Dear Readers, Another semester is upon us, and with it comes the new spring issue of Atlantis! Because there is something undeniably magical about the creative process, this issue was inspired by our favorite mythical creatures: Phoenixes, Big Foot, wood nymphs, and the Pied Piper to name a few. At Atlantis our goal is to provide students with a creative outlet, a place where they can proudly present their work to the Wilmington community and beyond. It was a tight squeeze this semester, but we’ve managed to load up the following pages with exciting new features, eccentric bands, and delightful submissions. To our readers, contributors, and featured organizations: Thank you for supporting Atlantis. You all are the backbone of this magazine. By picking up an Atlantis copy, submitting your work, or giving us a taste of what your creative organization is about, you have helped to keep Atlantis alive and thriving. I also want to extend a huge thank you to my staff for working together, kicking it into high gear, and pumping out this issue in record time. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy our newest issue of Atlantis Magazine. We hope the content on these pages will hold you spellbound! Yours truly,
Jessica Lowcher cover art:
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Spinner by anna Kennedy acrylic on canvaS UniverSity of north carolina Wilmington atlantiS magazine fiSher UniverSity Union 1049c 601 S. college road Wilmington, nc 28403 p: 910.962.3229 f: 910.962.7131
CONTENTS Photography
Prose
4 6 16 26 36 36 38
Poetry
Art
7 10 22 27 34
8 18 24 25 32 39
“Julian” by Naomi Spicer “A Pair of Boots” by Jay Callow “Alone” by Casey Mills “They Named her Blue” by Mekiya Walters “Stolen Moment” by Ryanne Probst
“Island Hoppers” by Mekiya Walters “Only One” by Mekiya Walters “Superkids” by Matthew Egan “Buoy” by Mekiya Walters “Remember?” by Mekiya Walters “Imaginary Love” by Mekiya Walters
Features
1 8 13 19 21 23 24 29 33
“Copycat” by Rileigh Wilkins “Lochness” by Sara Pezzoni “Untitled” by Ethan Sigmon “Hello My Name Is.” by Kelly Strawinski “Exposed 2” by Sara Magin “Triple Portrait” by Juliet Wiebe-King “Winding Road” by Carson Smith
“Spinner” by Anna Kennedy (cover) “Disengaged” by Elizabeth Oglesby “Me and my Squaw” by Erin Tetterton “Reflections” by Andrew Edwards “Endless Bronze” by Ashby Reber “Fan” by Andrew Edwards “Cross-city Night” by Elijah Brookie “Spoons for Thought” by Ashby Reber “Still Life” by Erin Tetterton
14 Golden in the Rough 20 Blacksmithing in the Age of Computers 30 Beautiful Beasts: An Interview with
Natasha Cain 37 Dead Broke, and Dirt Poor: An Interview with John Lopez
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Copycat — photography by Rileigh Wilkins
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Lochness — photography by Sara Pezzoni
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Julian — fiction by Naomi Spicer Cultivating. That’s the best way I can describe it. They’re lined up in rows, five wide, twelve deep. It’s usually getting dark when I pass by the old man’s house, but their faces shine. The old man says that they’re stars. I didn’t believe him until I met one of them, saw what they were really like. The old man: that’s what I usually call him, but his name is really Orion. He’s lived on the star plot since he was born. I think he inherited the land from his father, but he won’t tell me the truth. He won’t ever. That’s why I didn’t believe him about the stars. My feet usually kept me rooted to my spot when I saw the stars, just like they were rooted in the ground. There was one time that I didn’t stop and stare, but I ducked under Orion’s fence and went inside. I saw the big ones first, stretching high and shining. They were mounted on trunks made of steel and lit most of the plot. I ran and hid behind the bushes though. That’s how the old man didn’t see me. Instead of berries on the bushes, there were baby stars. I didn’t notice them from far away because their lights were too small. You can’t see lights that are small unless it’s real dark. I met Julian when he was only a baby star on one of the bushes that I hid behind. He was green then. The stars on the bushes were real colorful. Green, blue, purple, red... all sorts of colors. But Julian was green, my favorite color. He was real nice about me almost falling into his side of the bush, though, when it happened. I was crouched by his bush when I heard him speak and I jumped so far out of my boots that I nearly fell into him, like I said. And then he said he was sorry for scaring me, that he’d never met anyone as tiny as me, and that he just wondered who I was. I said Thank you, but I’m sorry too, for almost crushing you. He was fine with it. We got to talking and that was when I found out his name was Julian. I told him my name too, which is Zachary. I told him he could call me Zach, which is what everyone calls me except maybe my mom when she’s cross. He said he was glad to know me and thanked me for introducing myself instead of running away. It wasn’t a problem, of course. I wanted to know him too. We talked for a while. He told me about what
the old man was like and how he wished he could be in the sky. He said that all stars grow up to be in the sky after a while, but when they’re babies like he is, they need a little help. So you start on a bush. But after a while, when you get your starlight up to snuff, he said, you get to grow into a real big post and then go off into the sky. I wondered what that was like, but Julian couldn’t answer because he hadn’t been in the sky yet and the stars that were up on the posts were too busy getting ready to go to the sky to let you know. He also told me that when you grow up and go into the sky, you can’t come back. Before I knew it, time flew. A light appeared, shining right at me and I thought it was a star going up to the sky, but it was really the old man coming to get me with his flashlight. I had to run, but not before I told Julian I’d visit again. The old man didn’t like it when I came too close to his star patch. He didn’t mind if I visited his front porch, but the stars were off limits. I tried to tell my momma about Julian, but she told me, Stop that crazy imagination of yours and come get some dinner. So I did. But I knew that Julian was real, not a piece of my imagination. I went back the next day on my walk home to talk to him again, just to make sure though. I knew Julian from when he was a little baby green star until he left. Even as a big star on a post, he kept talking to me, which I was happy about. He was real nice, like I said. I was sad when he was gone. I didn’t get to watch it happen, but I’d seen other stars go up into the sky. First they glow whatever color they were born with and then they just float on up and join the rest. I swear I saw the green flash, though, heard his little laugh. I always know which one he is, because sometimes he flashes green at me in a friendly hello sort of way. I still go talk to the other stars, even though Julian isn’t there. Orion got used to me after a while and I think he’s going to give me the plot when he’s dead. I’d like that. That way I can still talk to Julian even though he’s gone, and I can help his little brothers and sisters get into the sky. Even if I don’t, I’ll still have Julian. He’s the star I wish on every night.
