Atlantis Fall 2015

Fall 2015 | Issue 72

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Emily Martian Q&A with

BROTHERS EGG an ecletic trio of americana roots rockers

featuring

Kyle Maples Threa Almontaser

AtLant s a creative magazine

Editor’s Note Dear reader,

Welcome to the seventy-second issue of Atlantis magazine, a haven for the artwork of North Carolina students. This is my last issue as a staff member, so forgive me as I write about these pages while I fight small tears and big laughter.

As I think about this issue, I remember a meeting in which our art editor told the staff about a French phrase she recently discovered.

“Espirt de l’escalier,” she said to us in an Americanized French accent. Literally translated, the phrase means “staircase wit,” as if someone were only able to come to a conclusion after traveling floors of ideas.

“It’s a term used to describe the struggle of thinking of the perfect reply too late,” she said.

The contributors of this issue created introspective pieces of prose, poetry, art, and photography. The staff wondered: is artwork the artist’s espirit de l’escalier? This question provokes the issue’s theme.

Much of the work in this magazine comes to a conclusion—a conclusion about a lover, about time, about culture, or a conclusion in between notes, in between mountain plateaus, or at the end of concrete steps. By contributing to this issue, the artists and writers are sharing their perfect reply with us; we’re honored to be the consumers of their staircase wit.

As I prepare to leave the Atlantis family and launch my last spread, I realize my espirt de l’escalier has yet to arrive. I’m not sure how to thank all my staff, their volunteers, and the magazine contributors.

In fact, I’m hesitant to describe my gratitude for fear it won’t justify its magnitude.

But, I guess, here it goes: thank you to the staff for helping me enact change and for letting me tell stories to which no one else would listen. Thank you to our contributors for allowing me to awe at your images and words and for tripling our submissions rate for this issue. Finally, thank you to our volunteers who make this magazine a special component of our university.

With much love, Lori Wilson Editor-in-chief

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Contents Art 3 18 19 23 30 31

Invisible Man #2 by Quoctrung “Kenny” Nguyen Fly Away Print by Hyewon Yang Through by Tessa Butler Memories by Beth Richter Beautiful Sorrow by Nathan Ryan Verwey Sweet Dreams by Hyewon Yang

Feature Articles

Photography 5 7 11 15 27 37

Out of Darkness by Gabrielle DeSopo Approaching Sawtooth by Tiffany Ernst Free as the Sea by Madison Bowen Behind Closed Doors by Summer Ray Moore The Radical Oppositions by Marco Figueroa Mountain Heaven by Isabela Zawistowska Convergence by Lemuel Heida

9 Q & A with Jamie Eggleston by Heather Cayton 21 Building with Bruce Bowman by Joseph Lowe 35 Oops, I Hearted by Heather Cayton

Prose 12 16 17 24 26 28 29 32

Waste by Sarah Holtkamp Collision by Julia Castillo Solipsism, a Wandering Mind by Mason Hamberlin The Man in the Street by Kyle Maples Revelation in July by AlyssaVincent A Revelation by Kyle Maples The Dissolution of Us by Paula Eames A Guide to Surviving Your Love For Her by Erinn Seifert

Poetry 4 6 8 20 33

Vignette at the Bottom of a Glass by Mason Hamberlin Consequences by Threa Almontaser On Top by Threa Almontaser Lavender Columbines by Mckenzie Gritton Parched by Mikaela Fleming

Medusa front and back cover by Jai Woods Illustrations by Colleen O’Malley

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Invisible Man #2 3

Art by Quoctrung “Kenny” Nguyen

en

Vignette at the Bottom of a Glass Poetry by Mason Hamberlin Me and my heavy pitch coat sit off to the side. I let it hug my shoulders with the force of the night sky, brittle boned and empty, in this light polluted landscape.

Surrounding voices—try as they might—rage to phase through a self-constructed haze of sour thoughts and wet bread.

Just as my ancient heart has petrified and crawled to tired sprawl, my skin firmly cracks, groaning at movements beneath its fibrous mold. Longing, left to suffer on a stone pedestal like Laocoön torn from the arms of company. Without friends, these skin-hid snakes slip my coat, oak horses sap my veins.

I take root. Should I crumble and wade through screen doors, amid shallow faces on mudcaked linoleum floors, I’d dirty my soles, forcing a plastered, off-white smile—alone in the crowd, sifting through dregs and sweat-encrusted dresses for you, who are terrifying, strange, and beautiful.

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Out of Darkness Photography by Garbielle DeSopo

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Consequences

Poetry by Threa Almontaser

My mother knew.

How it started with a fever in her daughter’s constant flushed cheeks. Grew with random, upward twitches of the mouth. Made her eldest daughter sick on the inside, too.

The place where rapture and sex reside. Thinking about a boy.

My mother tried.

The cure included a spoonful of cumin forcefully stuffed into her daughter’s mouth until swallowed. Boiling water poured onto the soles of her feet. A burning coal of bakhoor splayed on her stomach, just a few inches shy of the vagina.

Healing her daughter with these small signs of hellfire.

After, my sister was found in the forest behind our house with nothing but her naked, scarred body and a love letter scribbled in red Sharpie on a ripped page from the Quran we kept on our dining room table.

I can’t remember the verse. Something about one soul, a mate, wombs.

That night, my mother checked my lips for bruises, my breasts and neck for bites.

She warned me, “Hayati, my world, keep your heart veiled as much as your head.

This is the safest way to live.”

I believed her.

But ever since you pressed me beneath the yellow birch tree— its bright leaves like suns raining down on us, a shower of broken light, your broken breath of heat and smoke, something not safe— I don’t believe her anymore.

I dream about my sister.

She sleeps on yellow birch leaves that glow hot, sizzling. Someone is always watching her. He saw her there, that day.

Saw her as a birthed wet bud, petals the color of ash, rare and pretty. And He thought, How lovely. How lovely she will bloom.

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Approaching Sawtooth Photography by Tiffany Ernst

Free as the Sea Photography by Madison Bowen

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On Top Poetry by Threa Almontaser Near November, raindrops pinch our hard heads. Solid mountains swim in their own dissolved bodies.

Parched ghosts of drought, cracked streets, cracked lips, all soak

Quick, I hear the floods coming—dark water rushes meters below our spat. I bite his pinky. Now he rushes away, almost slips into the torrent, but I catch him, pull him close to me again, and he is crying, salty raindrop cheeks.

in the sky’s sprinkle. We spill, no longer dry and dusty, heavy in our dampness like drenched woolen blankets.

Mustafa Al-Qureish is over me,

I slide home, trying not to miss a step. He calls me bad names, waving his knife at me, and still I pray the downpour washes out his mouth, along with his heart.

I wonder if I’ll grow up

with his muddy thobe and lizard hands.

I, too, am a scrappy kid. Back on a bed of pebbles, shoving back revenge for using my kitty as another ragged, deflated soccer ball with your friends. I think

with the same mold as his, in this humid heart known as the middle and the east, its grounds in constant thirst for a fine American lawn.

