated psyche. even transitions in sentences, filler words to buy some time, “so I was at the bank and um...” please, articulate between ‘and’ and ‘um’ otherwise it sounds like you’re calling me stupid. these things are tiny, I realize overthinking and obsession at their finest but without language, what are we, what have we? animals without awareness sensation without sentience “sticks and stones can break my bones” but language is a deadly weapon as children hang like fruit from southern branches my first meeting, they passed me a book entitled It Works: How and Why the first word dominating the cover I flipped it over, the flying DeLorean of my memory whisking me back to junior high school gym class “it” “he-she” “faggot” “lezbo” yet language is greater than individual attacks Orwell’s Newspeak intentionally blurs meaning censorship and political correctness whitewash our textbooks. language doesn’t describe it Creates or Destroys. and calling me a crossdresser keeps me locked within your boxes smaller and even more confining than the ones I bought from drug stores with 20 Sudafed capsules inside them we are addicted to our means of oppressing those we do not understand and semantics, while seemingly pedantic can be the difference between a closed fist and an open hand.

samantha mallari

H.A.U.N.T.E.D When I was younger, I dared to memorize the dictionary. And though I was capable of comprehending everything, from aardvark to zany, I never understood the definition of “haunted”a definition that would slowly creep, in increments, into a heart that was operating on its last set of AA batteries. And while most would say that they are perfectly able to search any word, arranged in alphabetical order, Here is the one word, that searched for me. H… Hated by my very reflection who only seemed to be imprisoned, In a prism of flaws, darkness refracted to surround me every way I turn, in the core of a mind left to glaze over only in the light of a blue moon, A mind constantly turning like the cogs in a clock, The reason why I’m 95% brain and 5%... Space. In a powder-puffed, photoshopped body, stalked by the shadow of the prevailing essence of “ideal” and “beauty” a body that only occupies 0.0001% of a world too big to account for a miniscule digit like me. Rise up, fall down, day in day out… A routine and regimen towering over a diluted, deflated heart. But the reflection stays the same in the unyielding tick of each second, of a crippling force of loathing because of an entity otherwise invisible, but has become the center of My world. An ideal became my atom bomb. A… And not until the final bell rings, will I be able to formally swear, that there is anything and anybody left in the world for a girl who used to have everything in the world to dream of. In a world that renders her, buffers her, filters her into pixilated matter. I build my thoughts on precariously built shelves of “I should’ve” Should’ve said this, Should’ve done that, Should’ve looked like, Should’ve been that..

samantha mallari

Because for me to love, love the very pinch of the feeling like there could possibly A Romeo left out there beyond the concrete doorstep, to love the fizzle and popping feeling of two tons of expectation dynamite on my shoulders, The final bell has to ring. U… Until there came...you. Unanimous decisions to become the lone wolf, A choice made by me, myself, and I on a bench made for two, Became overwhelmed, overworked, overly exhausted,overturned by the newfound, show stopping, heart clenching, thought of… You. N… Not even the pushpins I became so accustomed to walk on, to avoid the cracks in the street, or the usual stoic facade I bestow on the people I meet Would ever be able to conceal the very thing that I hold fearfully and dear, The crippling, excruciating, exhilarating feeling, of having you near. T… To believe that you can ever believe in the reflection that has reduced me to an incandescent blur of envy, of hatred, of disgust for the very person, that you can’t possibly fathom as a mistake, is beyond the monstrous, stealthy stalker dubbed “ideal”a belief I have to pinch myself to formally recognize as real. You see past eraser shavings, the scratch and smudge of a self, I would rather forget, and you somehow make out... a masterpiece.