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Island Hoppers poetry by Mekiya Walters
Keep me in your pocket. I like the lint. I’ll hang it, Halloween cobwebs, on my windows, and peer out on a waist-high world through your torn, unpatched coat-seams, through my coin-and-button eyes. Fringe a dress with misanthropic echoes, and bind up my hair with paperclips and barnacles sunk far out in the south bay, amidst sediments and sunken oil tankers, lost jellyfish and tears.
Maybe we’ll remember those molten strips, laid like red carpets to God on the ocean. Maybe we’ll island-hop all the way home, you tripping on message-bearing bottles, and diving like an otter through oily surf, me peeking from your pocket, from between my cobweb curtains, from behind my coin-and-button eyes.
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Disengaged — acrylic painting by Elizabeth Oglesby
Tease the kelp from my eyelashes. Throw out a long line. hop on driftwood stepping stones across cold breakers, out to languid, tsunami-ridden seas.
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A Pair of Boots — nonfiction by Jay Callow “Whelp, he’s dead alright,” Robert’s mom said, nudging Boots with her New Balance sneaker. The cat was completely stiff, even his fat white belly didn’t wobble anymore. I could see she was starting to cry, but I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her. “I guess I’d better go tell Robert,” she said and looked back at Boots. “You had a good run, mister.” That was a strange summer. It was the one after freshman year of high school, where I didn’t have my license so I still had to be driven around in my mom’s Taurus. It felt like I had taken a step back into childhood. Especially the first time she dropped me off at Robert Trowell’s house to work at his mom’s camp. I hadn’t talked to Robert since, what, sixth grade? It all started coming back to me as I was heading down their long gravel driveway. I knew how it would go. Robert would wait for me to initiate a conversation, or else he would pretend like he hadn’t noticed me there. Kind of hard to pull off when it’s just me and you in your whole house, Robert. I don’t remember him always being like that. As children, he was always the more daring one. He’d climb trees twice as high as I would, and when I’d climb back down, Boots and I would watch him in admiration from the ground. He would always be the first to try out any new bike ramps we built in his woods. But he was never competitive about it, and always cheered me on to follow him. Everyone knew we were best friends. Even our second grade teacher would sometimes let us collaborate on an art project or a creative writing story as long as it was twice as long as everyone else’s. It must have been during the transition to middle school that he began to change. Our schedules were always different, so we saw less and less of each other as time went on. I don’t remember him being with any new friends when we saw each other at the lockers or in the hall. And he was never in any sort of extracurricular activity. Even so, his cheerleader of a mom was at every school function, and always got to them at least an hour before they started so she could “get the best seats”. Since her son and I were best friends in 10
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elementary school, my mom often got dragged into long, gossipy conversations about other kids and their parents whenever she dropped me off at his house. And annoying little Boots (this was before he became obese and too lazy to waddle out to the driveway) would be there too, using Mrs. Trowell’s jeans as a scratching post before going to sit by himself in the shade. Back then, Robert’s grandparents, who lived in the basement, would come out to say hi and start yet another drawn out conversation about the weather or how I was doing in school or with basketball. “Oh Boots, you’re getting so big aren’t you? Yes you are! Yes you are!” she’d say. His grandma must have loved Boots just as much as her husband. She’s the reason Boots became obese, I think, because she kept feeding him and sneaking him treats. I snapped out of recalling the image of his frail grandma gingerly bending down to feed Boots a snack from her hand. Looking at the house from the front porch, brown paper bag lunch in hand, I felt a faint hint of nervousness, like I was waiting for the bus on the first day of second grade. But I was not in elementary school anymore. Now I was an awkward, lanky stranger to that house, who desperately needed money to save up for a car. I wish I could have just jumped back into some sort of comfortable dynamic, but there was little chance of that. I’d seen Robert around school, and we never really acknowledged each other. I liked him, he was nice enough, but at some point making the effort to keep contact with each other didn’t seem worth it. I’d realized years ago we were only best friends due to geographical convenience. He might have realized that too. So it wasn’t like some big reunion when we started working together. Mrs. Trowell opened the front door to me standing uncomfortably on the porch. “Hi, Jay! Come on inside, Robert’s downstairs!” I gave her a half-smile and made my way down to the unfinished basement. Robert was standing almost in the corner, turned away from me and playing with a rubber band. He hadn’t grown since elementary school, at least not vertically.