Mustafa is trying to kill me for real when he reaches for the sharp gambia on his waist and still I think I’ll marry him, just for his long warrior name . . . his black eyelashes, so long I could fish with them, and his mean,

I am thirsty too, for the airy ocean and its waves, bloodless, rushing only with calm.

deep voice like he swallowed the pebbles digging into my spine. I can’t free my face from his fists. A loose, white tooth pops out, lands with the pebbles, becomes one of them, myself drowning in slick blood.

In a history book, I learned that the Qureish were powerful tribesmen who fought many battles by smashing everyone into submission.

Mustafa smashes my lips with his nails.

The salt of landlocked, gritty rain. Raw flesh.

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Q & A with Jamie Eggleston of B The North Carolina-based band Brothers Egg was formed in 2014.

The trio released Bleeding Slow, their debut EP, on April 17, 2015.

Brothers Egg offers a self-described mix of “Americana, Roots Rock, Indie Folk, Bluegrass, Grunge, and World Music.”

HC: On Bleeding Slow, released this spring, which track are you most proud of, and why?

JE: I would say “Dance with Me” probably, just because that was the first song we wrote and recorded. The version that’s on the EP we cut completely live. We just did one take and that was that. It’s not perfect, but it’s got good live, raw energy, and we’ve been getting a lot of good feedback about that song.

HC: How would you describe your songwriting process, generally speaking?

JE: Usually it starts with a riff that Hunter and I write on either the guitar, mandolin, or banjo. Then from there we kind of get a melody, and then we start working on words.

I think it’s slightly different for both of us, but we like to try to work together and put both of our ideas into the song to make it work.

HC: You spent some time in Africa. What took you there?

JE: A study abroad [trip] took me there, at UNCW. I just wanted to get out of the country and experience something new. I love to surf, and there are good waves where I went in South Africa. I stayed a little extra and did some travelling. I ended up writing a lot of music over there.

HC: What were some of your favorite places you went while you were there?

JE: Mozambique was really cool. That was crazy. It was a wild experience. Jeffreys Bay is a famous surf spot—I got to surf that a lot, which was really fun for me, and Cape Town was super cool.

HC: Getting back to the music, do you have any particular bands that you would love to share a stage with or open for?

JE: Boy, there’s so many. I can tell you some of our influences. We love the Avett Brothers—we think they’re awesome. We love Dave Matthews Band. We love The Black

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of Brothers Egg Feature by Heather Cayton

Keys. I think our music is kind of hard to pigeonhole because we like so many different kinds of bands. We’re really influenced by bluegrass and old-time, and we’ve met Suzanna the fiddle player. That’s why we kind of have a western sound on [Bleeding Slow].

We’re also influenced by rock and blues, and the next one we’re working on is a rock/ blues/bluegrass-oriented album.

HC: If you could only pick three albums to listen to for the rest of your life, what three albums would you choose?

JE: Oh my god, that’s tough. I think Led Zeppelin I. Man, Paul Simon’s Graceland is an awesome album. And I would say Radiohead’s In Rainbows is a good one. Is that three?

Oh, no, I’ve got to put a Dave Matthews album in there. I’d say Before These Crowded Streets. That’d be in the top three for sure. I gave you four, but I love all of them.

HC: Do you have any certain venues or festivals you’d be thrilled to play in the near future?

JE: We’re hoping to play Shakori Hills in the spring. It’s in the piedmont outside the Chapel Hill area. They just had their fall festival, and we went there to check out some bands. I think we’re going to try to play the spring one. Ultimately it’d be pretty cool to play FloydFest or Bonnaroo or something like that.

HC: Which would you choose, Biggie or Tupac?

JE: I’d say Biggie. I just like Biggie’s flow.

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Behind Closed Doors Photography by Summer Ray Moore

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Waste Nonfiction by Sarah Holtkamp The room is long and narrow, and it smells like dead ladybugs and dried-out Play-Doh, because it’s full of dead ladybugs and dried-out Play-Doh. It spans almost the entire length of the upstairs with a single window at the end that overlooks the neighbors’ swimming pool, and I have to listen to Jimmy and Joey splash and scream while I sit in the narrow room and seethe with jealousy because we don’t have a pool, and I’m not allowed to invite myself to their house to swim because that would be rude. My backyard is nothing but heat and red clay and mosquitoes. Dad built a wooden playset out back a few summers ago with a sandbox and swings and a slide and monkey bars, but the monkey bars splinter my hands and the sandbox turned into a mosquito breeding ground, so when I play outside, I usually go to someone else’s house. Pretty much every kid on my

street is homeschooled, so Heather and Nathaniel and Hannah and Jordan are still in class several weeks into my vacation. I shouldn’t interrupt them.

Instead, I sit inside on the cold metal folding chair in the narrow room and make Mario swim across the tiny screen. A Blooper kills him. It’s my version of a swimming pool, I guess.

My toes rip at the crunchy, matted, orange carpet that’s full of bits of dead ladybugs and dried-out PlayDoh, and I mash the buttons on the Super Nintendo controller as if pressing harder will make Mario jump higher. It’s kind of like how pressing B really fast while the Poké Ball shakes in a Pokémon game increases the catch rate, even though deep down we all know that it doesn’t really work and it’s just a superstition. Everyone does it anyway because it’s a sacred superstition, and

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it just doesn’t feel right to throw a Poké Ball and wait around for the Pokémon to either be caught or escape without doing anything to bring about the better outcome.

Mario falls into a bottomless hole this time, and I angrily hum along to the game over jingle and thumb the cursor to continue, because what else is there to do?

Before I get the chance to press A, though, Zach peeks into the room and says he wants a turn. I tell him to plug in the other controller and he can be Luigi every other life, but he doesn’t want to play this game; he wants to play Yoshi’s Island. I tell him that’s a one-player game, and what am I supposed to do while he’s hogging the Super Nintendo? He doesn’t know, and we wrestle for the controller for a while until he starts crying, and the freezing fear of getting in trouble shoots through me as I try to calm him down. He’s a loud crier, and I don’t want Mom to wake up from her nap and get mad at us. I give him the controller, and he stops crying as soon as it’s in his hands. He grabs the Yoshi’s Island cartridge from the game box and exchanges it for the Mario one. I would call him the s-word, but he’ll tattle, and I’ll get a spanking.

I retreat to my room and play on the computer. It’s not connected to the Internet or anything, and the CD drive hasn’t worked for a long time, so I move files around and change the background and screensaver and login password a few times. I open the word processor and play with how fast the letters appear when you hold down one key for too long, and then I press the spacebar and watch the red line appear beneath the string of letters. I don’t type anything because I’m ten and the letters on the little pink practice keyboard are all out of order. There’s a game for learning how to type that came with the keyboard, but it’s boring and frustrating. I hate typing.

I almost think about going across the street to Chase and Cole’s, but I can never tell when they’re home.