E… Even the best magicians, the smoothest soothsayers, the valiant of the vigilantes could not possibly erase the immenseness of the shatters, of my manufactured identity, that I thought society saw as perfect, though forced onto a photocopied body, the kind of plastic my true self bitterly labeled as . A junkyard.

samantha mallari

But you only accept to see as a porcelain plain, Made pure by the very scars of litter I threw, to hide the monster of a reflection that left me farther than down in the dumps. More skilled than Houdini himself, you managed to vaporize the fabricated phantom, constructed from the bruises I never asked for, the same flaws my subconscious blasted with Broadway floodlights. I never loved you at first because I was too preoccupied with fighting the massive puppeteers I foolishly convinced myself were real. But you never asked for a transactionyou felt rich with the mere presence, Of the feeling of hope and of heartstrings left entangled by the clumsy hands of fate strings pulled so tight, that they shrunk both of our inner apocalyptic worlds into a steady sanctuary, housing reckless, hopeless, school-court lovers. And with every “Why don’t you leave?” and every “You could do so much better”, We paraded through the cacophony of the large world itself, Crusaded against the flaws we smothered into nothingness, behind moonlight rendezvous and sunlight soirees, as newly freed marionettes, dressed in bandages we applied to each other, cracked eggs, fractured femurs, previously heartless heads and all, Supercharged against the magnitude of our cyclones of insecurity, by the very fact that in the reflections we saw in each other’s eyes, we saw the monstrous world before us for the first time, as just within the reach, and just capable of controlling, with our interlaced fingers, fingers that once tottered on the verge of amnesia, of how to point out the very stars in the sky. My world became Our world, shrinking the vast expanse of “lonely” and “me” and “imperfection”, into simply: “Us” And though we were never comfortable with calling it love, or lust, or anything in between, though we always shuddered at the vastness of the expanse of our future, To our surprise, We found simple consolation in accepting it as a much smaller word.. D… Destiny.

cailin doty

The Whale Queen Deep below in darkest ocean blue, There resides on a rocky throne, There, the Queen of Whales. Surrounded by her loyal subjects, They sing in harmony, praising her long rule. See her steel armor, dented and scratched from wars Won and lost years ago with the denizens of the deep; The cruel, the ugly, and the brutal. And there, in that shiny armor, are engravings Of the loved ones she lost years ago; Her father, her mother, her sisters, her brothers, And her children, her subjects sing for all of them. On her head is a barnacle crown, in her hands a rocky scepter. And before her, a kingdom of tempests, oceans, And creatures that bow before her piercing gaze. Praise to the Queen of Whales, Commander of the Oceans, Tamer of the Storms, And Mistress to the Mysteries of the Deep.

nina v. rye

Elephants Do Not Exist “What do you mean, I can’t go?” Diane stood with her arms on her hips, quite flustered, and stared hard at her brother. Ryan was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand. His resolve didn’t waive even an inch before his sister’s displeasure. “If I said, you can’t go, then you can’t,” he said, undisturbed. “But it is connected to my research!” “I thought you had graduated from college already,” Ryan’s raised an eyebrow, and Diane huffed in annoyance. “I did,” she said, frowning. “A month ago and you didn’t even notice!” “Didn’t I give you a ‘happy graduation, little sis’ card?” Her brother seemed to be lost in thought for a second. “I am pretty sure I did.” “Yes, you did. And it was for my other degree in cosmology!” Ryan looked confused, “So, it is not what you are studying now?” Diane groaned. It had been a constant source of all fights between them. Ryan had an excellent memory for everything related to his field of study, universe history, but he couldn’t keep in mind even simplest of things. He never remembered what day it was, or whose turn it was to charge their garden illusions, or, apparently, what his sister’s major subject was. “It is zoology! I don’t know why it is so hard for you to remember!” Ryan shrugged and took a croissant from the plate. “Still it does not explain why you want to go to the Projection House.” “Look,” Diane sat down across her brother at the table, “we all know that the Projection House is responsible for creating all holograms and illusions that we have. It is also known for a fact, that to create a full illusion you need a live model.” “Yes, but not all of them are based on models,” pointed out Ryan, “Some are products of artists’ imagination. Creative license. There are images, sculptures. Even frescos! For example, dragons are not real. Or gryphons. Or flying mice.”