“He looks fuller,” as my mom put it. And his personality hadn’t changed at all. Same routine as always, pretend I’m not there until I say something. But I wasn’t a skilled conversationalist either. Me: “Sup, Robert.” Him: “Oh, hey.” Me: “Man, have you seen Emily lately? She got really hot this year...” Him: “Yeah, she’s like...hot.” Me: “...yeah. She is.” Him: “So hot.” Me: “Like...it’s crazy how hot she is.” Him: “I know.” Me: “Well...I guess I’m gonna go outside.” That’s about as deep as our conversations got. And so for a whole summer, it was me, an aging cheerleader of a mom, and a chubby version of my old friend looking after around thirty elementary and middle school kids. “Jay! Jay! Logan told me I look like dog crap!” “Logan, that wasn’t very nice. Tell her you’re sorry. Addison, for the last time, get out of the tree and pull your pants up!” “Jay! Devon told me to tell you something.” “What’s that?” I said. “You’re a butt.” I think that was the only summer I’ve ever wanted to go by quickly. Boots did help out a little bit, distracting most of the younger girls who were always trying to put tiny pink shoes and dresses on him. His stomach was getting so big that it nearly dragged along the ground when he walked. Robert spent all of his breaks watching Days of Our Lives with Boots on his lap. He had it TiVo’d and he made microwave popcorn and closed the curtains. It was a really depressing thing to see. Boots was probably happy though. But then he died. He was in the attic and it was mid-July. We didn’t find him for days apparently until one of the kids started complaining that it smelled really bad in the garage. Mrs. Trowell told me to come into the garage with her to find out what it was. “We’ve already taken the trash out, so I guess a mouse must have gotten stuck behind the wall again,” she said out loud, but mostly to her-
self. I think she knew what was coming. We hadn’t seen Boots since last week, and it was Wednesday. After finding no mouse in the garage, Mrs. Trowell grabbed the string hanging from the ceiling and pulled down the stairs to the attic. She went up first, but stopped before she reached the top and let out a sigh. We both knew what she’d find up there. I never really liked Boots, but I guess I’d grown fond of him just because he was always there. They’d had him for something like a decade, and I sort of watched him grow up. So I was surprised at how easily the always-dramatic Mrs. Trowell was able to hold back her tears. When we went into the kitchen to tell Robert, he cried more than she did. I stood awkwardly in the doorway as he sobbed into his mother’s shoulder. I looked down at my dirty shoes, then out the window, pretending the trees were doing something interesting outside. I looked at everything in the room except my childhood friend. Once everyone collected themselves, we realized we needed to do something about the stinking obese cat carcass in the attic above the garage. All thirty kids were there that day, and they’d already been questioning where Boots was. Robert’s mom took the easy way out and told us to “take care of it”. And by “take care of it,” she meant bury the cat in the woods before the kids find it and we scar them for life. Boots could have a proper funeral later. So Robert got an old blue baby blanket and we rolled up Boots in it. I tried to lift one side of the giant cat mummy. There was no way a cat could weigh so much. Boots must have eaten a dumbbell before he died. It took both of us to carry him, which made for a clumsy walk down the ladder into the garage. Kids were grabbing our shirts and jumping to get a better look, saying “What’s that? What is that?” Robert told them it was a dead attic monster and they screamed and ran away. So much for not scarring them. We got two shovels and put Boots on the back of a four wheeler. Robert drove for a few minutes into the woods before he stopped at a break in the trees. It was really humid and the trees blocked our view of the sky but I could tell it was about to rain. Digging this damn cat’s grave was a lot more challenging than we thought it would be. The ground was baked hard as a rock, and it took us something www.atlantismagazine.org
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like half an hour to dig three or four inches down. “That’s good,” Robert said. He picked Boots up and laid him in his shallow grave. Did I say laid? Because really he sort of just dumped him in there. There was nothing gentle about it. And the grave was clearly not big enough for Boots. We both noticed this, but Robert started to cover Boots with dirt anyway. He threw about two or three shovelfuls on him, then stopped. It took me a moment to realize what Robert did next, because I was spaced out, pretending I was somewhere else. Robert raised the blade of his shovel in the air, and drove it down. I thought I’d maybe daydreamt that just happened, but then he did it again. “What the hell?” I said. “What?” “What are you doing?” “Won’t fit.” “So dig the hole deeper! Don’t cut your fucking cat into pieces!” “Oh... okay.” He lifted the now slightly shredded blanket with segments of Boots in it and put it on the ground next to the hole. There was no blood, but the animal was clearly no longer in one piece. He dug the rest of the grave by himself pretending not to notice my confused and stunned face. “So, everything go okay?” Mrs. Trowell asked us when we got back to the house. It had just started raining.
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“Yeah, it’s fine,” I told her. Robert just stood there and looked at the ground. “Okay. Sorry, boys. I know that must have been hard.” “Don’t worry about it,” I said. Robert still wouldn’t look at his mom. “You guys can go upstairs and get something to eat. I think there’s a frozen pizza in the freezer. Take your time too, no rush.” “Thanks.” Robert and I sat on the couch upstairs and watched a TiVo’d episode of South Park. I pretended to laugh at parts I didn’t think were funny as Robert sat with his head resting on his hand. He didn’t eat, and we didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the day. I never brought it up again after that. I don’t think Boots ever got a proper funeral, and I never really talked to Robert much after that summer. Still, I never told anyone about the cat for some reason. His mom still calls my house every once in a while, though, so she can keep my mom up to date on what’s happening in mine and Robert’s life. My mom always said she got the feeling Mrs. Trowell thought of our achievements as a sort of competition. She stopped calling last year, though, after Robert’s freshman year of college. It hadn’t lasted long. He was in the hospital about a month after move-in day due to a drug overdose. I think he just lives at home now. According to my mom, the rumor was that he’d tried to kill himself.
Me and my Squaw — mixed media by Erin Tetterton
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Golden in the Rough By: Caleb Andrew Ward
It’s been freezing all week, and I can’t find my gloves. I sit down with twenty-year-old David Adusei, aka Most Golden, and the wind is blowing just as hard as it was yesterday. He’s just left class, yet David appears as stylish now as he does on stage. He’s not only a part-time electronica connoisseur, but also a full-time student in his last semester at UNC-Wilmington. In May he’ll graduate with a degree in Communication Studies, but his real passion lies in what he’s coined as Future R&B. For the past two years David has gone by Most Golden, playing his solo tunes around town at first, and then at several locations out of state. When listening to Most Golden live, his personal lyrics spill through the speaker system, carried by a voice that sounds like silk dipped in aged whiskey. It’s difficult to pin down a singular term to describe his sound—his influences and modes of sound transportation range all across the spectrum of harmony. 14
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Future R&B is the term that seems to most easily define Most Golden’s sound. Most Golden consists of David Adusei, and occasionally when playing live, his friend and DJ, Brian Davis. His smooth melodramatic lyrics, comprised mostly of past/current relationships with women and a constant readiness to party, penetrate with a fierce fervor that is able to capture the most uninitiated of electronic listeners. One song that I have been hooked on for about a year now is “Desirée”. This song evokes images of a woman shrouded by perfection. She is living in the present, alive and full of wonder. Even the name Desirée is erotic and mysterious. He is calling for her, asking that any deity in existence bring oxygen so that he can continue his search for her in the light. “When my fingertips are frozen and I can barely breathe/When I call out I’m screaming out your name.”