Sometimes they’ll ride their scooters and bikes with the garage door open and it’s easy to get my own bike and join them in trekking up what we call Rollercoaster Road. The top of the world, the edge of a new housing development where we rev our playing card engines and let go of the brakes, steering for the manhole cover that gives a jump in addition to the speed and freedom of a steep incline. Once I forgot my bike at home and had to borrow a scooter, and the layer of skin left on the pavement reminded me that I’m not very good at riding scooters.

Their garage door is closed today, though. No bikes.

No scooters.

I almost miss school on days like these when Dad is at work and Mom is napping and Zach is being a brat as usual and every kid on the street is busy doing

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other things. Chase and Cole are probably at summer camp. Hannah and Jordan would be asking me and Zach to play dragons with them at the creek in their backyard if it wasn’t for their homeschooling. Same goes for Heather and Nathaniel, but we prefer climbing the big tree between our yards and kicking over ant hills and collecting the golf balls that Mr. Bill shoots over the fence to return later and mixing grass clippings and wild onions and stagnant rainwater in pails for “soup.”

I have a GameBoy. I play Pokémon until the batteries die. It kills enough time, I guess, and I look out the window in time to see Dad’s dull-gray Volvo rolling up the cracked driveway. I perk up a little bit and hurry downstairs. He’s unloading groceries and I don’t help at all, but I do run up and down the driveway with him as he carries the plastic bags, just so I can be underfoot. He asks if I logged my Magic Treehouse book for summer reading and I say yes, of course I did, even though I completely forgot about it.

I see charcoal as he’s unloading the groceries and I ask if we’re having burgers for dinner, but he shakes his head no and says we’re having hot dogs. With Mr. Bill? I ask. No, just here, he says. I say, oh, okay. I don’t tell him that I think Mr. Bill makes better hot dogs. I like having dinner at his house because his yard is soft and grassy and it’s actually nice to run around barefoot in, and he has a huge red-stained porch with a built-in grill and a fire pit and heavy wrought-iron furniture, and there are two eucalyptus trees at the end even though I thought those only grew in Australia. He plays jazz on summer evenings and it floats through the whole neighborhood, but I don’t like jazz. I think that in order to like it I’d have to be old like Mr. Bill, his face droopy and dark from hours in the sun while he worked on his yard. He’s always loud and cheerful, but sometimes I can’t understand what he’s saying, and when he talks to me I usually smile and nod and hope he isn’t asking a question.

I liked the evenings when Mom was hungry for hot dogs and she was strong enough to visit, and we’d all meet in Mr. Bill’s yard with brassy strains of jazz bursting from hidden speakers. The way she’d talk with everyone, all life and laughs, it was like she hadn’t been sleeping all day with the blinds down and the door closed. While the hot dogs sizzled and swelled and burst at the sides, Zach and I would pick at the eucalyptus tree and smoosh the fragrant leaves between our fingers, sniffing at the medicinal oils they’d release. Dad would tell us to stop ripping up the tree, but Mr. Bill never seemed to mind too much. Sometimes Mr. Bill would make baked beans, but he put onions in his baked beans. I’d pick around them.

We don’t go to Mr. Bill’s house for dinner much anymore.

Dad grills the hot dogs and Zach and I scarf them

down while Dad brings Mom a plate. When I finish, I hurry up to my room and crawl into bed, on top of the sheets because it’s hot. My windows are always open in the summer because Dad puts them up and the wood swells with humidity and I’m not strong enough to put them back down, and I can hear Mr. Bill’s jazz playing without us, but from underneath rising cricket songs.

Hoot owls, too. They keep me up.

Mom and Dad say I need to behave better in church.

They say I need to do my prayers before I go to bed, but I always forget because I’m too tired. I can’t sleep right now, though, so I think things at the spackled popcorn ceiling. I ask to not be scared of air vents and monkeys.

I ask to be able to beat that star level in Mario. I ask when Mom’s hair will grow back. I think thank you for the pretty day, I guess, even though it was boring, amen.

The ceiling doesn’t answer. It’s just there. Bumpy and

white. I’m too tired to think any more if it won’t answer.

I don’t notice when the music stops. I can’t remember when the noisy crickets turn into a summer soundscape.

I don’t know what day today was, or what tomorrow will be. I can’t tell if this is a side effect of summer, when the days are too long, when everything happens out of order, when I feel like I’m not taking advantage of being a kid, and instead I’m growing up too quickly.

Fall sneaks closer without discrimination.

X A

SELECT

START

Y B

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The Radical Oppositions Photography by Marco Figueroa

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Collision Fiction by Julia Castillo We were two objects in space, dancing the line of stranger and acquaintance.

Somewhere down that line, one of us missed the next step in our dance, and we ungracefully collided. We drifted from the orbit of almost and jumped into the orbit of surely. You and I faded into our own sequence and watched the constellations in motion. One revolution on this pathway is not enough to satisfy my selfish being, but, unfortunately, our universe does not permit the luxury of second miracles. I need more time in our own galaxy before the drifting turns into fading, and our brief moment in this system is lost. We need a home in which the components of this space obey different laws that allow distance to be insignificant in the everlasting force of our attraction.

I foolishly await the day when our paths will crash again, but when lines intersect, they only do so once.

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Solipsism, a Wandering Mind Nonfiction by Mason Hamberlin

It started with trash bin graffiti stating, “look around once in a while” in drawn-out, pink marker. Immediately, I peck out that same message in the notes section of my phone and move on. I don’t think much of it as I pocket my phone, but part of me registers that it would be “poetic” to use in a later story. Something of the hipster-shit sorts—not much is interesting in my day-to-day life. So I keep walking with my head down, searching the pavement for anything new.

Later that night: the rubber soles of my shoes smack against the plastic caps of the library stairs as I climb to the second floor. Usually it’s difficult to find a secluded desk to work at, so I set up camp on the ground between the dusty English literature essays and the untouched Spanish fiction section. The rough, knotty carpeting hurts to spread out on. Yes, the floor is hard, but my stubbornness says otherwise. I force a straight spine and make glancing eye contact with the shelved titles. One book called 50 Works of Classical Literature We Can Do Without snags my attention. I pluck it out and grin; it pretty much summarizes my high school experience. At least two or three of the listed works have put me to sleep, ending up as paper-spined teepees on my face, and turning late nights into groggy days.

Mid-morning the next day, while returning from breakfast: hot coffee spittles out from under the plastic lid, scalding my hand as I bounce down the brick steps of the dining hall. I groan and pat my pockets, searching for the outline of a rectangular phone case. Then, fingertips slip under the denim cuff lip in an attempt to draw it out, but I groan again once I realize the phone isn’t there; it’s futile. Perhaps it tucked itself away in the second outer pocket of my backpack. Grab it now? Too much effort. Just keep walking. I bide time during the plod home by cycling through a mental checklist for the day. French Essay? Gym? Psychology reading? Call Grandparents? I look up from the ground and catch a glimpse of the coastal evergreens, with their scaly bark and their needles, like leafy stars, illuminated in the young sun. Outstretched palms open, dripping water,

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beads of perspiration holding firm against the wind. It’s kind of beautiful.