nina v. rye “They are called bats,” murmured Diane. “Whatever. They are not real. Like the rest of the animals are not real. Or plants.” “I know! I know!” Diane tugged at one of her blond strands of hair in frustration. “But I want to see the projection models. They are said to look like real animals!” Ryan gave her a look. “Well, as real as they can be,” she amended. Her brother sighed. It was not as if he could really prevent his fully adult sister from doing something as stupid as breaking into a government facility and looking at the models of mythical creatures. “You know what,” he said, picking up a newspaper. “You can do whatever you want. Just don’t call me when you will need to be bailed out of jail.” He flicked his fingers over the transparent slate, and it lit up with the latest news. “Thank you!” Diane jumped up from her chair and briskly walked towards the exit. Before reaching the door, she paused and then walked back to his brother, who was trying to unsuccessfully shield himself with the newspaper. “You are the best,” she said and kissed him quickly on the forehead. She got only an annoyed huffed in return, but she noticed that Ryan was trying to hide a smile. Diane left and returned only on the following morning. She found her brother seated in the same pose, on the same chair, and the only indication that it was in fact a new day and not yesterday was that Ryan was wearing a green-blue striped vest. A projection of an enormous giraffe wailed pitifully behind the window. It had been raining all morning, and even though the holograms were unable to feel it, they still reacted to the weather, as living creatures would. Diane was soaked through and she was clutching her beg with a reverent expression. Ryan arched an eyebrow, “Do I want to know?”

nina v. rye “No, not really,” she grinned at him with a manic excitement. “Fine,” he hid himself behind the newspaper again. An hour later, Diane emerged from her room. She had changed into a dry pair of faded jeans and a big dark blue sweater. She was holding a bundle of towels in her arms. “Isn’t it my jumper?” Ryan looked up from his morning newspaper. The local baseball team had not been doing very well lately, and he wanted to get back to the score results. Diane shrugged. She moved several cups aside and a half empty pot, before putting her bundle on the table. It stirred slightly. The movement didn’t go missed by Ryan, who stared at it as if it was poisonous. Before he could say anything, Diane slowly peeled off the towels to reveal a small creature in their midst. It was six inches tall and grey as a whetstone. It had four legs, a big ears, that flapped slightly. It had a thin tail and also a very funny appendix that was growing from its head and moved freely back and forth, touching everything, as if getting its bearings. “What is that?” Ryan stared at the creature with the mix of horror and curiosity. “And where did it come from?” “Well, I can answer the first question, although I am not sure you would want to hear the answer to the second,” said Diane sheepishly. Her brother stared at her. “Don’t tell me, you stole this thing from the Projection House,” his voice was somewhat amused, but mostly stern. “Then I am not going to tell you that,” Diane batted her eyelashes at Ryan and he rolled his eyes. “It is an elephant,” she explained. “Elephants do not exist,” her brother’s voice was very flat and breaching no arguments. “Well, this one does exist,” pointed out Diane. “Do you know how all

nina v. rye projections of elephants are big as houses and they are carnivorous and nocturnal?” Ryan nodded. “Imagine, that this one is not!” Diane sounded so excited as if she had discovered the answers to ultimate truth question. “It eats grass and it sleeps at night and it is so cute!” Her brother frowned and leaned slightly forward. “What are those things?” he pointed to two protruding bones that looked like weird canines. They looked threatening even for such a small creature, but the elephant backed down from his finger and almost lost balance in the tangle of towels. “Are those fangs?” he asked. “Yes,” said Diane and smiled, as her brother immediately thrust his hand back. “Don’t worry. They are called tusks. It does not really bite.” Ryan watched the creature warily and finally leaned back. “You do realize that you shouldn’t have taken it from the Projection House, right?” he said. “Where did you find it anyway?” “There is a storage room, where they keep all mythical creatures,” she made air quote with her fingers. “They don’t really use them for any projections, so I sneaked inside and looked around. When I found this little guy, well, I couldn’t help taking him.” “They are going to notice its absence.” “No, they won’t. They don’t pay any attention to that storage. What they show us as projections are not real animals.” “Animals are not real.” Diane was getting tired of this argument. “This one is,” she pointed out. “Fine, it is. So, what do you want to do with it?” “I don’t know,” admitted Diane. She her chin on her crossed arms and watched as a tiny elephant moved through the folds of the towels. It was fascinating how such a small creature had a mind of it is own. She brushed a finger over its back carefully and smiled as it produced a tiny sound, very like mewling.