About halfway through my time with David, a man has begun to idly weedwack right next to us. It’s almost impossible to hear what he’s saying for a few minutes. “What is he even doing man? He’s just sitting there not cutting anything. He’s like, ‘Oh I got time to kill I guess I’ll just hang here for a minute.’ Man that’s weak,” he says. “I’m still finding my focus, but I’m really comfortable exploring the limitless amount of (musical) inspiration there’s available to draw on.” David contains a boy-like wonder to the world of music. His influences come from early 90’s new jack swing, He Is Legend, Amsterdam’s deep house group Homework, Jamie xx, and Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. “Some people argue that having that type of range of influence takes away from the depth of the songs…I disagree.” The influences are palpable in songs like “The Break”, which tells the story of a man learning about loss. His soft melodies reflect an earlier Nat King Cole piece. Through the incredible climax at a point where overlapped voices and electronic blips and beeps create a rythmsphere attuned to a post-dubstep Burial song. “Man, there’s something in the timbre of Luther Vandross’s voice that’s just easy to fall in love with. His character has had some damage.” Vandross described his music as “something for the fireplace.” Most Golden is something that starts at the fireplace and kicks into high gear blasting until the wee hours of the morning. “I feel like sometimes I’m dragging ass and then sometimes I’m doing more than I know how to handle,” he says. “It’s a difficult flux budgeting art and your career, right?” “Yeah. I’m ready to branch out and really expand my horizons both musically and culturally. The two go hand in hand and I just want to see where that takes me.” What’s next for Most Golden? “I want to release my ‘Bootleg Series’ containing remixed versions of songs like LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Dance Yrself Clean’, and about four other tracks that are semi-popular.” I’ve seen Most Golden live several times, and when the LCD Soundsystem track is done, the crowd is tough to contain. There’s no end in sight for Most Golden.
Along with Most Golden, our Spring 2103 Release Party featured Clouds Make Shapes and Brother & The Harmony:
Clouds Make Shapes
From left to right: Mark Eaton, Shane Deters, and Jeremy Jacoby
Brother & The Harmony
From left to right: Caleb Ward and Joshua Brady
“Even when the bridge was burning both ways you walked on what still remained.” -Desirée Most Golden www.atlantismagazine.org
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Untitled — photography by Ethan Sigmon
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Only One
poetry by Mekiya Walters There was only one spider, and I was the mirror. There were two mirrors, and no bright infinity to keep dark infinity’s infinite company. There was a company of footsteps, but only one boot, and no line is at fault for the tilting of axes. There were two wings, but only one dragonfly. This is the fault of symmetry. And there were crooked mockingbirds, and ranks of black geese like a river reflected. There was only one river, and the mirror was the night. I counted to zero on my twice-jointed fingers, and the sky came down like a hinge. The spiders counted their legs, and divided by sighs. Twins speak on both sides, avoid hollow receivers. I spoke to the spiders of mirrors and apocalypse, and I knew why the geese had two wings. I knew I was the mirror, and the night was the night. There was only one shadow.
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— powder graphite on paper by Andrew Edwards
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Blacksmithing in the Age of Computers By: Matthew Egan
An artists’ workspace is an essential part of the creative process. Not long ago, Jeff Bridgers, a local blacksmith, decided that he had outgrown the shed in his back yard. On his parent’s property, which consists of farmland in Leland, he constructed his new studio. Much larger than his old shed, Bridgers erected an airplane hanger that now houses his two forges, as well as other metal work equipment. Bridgers worked in a couple different mediums before he settled on blacksmithing, a trade that has remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of years. His interest in manipulating metal began when he picked up welding. “I was really into bikes. I went into welding wanting to build custom bike frames.” After attaining a welding certificate from Cape Fear Community College, Bridgers took after his Dad, a professional welder with Progress Energy, working for a crane company. During this time, blacksmithing was something constantly on his mind. “I started doing industrial welding to make some money. Doing some heavy-duty stuff, like cranes and sports goals. Then I would go home at the end of the day and start blacksmithing.” Creating hand-forged works of art is something that has fallen out of favor. When Bridgers wanted to pick up the craft, there were not many people that could show him the way. Almost completely self-taught, Bridgers started blacksmithing with only a book and a few simple tools. His attraction to welding comes from the nature of manipulating metal. “I like how you can take metal and move it, and you know, draw it out. I’m not taking anything away from the metal, I’m actually drawing it out and stretching it.” While displaying a floral piece, Bridgers likened blacksmithing to natural processes. “This started out as a three inch piece of square stock (metal). When I was making it, it was almost like making the cells grow.” 20
Organic forms make up a large part of Bridgers’ output, but he has always been more attracted to traditional blacksmithing patterns. “I like to do scroll work because the design is a challenge. A lot of people think you put a bunch of scrolls together and see what happens, but I’m real picky about it. There is a real method to a scroll design.” Typical of a blacksmith, Bridgers also hand forges tools, as he needs them for specific projects. In his shop, these range from a custom rounding hammer with a 45 degree face to a fully motorized power hammer, capable of creating enough force to fuse large pieces of metal together. Recently, his trade has thrust him into the spotlight. Through a fellow blacksmith friend, the casting director of Revolution heard about Bridges and his coal forge. The show, set in a world where the grid has gone down, has a unique need for people in this archaic trade. “They’ll hire me in the background as one of the town blacksmiths. I was a little bummed out because, more often that not, I don’t actually get to forge. Most of the time they make me mime it.” In a time where more and more ‘artwork’ is being produced by machines over seas, Bridgers thinks his craft is increasingly important. Connecting with such an old art form has caused him to “take a step back in time, but not experience”.