Walking back from classes two days after: a wink of sleep escapes from my dewy eyes. A sudden breeze whips my face, interrupting me mid-yawn, to wring out more sleepless tears. I’m tired. I can’t be bothered. With each step, the gravel feels my pain through its cracks and grunts. White noise fills the space between each footstep—is the space between each footstep. Quiet, it’s so peaceful when it’s quiet—a much-needed break from everyone and everything. I’m the only one intruding here. However, the trees and grass don’t seem to mind.

In fact, they welcome me, openly willing to share their space. Again, the wind rushes by, knocking broken leaves from branches, throwing them across a grassy patch in the direction of a pathetic little roadside puddle. Eyes trained to their paths, I almost feel sorry for the little guys. Once more, I crane my neck and watch the trees, as a resilient brown leaf flutters down. In a last defiant act, it rides the rough air and nestles next to a grass-hidden dollar. I look around. Not a soul. Nice.

Staring at the ceiling in bed later that week: it’s too hot in here, the sheets stiff and itchy—will I have time to print my homework in the morning? Stop. My eyelids slam shut, smooshing the room’s faint light into a horizon of blues, blacks, grays, and whites. Brain ticks, longing to escape reality through the stupid, fake digital plane of a phone and avoid the world leaking through the real windows. Stop. I sigh and breathe out the tension in my body. I roll over, eyes closed. Fingers trace the ridges, cracks, and blemishes in the wall’s skin, scars spelling a story of birth and weathering. The piping of the building hums in the silence, air oscillating through its lungs and water whispering through its veins. It begins to drift. I drift with it.

Riding a bike late into Saturday night at the end of the week: the moments when I close my eyes, all alone in the air of the cold night, the gushing breeze gnaws at my skin and holds captive the ends of my fingers. Its frigid spell caresses my bones and warms me, loosening

the tightly wound cords of my arms and legs, fleshing out fingers and toes where mechanisms once were. Unbound, lungs explore the openness of space, taking in the piercing air that drains pus from a clouded mind. I exhale and give back a taste of living warmth to a dying evening. It stings, but it stings so good; discomfort means I can feel. I look up and hate the stars in the cloudless night sky. Even when I feel like I belong in the world—freed—I can’t catch them with either word or action. They challenge me. They get stuck in my head and rattle around like the beans of a child’s shaker toy.

My gaze falls back to the damp, tangible world. I’m getting ahead of myself. Someone might be missing me.

My phone might be dead. But I don’t really mind. I haven’t bothered to check.

Fly Away Print Art by Hyewon Yang

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Through Art by Tessa Butler

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Lavender Columbines Poetry by McKenize Gritton The pear slept on the counter near the microwave, left quiet the way unfinished houses rested lined by the fresh cement, near blotches of brown grass that hadn’t been given any time to grow in the new slice of our suburb.

They sat in slumber, their quiet similar to ours now.

I smell the new summer hitting my skin while you breathe in the bloom of lavender columbines in Steamboat Springs.

The petals fan out like the mountains behind you, and a beard grows on your face while you read about Marx and Freud, calling for me only when something tragic happens.

I find a calm in it all, like the day I ripped pages out of your favorite books without telling, or later, when I ran out of that dusty, unfinished house and you became a variation of yourself—altered like an old dress that now sits on my couch as pillows, or the way my little sister now stands three inches taller, has breasts, and falls in love.

How life leaves all of us—or how we leave it: all of us absent but thriving, involved with our own minor existence. For you, right now, the lavender columbines reaching up into your nose, and me, 2,000 miles away, drinking coffee with honey.

Either way, we always continue.

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Building with Bruce Bowman Feature by Joseph Lowe

From a creative standpoint, many people view architecture as a type of art form. The planning stages, the molding of building structures, and the construction of the work connotes the conventional definition of an artist’s technique—the planning phases on canvas, the outlining of the piece, the painting stages, and, eventually, the finished product. Though there are many comparisons, we keep them in two separate groupings.

Becoming an architect doesn’t mean you’re artistic, and becoming an artist doesn’t infer architectural brilliance.

But, in the case of Bruce Bowman, it does.

Bowman is the anomaly. He is an architect working as a principal of Bowman Murray Hemingway Architects, and he is an artist displaying his works in various galleries, but he features most of his pieces in Wilmington’s New Elements Gallery. His love for both art forms began at an early age.

“I always had a proficiency for drawing and building things,” Bowman says.

Growing up in Valley Forge, PA, he was influenced by its historic ties, such as the Valley Forge National Historical Park. Valley Forge is also where George Washington built the first version of the Pentagon and where soldiers built hundreds of log cabins.

Bowman’s mother also had a powerful influence on his work. His grandfather always pushed her to become an architect. But at the time, gender roles proved too strong, and she took a different route.

“Back in the day, it was not common for a woman to pursue architecture,” Bowman says, “but her father wanted her to, so she did, but I don’t think it was the right time for her. She opted for the art education route.”

With a childhood immersed in architecture, Bowman relocated to North Carolina to attend North Carolina State University where he earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design in Architecture in 1983. During his time there, he sought out the integrated design program where he was able to study graphic and product design while focusing on his core classes of architectural design.

Bowman met several printmakers there, and he maintained an adept level of duality throughout college.

In 1991, he became a licensed architect, and his focus on his craft sharpened. He aided in the construction of several Wilmington governmental structures including medical, municipal, law enforcement, and judicial buildings.

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“I’ve done a lot of architecture that’s not terribly sexy, but highly functional in the community,” says Bowman.

These include the New Hanover County Judicial Building expansion and a project he is currently working on: the redevelopment of the Davis Community in Porters Neck, NC. The Davis Community, a skilled nursing facility, is a fifty-year-old structure that he and his team are planning to fully rehabilitate. Though it may not be highly attractive, the project, like several of his other works, is philanthropic in nature.

In 1997, he found himself with a lot of free time, which granted him the opportunity to pick up on his artistic pursuits. Around this period, he began showcasing his unique fine art around North Carolina until he found a home in the New Elements Gallery. He’s been at New Elements for fifteen years, and he’s displayed his artwork at more than eight two-person shows. Their regular inventory featured his work for several years.

New Elements’ dedication to Bowman is due to his matchless artistic flair. Though his influences include the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Wilmington’s own Claude Howell, his artwork complements his affinities for architecture.

“I love that [my early influences] were all on the edge of modern painting before photography had hit, or at least until photographs weren’t commonplace,” Bowman says. “They changed the world.”

Bowman focuses on an expressionist style stemming from the NC State College of Design color theory and an extraction of things that interested him the most from his coursework. Expressionist artwork focuses on the subjective emotions that arouse within an individual.

He mixes in Cubist styles—artwork focused on cubes and symmetrical shapes—with an exaggerated take on constructed buildings.