nina v. rye “Maybe we could find it a new home?” she asked, tentatively. Her brother let out a sigh. Ryan was very fond of his sister and often indulged her whims. He knew that this time was not going to be an exception. Ryan stood up from his comfortable chair and walked toward the bureau that stood in the corner. It had multiple drawers and was almost as tall as the man himself. He opened one drawer, looked inside and then closed it. Then he opened another and then closed it too. He kept looking for the right drawer, until what he was looking for gleamed at him in the darkness and he gave a triumphal cry. “Here it is!” Ryan said, looking at a glass globe in his hands. It was as big as his fist, had a small wooden stand and was completely dark. He shook it a little and it suddenly lit up with a million of stars inside. As he moved his hand, the stars twirled and joined into constellations. “What is it?” Diane looked at the globe with avid curiosity. Her brother rejoined her at the table and placed his possession on the wood surface. “It is called the solar system of planet Earth,” he said, checking a metal plate on the base of the globe. He put it down again and they both watched the stars move and shine very bright. “Do you think, it will like it?” asked Diane. She watched the elephant hobble to the globe and stand beside it without touching. “Of course, why not,” shrugged Ryan. “It is a huge universe, still in its creation stage. By the time it gets there, they would already have the ecosystem. It will have all the grass it can eat, and other creatures to play with.” Diane nodded, “Fine. Let’s do this then.” Ryan scooped the elephant in his palm. It protested feebly, but it was only a matter of a second to let it touch the globe. The glass surface gave under the gentle touch and the tiny creature was sucked into inside. It appeared as a tiny dot inside at first, but very quickly it disappeared. Diane looked on the verge of tears. “It is so sad,” she said. “Why do we always have to give everyone away? Why can’t we keep them? First, angels. Then, humans. And now elephants. It is not fair.”

nina v. rye “Life is not fair, sis,” said Ryan. He gently took the globe back to the cabinet and placed it into the same drawer. It was full of similar glass globes, but most of them already had a shining constellation of stars inside. He carefully closed the drawer and walked back to the kitchen table. He petted Diane’s hair and added, “Nobody asks you to be a god. It is not something you can choose not to do. You are just born that way.” He watched as his sister mulled over his words. “Do you want coffee?” he asked. Diane nodded. It was not something she could change about herself or her brother, she decided. It was simply their ingrained ability to change the essence of reality that would affect everything, even such a small create as an elephant.

Contributors Bios Trevor Allred finished his bachelor’s degree in English in the fall of 2013 from Cal State Fullerton, where he will return for his MA in English the fall of 2014. He is traveling alone through Italy and France this summer. Trevor’s favorite classical composer is Rachmaninoff, and his favorite poet is Ezra Pound. He is considering careers in teaching or diplomacy; however, writing, poetry specifically, will be a lifelong occupation. Dennis Brinkworth was born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is a recent graduate from Northeastern University where he developed a love/hate relationship with sushi. His work has appeared in BDCwire, Buffalo Spree Magazine and Haute Living Magazine. City Limbo is his first short story. He lives in Boston, MA and misses his dog Finnegan, who is back in Buffalo, very much. Ivan Camarena grew up a native of two cities, commuting between the border region of Tijuana and San Diego on a daily basis. Following the completion of his undergraduate studies at San Diego State University and a string of exhibitions at Tijuana’s ICBC and San Diego’s Voz Alta Project Gallery, Ivan ventured off to Los Angeles in search of new experiences. Where his earlier work took on the roll of voyeur and was an attempt to find meaning in mobility, Ivan’s current work expands on similar ideas and attempts to look inward in an effort to materialize his own behaviors and thought processes. IvanCamarena.com Alyssa Cokinis, professional procrastinator, reads and writes both too often and not enough. She has a passion for warm weather, written word, and theatre. She is currently an undergraduate at the University of Iowa pursuing English/Creative Writing and Theatre Arts. Her work can also be found in Literati Quarterly (as Lyzzy Redd), The Light Ekphrastic (as Lyzzy Redd), and INK issues V and VI. She is severely attached to her cats and loves Harry Potter. Alexia Derbas is a writer from Sydney, Australia. She writes at lexderbas. wordpress.com Cailin Doty is a writer, an undergraduate student in Massachusetts (majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing), and a self proclaimed hot chocolate addict. Interests include writing, reading horror stories, drawing, and posting her writings on thejinxedwriter.tumblr.com.