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Photography by Ally Favory
Endless Bronze — acrylic painting by Ashby Reber
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Alone — nonfiction by Casey Mills I went to the Goodwill alone. Being a firsttimer, I left my expectations at home, but I did bring a bag of tattered sweatshirts and too-big-for-me khakis. Before I made it to the door, a man in the parking lot took the bag and offered me a receipt. I politely declined. He paid me, instead, with a smile and took my donations away. I walked in and stood on a dusty welcome mat. Slightly crooked, the mat sat on a four-by-five island of stained blue tiles. Past the section of blue, the rest of the floor was covered in dirty, off-white tiles. A single broom stood against the wall in the corner, watching the dirt pile up. The smell was overwhelming. Old. Old books, old people, old clothes. I was in my grandmother’s house. The smell of her home lingered on every item in the store. The atmosphere was dated. I passed racks overstuffed with color-coordinated clothing. Racks of blue, green, yellow, and what used to be white. There was a bin of stuffed animals that were once valued collectibles, being sold, without tags, for an insincere ninety-nine cents. Next to a smudged mirror was a family of used crutches, taped in pairs. The same kind of walker that my grandfather used when he had hip surgery accompanied the crutches. Past the medical supply section was a library of donated books. The books seemed neat, undisturbed, and old. I picked up a brittle paperback. Happiness: How to Find It. Chapter One: “Is a Happy Life Really Possible?” My question could be answered for one dollar and nineteen cents. I reached in my pocket, only a single dime. I wanted to know: Was happiness really attainable? Was it worth less than two dollars? I
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should have sat in the dusty corner and heeded the book’s advice. But something moved me to keep going, to keep searching. Maybe happiness was scattered throughout the store. Hidden under used kitchen knifes, in the pockets of faded jackets. I scanned the shelves for more uplifting literature, only to be disappointed by Southern cookbooks, financial handbooks, ripped children’s books, the first and fourth Harry Potter, and a brand new copy of The Da Vinci Code. I opened the Dan Brown novel, read a few lines and dog-eared the page. Caddy-cornered in the back left of the store was a metal shelf labeled “Misc”. On the shelf was a touch of everything: VCR parts, Christmas knickknacks, glaring porcelain dolls, candle-less candle holders, realistically textured fake fruit, and an array of dented cookie tins. Littered throughout the random selection, there were singular items that, at one time, sold as a pair. A lone shaker labeled “S” was missing its partner, “P”. And stray earrings sat alone, without their match. There was an entire shelf devoted to a collection of loner shoes; this singularity, this isolation jarred my search. The people in the store seemed like loners too. There were several but no one was together. They all looked the same. Mostly women. Each one paced around the store, picking up and putting down items. Some pleased with the cheapness of items, others not so enthused about the prices. No one seemed to be buying anything. They all just seemed to float, wasting time, only acknowledging one another with awkward “excuse mes”. The silence was eerie. There was one baby in the store. His cheerful bellowing added the only
Fan— silver gelatin print by Andrew Edwards youthful charm to the seasoned place. It seemed an impossible task to bring a hint of life to this Goodwill. The only hope rested in the baby and me, but he was confined to a stroller, only able to fight with his voice. The clerk behind the counter told the baby’s mother that the jacket she was trying on used to have pants with it, but they were nowhere to be found. The jacket was marked down to five dollars for being by itself. I felt a burden crash onto me, to revive this place, a place where the happiness dried up and crumbled, then got spread across the floor only to be swept into a corner and forgotten. I bought a DVD that I already had for a dollar (I had to go out to my car and scrape up some
coffee-stained coins). This place desperately needed change. I felt obligated to buy something since no one else was. I asked the cashier if she liked her job? Did it make her happy? She shot me a puzzled look, like I spoke in a different language, like “happy” was such a foreign word. “I wouldn’t say I like it. But where else would I be if I wasn’t here? Probably alone.” The ring of the cash register got everyone’s attention. They all turned and looked at me. Everyone was staring like I had done something wrong. Everyone. Even the porcelain dolls.
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Cross-city Night — acrylic painting by Elijah Brookie
Superkids
poetry by Matthew Egan Clicks and flashes that speed everything up are the gods we’ve sacrificed retention to. Prescription pills slow strobe lights in our heads to an occasional, dim flicker. Chemical Lobotomy. Gears, greased with resin, click, grind, and slip as they turn. We are the children of production.
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Buoy
poetry by Mekiya Walters Pull sunlight through a ripple, throw it on the concrete bottom. Spin turquoise tops and reach with elongated hands for the bent perspectives just beyond your phalange raisons. No one ever recovers the lost toys from this bathtub bursting with baby stories. Go ahead and vomit. Mermaid cameras flash (somehow never enough bikinis)— Don’t run! on those dangerous dark spots, You’ll break yourself! (for a laugh) Don’t laugh! There’s always an edge... Someone gets sick in the shallow end. We stand around with bees and crushed cookies, wondering who put this flaking skin all over our fingers. Parcel out the hours (adults only get one). Chlorine, legs spinning, clouds can’t talk today. Tomorrow’s on the clothesline.