“You’ll see most of my art carries over from illustrating architectural renderings for work that I would for many years be preparing as schematic drawings to show a building as it would be,” Bowman says. “It was a rigorous process where you would have to show everything to relevant dimensions. The art is liberating because you don’t have to be true to prerspective as you would have to be in the workplace.”

Bowman uses vibrant color schemes to captivate his viewers, and his primary painting tool is a rubber pallet knife. Using a pallet knife allows the colors to exist

closely without polluting one another. Once the majority of the piece is completed, he uses the pallet knife to finish his line work and provide an alluring crispness to every finished product.

“They may not know why they are studying the piece,” Bowman says, “but when you can attract a viewer or engage a viewer for even a minute, half the work is done for the artist because then they are having a conversation with the art.”

As both an artist and an architect, his feats speak for themselves. Serving as the previous president of the American Institute of Architects in Wilmington, former Board of Directors member of the Cameron Art Museum, past president of the Historic Wilmington Foundation, and a renowned artist in the Cape Fear region, it leaves us wondering, what work of art will he produce next?

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Memories Art by Beth Richter

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The Man in the Street Fiction by Kyle Maples One morning, right after sunrise, Jim Crawford lay down in the middle of Main Street and didn’t move for fifty years. He had woken up that morning to Mrs. Crawford’s stiff body gazing serenely at him across the pillows, and he decided he’d had enough. She had given in to her sickness; he might as well try his luck on a horse-drawn carriage. He lay in the street and breathed in the sky until shadows formed over him.

“Jim,” Mayor Hodges said, “why don’t you get on up out of the dust.”

Gossip of the tragedy had spread through the menial population of Maysville, and they flocked around the delusional man like vultures. Jim kept staring at the sky. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a note, which he handed to Mayor Hodges with an air of tender resignation.

It read: 1. I will not move.

2. Everyone go about your day.

3. Please, don’t bother to stop the carriages.

“Well,” Mayor Hodges said after reading the list, “all right then.”

The townspeople did just as Jim told them: they went about their days.

Maysville was a town in which people said, “That ain’t none of my business,” like a daily liturgical chant. The stores opened, the sun rose higher than the rooftops, and Jim remained lying on his back, motionless as a dead dog.

To Jim’s disappointment, the carriages that passed through the town did not fail to see him lying in the street, and they simply steered their course around him, as if evading a rotten log. Still, he persisted.

After lunchtime, Mrs. O’Kean, a close friend and confidant of the late Mrs. Crawford, felt such a burning pity in her heart for that man in the street, she took the leftover bread from her meal and laid it on his chest.

Then Mr. Stanley, the cobbler, placed a glass of water next to his head. It did not take long for the tradition to stick.

“How are you getting along, Mr. Crawford?” Mrs. O’Kean said each day at noon, as she placed her unfinished meal of potatoes or turnip greens next to him.

“Just fine,” he said every time, his lips peeling like onion skin.

Dr. Brock brought him cream for his lips.

“That should fix you right up,” the doctor boomed, stroking his beard in stern ponderance. “Don’t go crazy, now. There’s a tight supply.”

“I thank you, Doctor,” Jim said.

Others pitched in, too. When the spring rains came, the Dudley brothers built Jim a ramshackle shelter. When the summer sun burned, Jack, the bartender, came every hour with a glass of ice water, or, occasionally,

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whiskey. When the winter snows fell, Miss Shear, the baker’s daughter, gave him an old oven with a fire, so he could keep warm. She made sure it stayed blazing all winter.

The following winter found the two of them doing the same. Jim Crawford became “The Man in the Street,” and the townspeople accepted him in the way they accepted all things: with indifference, resignation, and an unspoken compassion. Decades passed and saw the citizens of Maysville plod through their days like slouching pilgrims. They gave Jim the food they could spare, sheltered him with the supplies they had, and taught their children to do the same as they grew older. Time saw Jim’s friends wilt into rocking chairs, and it saw Jim’s own head of leafy hair turn white. The children of his friends took on the chief responsibility of his care. To them, it was a ritual, an homage to a relic of their parents’ generation. They continued to bring him their leftovers.

After the corpulent Mayor Hodges died of a heart attack, a new mayor was elected.

He told the townspeople not to call him “Mayor.” He wanted them to address him as his friends addressed him: by the moniker “K.” K had big dreams for Maysville.

“Hello there, Jim,” K said to the decaying old man one afternoon. “I have a proposition for you. Instead of this nasty dust, how would you like to lie on some new, smooth asphalt?”

“I’m fine just how I am, Mayor,” Jim said. The shelter reeked of pestilence, and K conceded without argument.

“All right, Jim,” he said. “Just felt I should check.”

K paved the road right around Jim. He built a YMCA where the Shears' bakery had once stood. He put a sign on the side of Jim’s shelter, which read: The Man in the Street Jim Crawford 115 lbs.

5’9” Do Not Move He brought tourism to the honest town of Maysville.

With the new frenzy of activity in the once languid town, the locals began to forget Jim. There were autumn fairs to attend and movie theaters to occupy them at night.

Jim’s old friends were carted off to senior homes, and their children became absorbed in their own families. As summer rolled into autumn, Jim noticed his bones aching when the wind blew. As autumn grew wrinkled and leathery, Jim noticed the roughness of his own hands.

One day, right before sunset, Jim stood up as suddenly as he had lain down. He craned his neck back and looked at the dimming sky.

“All right,” he said, to no one in particular, “I think I’ll take a walk.”

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Revelation in July Fiction by Alyssa Vincent Tent 20-O is one of four hundred white tents surrounding the massive, man-made hole nicknamed The Pit of Miracles. It sits unoccupied under the full moon, its silence disturbed by the sounds of busy archaeologists, anthropologists, and other renowned experts. Robotic assistants travel around the site as well, their whirs cutting through the muffled human conversation; they pacify the simpler machines scanning and analyzing inside Tent 20-O. The flaps of the entrance hang slightly askew. Bugs begin to circle the overhead light.

Past the white flaps is a spotless white wall, on which a thin screen flickers autonomously between contoured maps and color images of northeastern Stateland: a rocky waste with little vegetation, oases sporadically relieving the miles and miles of desert. Between slides of data, the screen displays an image of the Holy Tablet, The Pit’s most prized excavation.

Even with an excess of elite technology, the washbasin in the corner still leaks. Despite gigabytes of procedure, the drain was left plugged when 20-O’s lone human occupant abandoned his half-rinsed tools to see what all the commotion was about.

The basin drips full as the tent is abruptly bombarded with cheers. The machines beep and shudder in response to the frantic whirrs of the robots outside. The masters shout victory: “Praise Washington!” “Good Saviors, there she is!” “It’s Mother Liberty!”

Pages of a thick book fwoosh when a strong breeze invades the tent, flipping to rest on the final chapter of Third Savior Lincoln’s sacred biography. Through the plastic window, an excavation floodlight briefly streaks across the room and over the screen, which now displays: By the First Savior’s Grave, kneel humbly. By the Third Savior’s Throne, give thanks. Have faith in the Second and Fourth Saviors’ Wits. Under their watch on the Mount, we are safe.