Growing up in upstate New York, Jessica Fisher has been drawing since she was old enough to hold a crayon. She studied cinematography at Binghamton University and has been shown in several galleries in the tri-state area. Currently she is based in NYC where she writes freelance news articles. Fisher’s art mainly includes pen & ink and photography, but she occasionally works in sculpture and painting. You can view more of her work at: http://thearticulus.tumblr.com/ or http:// miniktty.daportfolio.com/ Caitlin George is a legal assistant who graduated from James Madison University with a bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing. In addition to all things literature- and grammar-related, she also thoroughly enjoys art, video games, and cosplay. You can check out what she’s up to at palegreenproductions.wordpress.com. Julianna Head was born on a stormy day in April, and since then has always yearned for adventure. She wandered barefooted through backyards and forests, chasing adventure through a multitude of outlets. She’s still searching for that One Big Adventure, still navigating the turbulent waters of her seventeen years, all the while doing the one thing she knows she can do: write. Rhett Henry is a amateur poet studying Creative Writing and Philosophy at Emory University. He works for the student radio station and the student newspaper. He’s lived in (metro) Atlanta all of his life: what a fortune! His interests include, but are not limited to, aliens, time, the moon, communism, dogs, and AM radio. He’s currently working on a 3-part poetry series, working title Moths Can Love, to be released late Summer 2014.mothscanlove.tumblr.com. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Shanghai, Ellen Jin is a high school senior studying overseas at the Concordia International School Shanghai. There, she is a staff writer of school magazine Zeitgeist, a journalist for newspaper The Vigil, and poetry editor of literary magazine The Chronicon. A fervent adherent to artists such as Jack Kerouac or Jean Luc Godard, she hopes to pursue a career that combines her love of literature and cinematography. Online Portfolio: writing-portfolio-ellenjin.weebly.com. Website: thechronicon.org.

Having grown up around a family of small-time gamers, Simon G. Lewis naturally loved his PlayStation, and ended up hating reading. Desperate to get him reading, his parents bought him Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, and he read it mostly to please them, but ended up loving it, even though it took him a couple of months to read it, and wanted more. Nowaday’s, he generally finishes a book a fortnight, and has started writing fiction. He aspires to be a published author and poet. Grace Li is a reader and aspiring writer. She currently attends Rutgers University, where she is studying English and Creative Writing. When she isn’t in class, she is walking around campus “striving to catch sounds” of the marvel disguised as the mundane. She tries to translate these sounds into words at poemsarchive.tumblr. com. Megan D. Long is an educator and aspiring writer of poetry and short stories from a small city in upstate New York. Ms. Long recently completed her Master’s in education in both English and Special Ed. Her written pieces can be seen in her updated blog, The Literary Element. Her future goals include participating in educational research and writing children’s books. When in between projects, she can be seen exploring with her husband, Jeff, or volunteering in the community Visit her at: http://theliteraryelement.wordpress.com/ Samantha Mallari is a San Diegan high-school student, aspiring TED speaker and reporter, and a new name to the writing scene- but definitely not to writing. She has earned several writing awards, including three Scholastic Art and Writing Regional Awards. She’s currently writing her first novel. She enjoys musical theatre, running, and volunteering for organizations that help those with special needs, a cause close to her heart. Read more of her work and keep posted on her endeavors through: skylightboulevard.blogspot.com. James Moffitt is a writer and English teacher living in Richmond, VA. He has published two collections of short stories. As well, his writing can be seen in RVA Magazine, and Whurk. See more of his work at www.sinkswimpress.com. Heather Oldfield is a writer based in the North of England & she has never lived further than an hours drive to the sea. She does her writing at a school desk from the 1950s in a house from the 1850s. To see more of her work visit whirlwindofdust. wordpress.com.