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Hello My Name Is. — photography by Kelly Strawinski 26
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They Named her Blue — fiction by Mekiya Walters They named her Blue. She came wriggling into the world in a pool of red and viscous fluid, but they named her Blue. Years later, she would paint a blue mountain. It was the same mountain she might have lived on if she were the little Tibetan girl who died on December 2nd, 1950. The Tibetan girl lived high up, where air almost didn’t exist, and she died with three stones in her pocket. They were her favorite stones. Two were black, polished magnets, and the third had come from the river that ran through her village and retained the slate shades of an ocean she had never seen beneath a hurricane she had never imagined. If the little girl had come back into the world in 1956, in America, they might have named her Blue. She painted a blue mountain, but she made the sky red and the earth black, and no one knew what to think. This was the same year that her wife rode up into the sky and ignited, seventy-three seconds in, like a meteor. Blue fought for years, but received no insurance money, because this was Colorado,1986. The other astronauts’ wives got compensation, but Blue, who, according to the state, had never been married, received nothing. She painted the picture before Loretta rode the rocket, an image extracted from a dream, and afterwards she stopped using canvas entirely and only painted on dollar bills. No one knew what to make of this. She wasn’t a very good artist, but sometimes she would climb up on top of her and Loretta’s house and throw handfuls of ruined money into the wind. Later, she married a man who had never heard of B.B. King. He was white all over, but if he had been born black and muscular in Egypt, 789 BC, they might have called him Katesh. The strongest man in his village, Katesh became a stone carrier because the blocks fit so neatly into his massive hands, but when nomads passed through he became obsessed with their music. He wanted to create it, to play and sing their warped, ululating chords, and so he left his village and chased the caravans into the desert until their tracks disappeared. He kept chasing them until he ran out of water and collapsed like a fish in the dunes. Had he died there, the sandpaper wind stripping his bones, and been reborn as a
daughter of the Nasrid dynasty in Spain,1435, only to perish forty-eight years later at the hands of the Christians and return as a warrior who was captured by a rival tribe and sold to the white men who put him on a slave ship bound for an indigo plantation in South Georgia, and had the slave ship gone down in a hurricane before it reached the American shore, depositing his soul in the body of a young New Orleans man in 1919, and had he finally died and reemerged as a white Montana native in 1949—had all this occurred, they might have named him Caleb. When Caleb first heard Blue playing songs off the B.B. King album that she put on almost every night after that first, worst night in ’86, his mouth had gone dry and his hands had begun to sweat until they couldn’t grip anything. So he let go. Blue saw it happen and didn’t know how to stop it. One minute he was pulling on the arm that hung from the window of the car as it churned down into the swollen river, and the next he was just standing there, up to his neck in melted, muddy snow, gazing into a turbid vortex of bubbles. He made it back to shore because of the rope they’d tied around his waste before he plunged in, but something essential in him lacked the atoms to be restrained. It had gone under, dragged down by some force greater than gravity or suction, and afterwards too little remained. He caught pneumonia, and Blue buried him in the same cemetery where the family had interred the body pulled from the drowned car. The driver had hit the ice on the bridge in front of Blue and Caleb and Loretta’s house too fast and skimmed through the stone guardrail before smashing down into the water. Search crews found the body a mile downstream, and when they dredged it up, its skin was the same color as the little Tibetan girl’s favorite stone. She had that stone in her pocket, along with the two magnets to which she could never make it stick, when the Chinese soldiers hanged her from the dead tree twenty yards from her family’s hut on top of the blue mountain. The magnets had each other, but the slate-blue stone had only the little girl’s clammy fingers, so it nestled into the space they made and waited. www.atlantismagazine.org
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As her neck snapped, her eyes met those of the only soldier who would look at her. It was an accident. He wouldn’t forget the look in her eyes for ten thousand years, not even if he died in a skirmish a few weeks later and was born again in Massachussets,1953, to live a fast, rebellious life, get married to a painter from Colorado, attend the best schools, and ascend, the third American female astronaut, on a NASA rocket, for seventy-three seconds before becoming incinerated, all the crews’ atoms scorched and thrown miles across the atmosphere, and then, because that wasn’t enough, if he were reborn in 1985 to grow up, still moving too fast, still racing to escape that little girl’s eyes, and if he took meth, and cocaine, and drank too much, and smoked everything under the sun, and if he drove too fast one day in late January, 2005 across a bridge in front of the crazy lesbian artist’s house at the end of the road,
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with that little girl’s eyes still fixed in his rear view mirror, and if it just so happened that his tires lost traction on the ice and he broke through the stone barrier and plunged into the paralyzing water and the artist’s new husband wasn’t fast or strong enough to save him—even then he wouldn’t forget. He would see her face a day after they hanged her with the rest of her village, before they tramped down off that mountain and on to the next. The wind had blown during the night, and ice had set in, leaching the pigment from her skin and leaving her puffy, bruised, the color of slate. It was the same color as her face in 1956, when she slipped back into the world in a pool of red and viscous fluid, in a dark room, with her mother’s umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, a lifeline, a noose. They named her Blue.
Spoons for Thought — serigraphy by Ashby Reber
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Beautiful Beasts: An Interview with Natasha Cain By: Ashley Johnson
Natasha Cain’s desk is luster from the reflection of sunlight off shiny surfaces waiting to be assembled into necklaces, rings, and earrings—the desk of an artist. Her workspace is a jumbled collage of jewels, chains, gears, silver mouse charms, vintage beetle pendants, and gold spiders hung from the end of chains. This is where she creates the lovely oddities of Empire Jewelry. Maybe some of these things (insects, rodents, and gears) don’t seem as if they would articulate a desirable piece of jewelry, but Natasha’s jewelry is unique. She has a way of bringing unlikely, and perhaps freakish, things together to create something stunning and certainly desirable. Perhaps, her sight of potential in the improbable is what makes her an artist. This vision is also what has taken her from being a microbiologist in Moscow, Russia to an artist making jewelry in Wilmington, North Carolina. “To be an artist in Moscow, Russia is not a profession, so I had to do something else.”