The screen fades to white.

Water spills over the edge of the basin and onto a flyer notifying humans that next Sunday’s court service will be held at a different time. A pool accumulates on the counter, and a stream falls off the side. A misplaced machine short-circuits. The overhead light blinks out. Soon the basin reflects rippling fire. Through the window is a warped view of the floodlight crashing down, letting shadows overtake the scattering humans.

When silence is restored, the white screen is accompanied only by bugs and the moon.

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Mountain Heaven Photography by Isabela Zawistowska

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A Revelation Fiction by Kyle Maples It only took a fifth of whiskey. I’ve pictured this so many times, but I never thought it would happen. That I would ever have the balls to make it real. All it took was a hand from Jack. God, and have the trees ever looked so harsh in my headlights. Surprised they’re still shining. After I hit it. Tonight is dark as death, sure. Silent as death, too, with the engine off. Makes the light feel out of place, intruding on the stillness. I can see my reflection in the bottle, and that’s something. I look so far away—fuzzy in this light.

Curious. I’m not ready for the darkness, so just one more minute like this. I’ll just look at my reflection. That patchy hair on my cheeks, neck. Steel-gray eyes. I’ll just look at them until they’re clearer, just for a minute. Then I can face it.

The darkness isn’t so bad. It’s quiet now—quieter than I’ve ever heard the night. And this bottle’s too heavy for being empty, but the weight feels good. Makes me feel solid.

The grass. Wet and heavy on my feet. What happened to my shoes again? Oh well. I’d rather not get my feet all covered in dew, but oh well. Maybe it’s not dew after all. That’d be something. The fucker sure is coughing up a lot. Yes sir, that’s a lot of blood.

Thought the F-150 would do the job, but you can never tell nothing until you do it. I really did it, too. Jesus. I hope the fucker didn’t get blood on my hood. But that’s for later.

I must’ve hit it pretty good, though, with the leg all bent up like that, like a chicken foot or something. Flashy vest all torn up across the back. Arms squirming around like that, like they’re searching for a hand to hold on. Nothing to hold out here, boy.

Stopped coughing now. Curious. I’ll flip it over, see if it’s still breathing. Light fucker.

And would you look at that. Ain’t got no shoes on either. Pretty little things must’ve flown away into the woods. I still can’t see the face, though. Too dark. I’ll grab my flashlight from the glovebox. What was it doing out here at this hour anyway? No use in running around like that. Running around at ungodly hours of the morning. We’re all gonna die, nothing more to it. Can’t run away from that. You running toward me, you running toward death. There we go. A little dim, but it’ll do. Just enough to see it. I’ll stop for batteries after.

The feet are something else. Looks like one of those big toes about to fall right off. And I never imagined the legs all crooked like that. Didn’t know they could. But you can’t tell nothing until you do it. By God, did I. And those arms sprawled out like they’re trying to make some kind of snow angel. One of those wrist bones popping out there. All that blood on that vest. The neck all still—at an angle. Mouth dripping, gaping like a fish.

Eyes wide and staring at me.

Jesus, those eyes. Wish those things would close. They’re blinking now. And looking

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wet, like the dew on the grass. I wish they’d stop staring at me. I’ve seen those eyes somewhere before, I swear it. They look so close, like they can see inside me. They need to stop staring. Lord, those eyes. I can strangle it right now. Foot on the windpipe, it’d all be over in a minute. Yes, that feels right. Just gotta press down. But how do I know those eyes? How can eyes stab like that?

Momma always said my eyes reminded her of Grandpop’s hunting knives. The one with the elephant bone handle—that was the one. He sharpened that blade every day.

Sliced his finger once, wouldn’t stop bleeding. All that red on the bone. That blade was my favorite. Momma said my eyes looked like that. Lord, that must be it. The same shape and color and everything. The spitting image. And that face unshaved could’ve been the same reflection I saw in this bottle. So far away—but here it’s like it’s under a magnifying glass. We could be brothers, twins even. His eyes are mine.

The Dissolution of Us Fiction by Paula Eames The lilies sit, still, on the shelf. Rose petals, once sprinkled over the foamy surface of the bubble bath, now stick to the empty tub like clots of blood; a ring of water encircles the drain. The candles have melted; some of the wax has dripped onto the tile floor. I flick through the channels, dipping the chocolates into the mint ice cream I bought two weeks ago. It’s half gone. The door slamming seems to echo from down the hall—a haunted house. Your grief lingers, filling me with guilt. Though, I never could have said yes.

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Beautiful Sorrow30 Art by Nathan Ryan Verwey

Sweet Dreams 31

Art by Hyewon Yang

s

A Guide To Surviving Your Love For Her Nonfiction by Erinn Seifert First, accept that it will tear you open. Accept that you will spend countless nights alone, drunk or sobbing or both. Accept that you will twist back and forth, agonizingly and often, between knowing that she will never love you back and entertaining intricate daydreams of the day she does decide to love you back. Accept that those daydreams will never come to fruition. Accept, also, that even though the falsehoods you construct will give you comfort, witnessing reality will hurt you even more after spending hours imagining being able to hold her the way you want to. Accept that you will have to watch her love others and that you will have to watch those others break her over and over again. Accept that you will be the one she runs to for help putting herself back together. Accept that you will do it, every single time.

Prepare to write about it, over and over and over again.

Prepare to accidentally drink too much one night and try to tell her how you feel. Prepare for it to go horribly wrong. You can never speak as well as you can write, so attempting a verbal confession while drunk will not be your smartest move. Prepare for her to gently and kindly let you down, but for her to let you down nonetheless.

I’ve told you—you have to accept that she will never love you back the same way. Here, prepare for the proof of that, coming straight out of her tempting, red lips.

Find substitutes. Do not hold back with your affection, but keep it on the fair side of the friendship line. Date other girls. Fuck other girls. Fuck hotter girls. Tell yourself that you deserve more, deserve better, deserve someone who could love you back, at the very least. Love her anyway. Train yourself in the art of doing pseudo-romantic activities with her while letting them remain platonic. Kiss her on the cheek every time you part. It will help. Ignore your friends’ taunts of how you two are “so in love” and “should definitely date.” Laugh at these words, ignore them, pretend they do not make you want to throw up with longing. Call yourselves soul mates. Know that the way she means it and the way you

mean it are worlds apart. Appreciate, at least, that she cares for you deeply.

Take her to the beach after the sun goes down and convince her to skinny dip with you. Leave her lying in the shallow water, moonlight glancing off of her small, pale body, and walk as far into the sea as you dare. Stand there, chest-deep in the ocean at midnight, unafraid of anything except how much you love her. Sharks, riptides, drowning be damned. Revel in the intimacy that you two share—the intimacy of lovers that somehow exists between two people who are not lovers. Hope that she can feel the tender warmth you carry for her. Hope that she can feel the truth of the fact that she is the most special thing you have ever encountered.