Sam Ortiz thinks that poetry is meaningless, and devoid of any significance. He also likes writing poetry. His work focuses on the material world, in part as an attempt to convey it’s complexity and beauty, and in part to serve as a response to the large body of poetry that focuses on the spiritual as the ultimate source of inspiration. He enjoys playing with words and tries to make them dance because he can’t dance. He can be found at scrawlsandstuff.tumblr.com. Lucille Potocnik is the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants. Nicky Rehnberg is an English graduate student at California State University, Fullerton. She is obsessed with comic books and hopes to write her own one day. When she isn’t hanging out in a library, she likes to chase ghosts and take pictures of flora and fauna with her camera named Vera. She likes to camp in Northern California and write haikus about being in love with the Universe while using her phone as a flashlight. Follow her ramblings on Tumblr: http://crookedhearted. tumblr.com. TJ Reynolds is a graduate student at California State University Fullerton, working towards an MA in English. He writes fiction and poetry in an attempt to bring meaning to life’s tragedies. He firmly believes in the potential for artforms to break boundaries, change perspectives and allow for positive change in the world. He hopes to one day attain a PhD and become a tenure track professor and lifelong writer Angel Acuna-Robinson is a student at CSULB. At the tender age of six Nina V. Rye came to the conclusion that writing is integral to keeping her sanity intact in this crazy world. Years and several degrees later, she is building a portfolio of short fiction with the aim of publishing an anthology. An avid theatregoer, a bookworm and a restless traveller, Nina finds inspiration in things that surround her and spins ordinary ideas into stories with a twist. Visit her website at www.ninavrye.com.

Miles Scanlon is a 22 year old transgender man living in Kent, Ohio. He is a grateful recovering addict, and a psychiatric survivor, the latter of which means he has survived the abuse perpetrated by the psychiatric system. Though he currently works at a call center, he hopes to eventually return to school, study writing, and find a career somewhere between literature, music, and political activism. He enjoys punk rock, sandwiches with bacon on them, and terrible puns. Bob Schofield is the author and illustrator of The Inevitable June. He likes what words and pictures do. He wants to be a ghostly presence in your life. Eric Silver loves cardigans, peanut butter, and loud music. He is the co-founder and four-time team member of Slam! at NYU, the most winningest collegiate slam poetry team. A recipient of the Emerging Jewish Artist Fellowship from the Bronfman Center, he self-published the first run of his chapbook Post-Awkward Expressionism. He’s currently writing poetry responses to every question in The Book of Questions at http://chapbookofquestions.tumblr.com/. An NYU graduate and future teacher, he wants to be somewhere between Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society and College Dropout Kanye. Molly Silverstein is a 22-year-old person from New York City. She collects boxes, enjoys horseradish, and can be found at casualsnail.tumblr.com. AJ Urquidi is an MFA Student at California State University, Long Beach. Collin Varney lives in Colorado where he reads, writes, and teaches. Ever since he embodied its vitality, language has built him into a giant and has become a tool for mining the world into pieces he can manage and understand. Words have made him stand taller, and he doesn’t intend on shrinking back down to size. With teaching, he urges his students to embody language and to use it to break the world into pieces they can understand. He knows if he wants his students to be giants, he can never stop being one or trying to inspire others to stand tall. Visit him at www. readerwriterteacher-collinvarney.com. Maggie Williams is a bibliophile with a penchant for Shakespeare residing in the western suburbs of Chicago. She has a B.A. in English from Augustana College, where she had work published in Saga, the school’s literary magazine. She currently writes in her free time from a real grown up job, and enjoys spending time with her fiance and their dog, Mercutio.