Even more eclectic than her treasure-chest-of-adesk, is Natasha’s life story. She was born in Moscow, Russia, where she began her many explorations into various educational and professional fields. “I always was an artist. In the beginning it was painting, and then I started to use vocabulary to explain my art…” says Natasha. She always had an inclination to be creative and a deep appreciation for literature, however, her passions were not always something that she could pursue. “I took creative writing in high school…but I never became a writer or something in this field in Russia because I didn’t study English…In Russia, you had to know English to get enrolled in a literature field.” She tells me about a short story she wrote based on her
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childhood in Russia called “My Brother’s Clothes”. The story is about a time when she had outgrown her clothes, and her family didn’t have the money to buy her new ones. She had to go to children’s camp dressed in her brother’s clothes. She smiles when she tells me about it, “It was an adventure because children couldn’t recognize if I was a boy or girl, and also my mother had cut my hair…it was not easy because kids are tough if you’re different.” When painting and writing didn’t seem to be an option for her future, Natasha decided to become a microbiologist. Then came the collapse of The Iron Curtain and fall of the Soviet Union. With this change, the private sector became a new type of employment, and people had money to spend. “An American said it was like beagles when you open the door in the fall for hunting season, and they have been sitting in the cages. You open the door and the dogs are like crazy, they bark and bite everything,” says Natasha when she describes this time in Russia. Natasha opened her own travel agency in Moscow, which eventually led her to America in 1994 with her eleven-year-old daughter. “I came here [America] and sought to open another branch of my business. I didn’t realize it would not be easy. No English. No knowledge of real business...capitalism in America is at a very advanced level.”
Natasha faced even more obstacles as an immigrant to America than she did trying to pursue a career in art in Moscow. One of the hardest things to overcome was the language barrier. “I felt like a handicapped person because I couldn’t explain who I am. Communcation is everything. I went to courses, and in
three weeks I start to talk.” She moved to New Jersey for a few years, and then finally landed in Wilmington. “I fell in love with it here because there’s the ocean, no snow, an no crazy driving like in New Jersey.” In an attempt to find her place in America, Natasha decided to further her education even more. “I studied to be a recreational therapist because I wanted to study to be somebody else, not a microbiologist…I also studied to be a paramedic.” When none of these things proved to be what she was looking for, she found an unexpected satisfaction in making jewelry. “I was a microbiologist there [Russia] and I never knew anything about jewelry at all.”
Natasha got in contact with a relative in America who made jewelry. “She trained me how to go to shows, how to make jewelry…she taught me very tough. I didn’t do right and she said no good, take this home and in your own time fix how it’s supposed to be.” Learning the art of making jewelry was difficult, but fulfilling as it was a way for Natasha to express herself. She was able to access her creative side again. She attended Penland School of Art where she learned the craft of casting. She describes the process to me, as she shows me her work. “You make a mold from hot metal, it’s a long and very painful process… you put hot metal in a plaster cavity…you use tools that look like dental tools to carve the piece” “[Casting] involves two people, so I work with a professional guy who has a casting business. I send him my molds.” Natasha’s jewelry has a steampunk essence; it combines the rustic antique with the industrialized appearance of gears. “I started before I knew about this steampunk, and then I bought a book and thought oh my god it’s what I do!”
Natasha’s original idea for her jewelry came when she was decorating her Wilmington home in a Victorian style. “I fell in love with Victorian Era. I realized that it is possible to buy antique stuff here. In Russia, we cannot buy anything vintage/antique because after the Second World War, everything was destroyed.” She is always motivated to work, but as with all people who work in the creative world, she is sometimes at a loss for inspiration. Natasha struggled with cancer for some time and when she was finally able to come back to her jewelry, the inspiration was absent. It was then that she decided to donate her jewelry to Duke hospi-
tal. “My heart felt good. I felt like I helped, and sure enough inspiration came,” she says. Despite all of her challenges, Natasha has managed to remain positive. While she loves America, it is still a daily struggle to be an immigrant.
“There are so many cultures and levels of education here. America can be a very lonely place actually. You need to have someone close. If you have someone, grab them and keep them. It’s most important,” Natasha says. She has recently hooked up the Russian channel on her TV. This reminded her of who she is and where she came from, and gave her comfort in a place that is home, yet still foreign. “I couldn’t believe it’s so different, at the same time it’s so me. I thought maybe I need to change things about myself, and I thought it’s my fault, but it’s not, it’s Russian. It’s what we are.” Natasha still has hopes for further accomplishments. “My biggest dream right now is to publish something, because with words I can build real castles.” She is confident about achieving these dreams, and remains happy in her current life and excited for her future. She has struggled, and is still struggling, to be where she is today. “Life is not easy. It brings lots of challenges,” she says. But she has a philosophy that keeps her going. “When you live a life inside you, you can be happy. You’ve built your happiness, so nothing can hurt you.” She talks about a lens through which people, including herself, view everything as good and nice. “But in reality there’s lots of struggle to adjust to a different culture,” Natasha says. As a result of her struggles, Natasha says her brain produces “these type of beasts.” She has found a way to capture these beasts, tame them, and use them to create beautiful works of art. Her art is much more than fashionable jewelry; it is the result of a person finding a way to see light in the dark corners of life. Natasha makes beauties out of beasts; when her collaged materials come together to make a stunning, cohesive piece of jewelry, the product suggests that one cannot be without the other. Her jewelry speaks true of human nature in this way. “I came to America thirty-two years old with child and didn’t speak any English. So if I can do it, anyone can do it. The possibilities are limitless.”
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Remember?
poetry by Mekiya Walters Remember me? I’m here again, that bird outside your window, the brown one who sits on the branch of the cherry tree, feathers smoothed down, reciting scales because all of my favorite songs have been eaten by fish. I’ve come every day for the past three weeks, but I don’t think you’ve seen me. Last spring you put out feed: sunflower seeds, dried millet, specks of reddish protein and an alphabet of scattered vitamins. You hung a newly painted feeder from the eaves and we ate together, on opposite sides of the glass. I see you in your kitchen some days, running water over pans, but I wonder, do you still live here? Or are you simply visiting, struck dumb, a maid, a ghost, anonymous creature of hair, spine, shoulder blades? If I flew hard enough and broke my bones on the glass, would you see me? It wouldn’t be so bad, I think, to die in a sickbed of flowers fed frost and carbon dioxide through winter’s cool tubes, but given the choice, I’d rather be remembered. I feel better when I see the wind chimes that he gave you. You hung them beside my feeder, and haven’t taken them down yet, or heard their ice-caked tones in weeks.