Begin to accept the intimacy between you and the distance by which it will always fall short of true love on her end. Finish a process that began in a dimly-lit, smoky bedroom, tarot cards placed across your friend’s flowery yellow bedding. Finish the journey of acceptance that began that night. Gather up your heart again as you stand in the ocean, chest-deep under a half-moon, looking back at her on the shoreline, thirty yards away.

Thirty yards of distance: the necessary distance between two people who love like lovers but do not make love.

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Parched Poetry by Mikaela Fleming I have spent my life fueled by my own emotions.

And because of this overflow of feelings, I treated my body like a tall glass of water, constantly being passed around to the greediest of hands and lips.

In my chronic desire to quench the thirst of every groping throat around me, I found myself parched.

How easy it was to spill my affections into the mouths of others, to distract myself from the dryness of my own self-loathing.

This is the story of just another pair of thirsty lips.

He presented his virginity to me on a silver platter.

He begged, Take it, it’s yours.

How little he realized how I wished it were mine, for the word virgin was stripped from my vocabulary before it had time to form in my brain.

I now realize why I was so obsessed with his virginity.

I could trust him with the rough draft of my body.

His inexperienced and illiterate eyes would bypass the grammatical errors on my thighs, the poor punctuation of my stomach that proofreaders always highlighted before.

He took this crumbled creature and placed me on a throne.

Queen, he called me.

And from the height of that throne, I mistook his tears as freckles.

He dug his calloused and paint-stained hands into my chest, pried open my wounds, and the artist in him found charm in this crime scene.

And then he held me down, pressed his gun to my temple, fired off rounds of twisted I love you’s into my skull.

I can still feel them ricocheting inside my brain.

He crammed cigarettes down our throats so the coughing could cover up our miscommunication.

My young ex-lover, he loved to smoke.

He was always a drag.

But I printed compliments on his tongue in black ink.

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.

I hope they were permanent, so when he sticks it down another girl’s throat she can feel beautiful since he never found the vocabulary for me.

And when she takes up residence in his palate, I hope she tastes my red lipstick from the night he told me he wanted to live beside me forever.

He turned to me in bed one morning and said, I don’t love you anymore, and then he made me drive his ass two hours back home.

I am sick and tired of being dehydrated.

Let me be the salt he craves while he chokes on thirst.

Let me be his wet dream mirage in the middle of the desert.

This is just one more stupid love poem for a boy who could not keep up with my rainstorm.

I will split the wood on my bedpost, and there his mark can remain beside all the other lovers who just couldn’t manage to stay.

Couldn’t manage to knock knees anymore once they had gotten their fill.

I’m not the tallest glass of water; it’s so easy to suck me dry.

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Oops, I Hearted Feature by Heather Cayton

“Emily likes to paint and draw and stuff.” Emily Martian’s words are scribbled on an illustrated cardboard sign that hangs from her table at the Historic Downtown Wilmington Marketplace. On Sundays (weather permitting), she mans a booth of her monstrous goods on Water Street.

Martian’s work is whimsical, cartoonish, and a little vulgar. In Oops, I Hearted, a sheepish teddy bear covers his cheeks while exuding a bubblegum-pink, heartshaped cloud of gas.

Martian has always doodled. She is a hairstylist and co-owner of Elsewhere Salon. Her creativity intensified after she left a stifling nine-year job and opened her own business.

Martian prefers to work with Gouache. “It’s like watercolor,” she says, “but you can build the color.” Once satisfied with the results, she scans each painting for screen-printing on products such as clear vinyl die-cut stickers, greeting cards, T-shirts, and various sizes of

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prints and zipper bags.

Her top-selling design is a white unicorn “puking rainbow sherbet and kittens of joy,” says Martian to a customer. “He’s Every Girl’s Wet Dream.”

Martian can find ideas anywhere. A small child’s temper tantrum in a grocery store sparked Oh Darn, in which a sad, horned, green monster ponders a shattered lollipop.

“Sometimes I just see things,” Martian says, “or hear things, or even see people that look like cartoon characters, and I start drawing.”

Another of her pieces, Joyride, features a wombat riding a narwhal.

“I had a client that wanted a haircut,” Martian says. “I told her I would stay late if she texted me a random animal. She texted ‘wombat.’ So I started painting a wombat. Then she texted ‘narwhal,’ and when I asked why, she told me that her boyfriend needed a haircut too.”

Sometimes it’s as simple as putting two mismatched

concepts together—as in the case of the JellyBee, a green-and-violet-striped bumblebee with trailing jellyfish tentacles and golden wings. Her friend’s small child suggested the combination.

Martian is anything but serious. Her biography hangs above the box of prints. It reads: Emily’s biography: (completely true, not made-up by her friends, and unexaggerated) Emily was born in a log cabin in 1823 to a mule farmer. Her greatest accomplishment was swimming the English Channel wearing nothing but a zoot suit. She is a highly talented cartoonist, although she prefers to be called a doodler extraordinaire, and has an interesting sense of humor. Lastly, she studied nuclear physics at Harvard University and is a certified rocket scientist. If you don’t believe it, then you’ve misplaced your inner child. But fear not! She also has a time machine.

“I’ve been asked if it’s true,” Martian says, laughing, “if I actually did all those things.”

On this particular Sunday, six of the eight tents at the market are topped in white. But Martian’s tent is topped in purple, which matches her hair. Casual Sunday strollers wander up to her booth from time to time. Most are immediately drawn to the unicorn.

“Everyone loves the puking unicorn,” Martian says.

“It’s the height of my career.”

Martian also accepts orders for custom work. One past request came from a man whose car, nicknamed “Gnatster,” needed an engine rebuild. For him, Martian painted a disproportionate gnat—titled after the car— with tiny wings, baleen-like teeth, and a broken heart.

To buy Emily Martian’s work, visit Elsewhere Salon on 511 ½ Castle Street in Wilmington, North Carolina, or go to www.redbubble.com/people/emilymartian.

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Convergence38

Photography by Lemuel Heida

Staff Editors Lori Wilson

Colleen O’Malley Editor-in-Chief Hannah Layout Editor

Hailey Black Photography Editor

Ryan Budd Madison Roberts Prose Editor Features Editor

Volunteer Staff

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Marissa Flanagan Will Dean Britton Edwards Rachel Daughtry Breanna Morris Adreanna Sellers Natalia Pavel Kenneth Thies

Mason Hamberlin Becka Jackson Kyle Maples Angela Ciarletta Jessica Cohn Lemuel Heida Mallory Bittner Jordan Johns

son

hief

Hannah Granberry Art Editor

Layne Smith Raja Dang Jalernpan Promotions Coordinator

Caroline Schlanger Kylie DePriest Kinza Branch Erin Sullivan Emily McLamb Gloria Meiers Isabela Zawistowska Chianti Thomas

Web Developer

Kailyn Warpole Copy Editor

Caroline Orth

Poetry Editor

Hunter Houtzer Chris Livernois Ryan Burkam Julia Castillo Tamara Hoffman Nikki Kroushl 40

Contributors Threa Almontaser is an undergraduate at North Carolina State University, studying creative writing. She is normally spotted by the arrestingly loud scarves she wears on her head. Her poems and short stories have appeared in PHOENIX magazine, the Wake Review, Figment, and WindHover. She is currently a writer for the Nubian Message and an editor for the Technician. Besides writing, Threa enjoys cupcakes, a good discussion, trees, and all things blue.

Madison Bowen is eighteen and from New Jersey. She came to Wilmington, North Carolina, to chase her dreams. She fully intend on majoring in film studies. She has been taking photographs since she could operate a camera, and began filming and editing videos in recent years. She loves manipulating lighting in photographs and has passions for the sea, adventure, and happiness.

Tessa Butler is a studio art major with a sociology minor who works in a flower shop. She watches Jeopardy nightly and spends a fair amount of time with her two cats. She’s notorious for long naps and mindless humming.

Julia Castillo has a deep appreciation for the arts and hopes to integrate it into the mathematical career she wishes to pursue.

Heather Cayton will graduate in December with a BFA in creative writing and a minor in English.

She has always lived in North Carolina but dreams of moving to Europe after graduation, where she hopes to pursue a career in magazine writing, travel writing, or screenwriting.

Gabrielle DeSopo is a University of North Carolina Wilmington freshman who has always known she wanted to pursue something in the creative field and came to Wilmington with the intention of majoring in creative writing.

Paula Eames was recently uprooted from her Missouri hometown and is currently working towards her BFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She loves caffeine and sarcasm and can often be found making her friends uncomfortable by blurting out whatever is on her mind.

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Tiffany Ernst constructs most of her creative work among the trees. She is a junior at University of North CarolinaWilmington pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in both marine biology andchemistry; she continues to reassure herself this is not a death wish. While most of her time is devoted to scientific endeavors, the arts lend her a place of sporadic refuge from the rigors of academia.

Marco Figueroa was born in Mexico City where he lived for fifteen years before moving to Austin, Texas.

He has gained professional experience through multiple internships and by completing a Bachelor of Arts with a focus in photography at Greensboro College in North Carolina.

Mikaela Fleming is a communication studies senior

at University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is a slam poet and the 2014 winner of the Atlantis Poetry Slam. She has traveled around the country performing musical theatre and is currently the on-air host of Port City Spotlight.

Mikaela’s hobbies are cats and looking like Miley Cyrus.

McKenzie Gritton is a senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She loves the smell of citrus, the color cobalt blue, and long walks on the beach. She also enjoys writing things down.

Mason Hamberlin currently exists in a world of his own, dreaming of the cardboard box he one day will live in (he’s a psychology and creative writing double-major) after his studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington. Just like a semicolon, he doesn’t know; quite where he belongs. Please don’t (or do, it’s your choice) ask him about where he’s from, as he gets really confused (it’s actually quite funny). Traveling the world and living abroad does strange things to an individual. His pastimes include reading, writing, liberal politics, researching music, having existential crises. He will out-squat you.

Lemuel Heida enjoys lurking around with a camera and making people feel uneasy and awkward. He can be found in the darkroom in the middle of the night or at Whole Foods pretending to buy expensive vegan food.

He has been attending college since 2000 and has no plans on graduating. He doesn’t use “social media” so look for him in the Cultural Arts Building.

Sarah Holtkamp is a sophomore at University of North Carolina Asheville, and has been writing short fiction and other things since 2010. For a long time she hated English class and wanted to be a comic artist or Picasso or a graphic designer. That didn’t work out. Now she’s a lit major.

Hyewon Yang was born in South Korea in 1987, moved to New York with his family at the age of thirteen, and lived in NYC for fourteen years.

He earned his AAS degree in illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He moved to Charlotte, NC, two years ago and is currently studying at University of North Carolina Charlotte, pursuing a BFA degree in art with illustration concentration.

Joseph Lowe currently serves as the news editor for The Seahawk, University of North Carolina Wilmington’s newspaper. He has written for several publications in the area, including: StarNews, Focus on the Coast magazine, Men’s Ink, and the Greater Wilmington Business Journal.

Kyle Maples is a junior at University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is majoring in creative writing with a concentration in fiction. In his spare time, he likes to read, play music, and eat too much hummus.

Summer Ray Moore is a fashion and lifestyle photographer from the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Quoctrung “Kenny” Nguyen was born and grew up in South Vietnam. In 2007, he went to Ho Chi Minh University of Art and Architecture for a BFA in fashion design. In 2012, he went to the University of North Carolina Charlotte to continue the BFA program with a concentration in painting. Although he has professional experiences in commercial and industrial design, Nguyen finds his path in fine art and works in the medium of painting.

Nathan Ryan Verwey is currently pursuing a bachelor's in the studio arts program at University of North Carolina Wilmington, after which he will obtain a degree in education. He considers himself a renaissance man with a strong passion for mural painting some of which can be seen at 5325 Market St. Wilmington, NC. Alyssa Vincent is a freshman at North Carolina State University, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing and minoring in Japanese and technical and scientific communication.

She is a novice member of the NCSU rowing team and is beginning undergraduate research with the department of English.

Jai Woods is currently enrolled at the University of North Carolina Pembroke, pursuing a BA in art. Her studio focus is in sculptural ceramics with a secondary interest in drawing. Over the past year, she has experimented with both two-dimensional and three-dimensional media, exploring figurative work related to the theme of metamorphosis. Her portfolio revolves around experimentation with the aging figure, using a combination of watercolor, pen, and ink within illustration, as well as raku firing within ceramic work.

Isabela Zawistowska says that you’ve got to

take advantage of the great outdoors. Being out in nature is the best way to relax, challenge yourself, and put life into perspective.

Erinn Seifert is a new transfer student and a junior in the creative writing department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is a fan of dogs, avocados, and classical music, but not of spiders, being in the spotlight, or steamed carrots. Especially not steamed carrots.

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Fall 2015| Issue 72

AtLant s a creative magazine

Submissions Guidelines

We are looking for all types of art, photography, prose, and poetry with a unique perspective. We want our readers to experience your mood and talent through your own brush, pen, and/or camera. Show us your most creative, innovative, and personal take on the expansive world around us.

To submit to Atlantis, you must currently be an undergraduate or graduate student at any public or private university or community college in North Carolina. Contributors may submit up to ten pieces of art, photography, prose, or poetry. Please follow the guidelines carefully. They can be found on our website at atlantismagazine.org/submit.

Editorial Policy

For each genre featured in our magazine—art, photography, prose, poetry, and features—there is an editorial staff comprised of a qualified genre editor and several UNCW student volunteers. All submissions are anonymously coded by Submittable before being thoroughly reviewed by the student staffs. The submitter’s name is not disclosed until each editorial staff has made final content decisions.

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Copyright

All rights are reserved to the individual authors and artists. Permission must be obtained to use any material from this publication in any way.

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