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Still Life — mixed media by Erin Tetterton
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Stolen Moment — fiction by Ryanne Probst It starts with a smile. A slight twitch and those full lips turn upwards at the corners. There’s a flash of teeth and then he’s walking toward me. It’s a walk full of purpose, as if he already knows how this will turn out. It starts with a smile and then I am already starting to soften. I can feel that wall I’ve built up inside of me slowly crumbling beneath his greeneyed gaze, my resolve slipping through my already shaking fingers. Of course I prefer blue eyes, his eyes to be exact, but for right now I’m ok with green—In fact, it’s becoming my new favorite color. Green Eyes sits close to me now, his arm an inch from mine, but he won’t make that move. It’s not time for that yet. He drums his fingers on the countertop, his fingernails making a soft tapping noise, and he flashes me that smile again. I am blinded. It’s now that I start to think that maybe it’s all coming together. The real reason I came to the bar, an hour until closing with nothing to my name except a tube of red lipstick and an empty wallet. It didn’t have to be Green Eyes, maybe only someone like him. But the way he’s looking at me now, I’m starting to think maybe Green Eyes will be the one to help me forget that tightness in my chest, that aching hole that can’t seem to stop throbbing. Maybe tonight I will be able to close my eyes without seeing blue. Maybe. “I’m Matt.” He says it suddenly and I am taken aback. It seems too early in the game for names to be exchanged. It seems too late. Now it’s only polite for me to reach out and gently place my hand in his, to let my fingers linger for a moment too long, to watch him shiver under my gaze. After all, this is how guys like it. “Charlie,” I say it quickly, swiftly because I don’t think he’ll remember it anyways. “It’s short for Charlene.” But he’s already calling for the bartender, signaling for drinks and shifting in his seat slightly to reach for his wallet. It’s just one drink, one for the road and then I’ll be on my way. At least that’s what I tell myself as I sit back on the stool and turn my knees so that the soft skin at the tops of my knees presses lightly against the fine of hairs of his. He turns to me then, and nudges a drink towards me. I watch his fingers 34
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circle the rim of his glass, watch as the foam from his beer clings to the side of his index finger and there’s a smile playing on his lips. He knows he’s already got me. “Cheers, Charlie.” It’s one drink and then two because I want to know if that accent of his is real. It’s two drinks and then a shot because Matt’s looking at me like he used to, and for a moment I feel whole again. It’s one shot and then another and another because now those eyes that have been haunting my dreams, that voice that’s been stalking my thoughts, is finally all drowned out. And then Matt is there with an arm slung around my shoulder asking me something, something important but I can’t remember that now so I just nod my head yes, yes, of course. He’s taking my hand, grasping it tightly, too tightly and I want to pull away, go back to the bar where it’s safe. But even as I look back towards the bar, I think it might be too late now, the damage already done. Names have been exchanged, drinks have been bought and, really, there was never any going back to begin with. Heavy breathing, hands touching, tightening, and the shivers run rampant over my skin. I can’t think. A flash of blue, but I thought Matt’s eyes were green? Hazel, blue—It’s all becoming a blur—and suddenly he’s whispering in my ear. “I want you.” It’s simple. Three words. The first truth we’ve spoken to each other all night. When we met at the bar earlier in the evening he seemed nice, genuine even. At least that’s what I’m telling myself to justify going home with him. In reality, he wore a button down shirt, white and stiff with newness, a tiny pony in the corner of its breast pocket. If anyone were to ask, he looked like my type. But he looked like Tyler more. I want you. I’ve heard it before. Whispered to me in a drunken haze, thrown at me like the worst insult in a fight. I believed those words every time, with tears streaming down my face, I never doubted those words for a minute. But isn’t that what they all say
when it comes down to it? Now, though, I can’t think about this. I only want to push Matt away, run screaming from the room like I should have done hours ago at the bar. I am not this anymore. I will not be this anymore. Matt pulls me closer. “I don’t... I don’t do this often,” I say, panicking, begging him silently to understand. He chuckles. It’s low and deep, from the center of his chest, the center of his being. He shakes his head and leans in closer so our cheeks are touching, our noses barely colliding. He nuzzles my neck and whispers: “Neither do I, mate.” He reaches for me then, and suddenly it’s not Matt at all. It’s blue eyes and raven dark hair. It’s cigarettes and soap and that insufferable smirk that I can’t stand. And I can breathe again. I reach for him, for us, for what we were and I feel at home. I reach out, but then it’s already too late because Matt is there again, blinking at me as if I’m something he’s unsure of. Looking at me as if he’s seeing something that the four shots of tequila he consumed earlier can no longer mask. “Charlie?” He says my name, but I do not hear him, I’m still waiting for my ghost to reappear. I can already feel the tension in my belly, the way my hands shake at his touch and I squeeze my eyes shut waiting for his return, for the world to make sense again. I let his name drift through my thoughts, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. I can feel Matt somewhere close by, pulling at the hem of my skirt, touching his sweaty forehead to mine. And there’s that feeling all at once of being needed. For once that awful ache in my chest is softened. That disgusting need deep inside of me that festers in my heart and eats away at my soul, the voice inside of me that screams for someone, anyone, to love me, is all finally silenced.
“Charlie,” He whispers it again. “I want you so fucking bad.” He kisses my earlobe, taps his fingers against my thigh. I shiver. “I need this,” He whispers. And there it is, the root of it all—Need and want, the only truths that lie between us. I reach out to touch his chest and then I am pulling at the buttons on his shirt, grasping, clutching at what is real and what is now. Both of us, with eyes closed, hoping to feel what it is we’re supposed to feel at the end of it all. It’s not perfect, but then it never is. It’s not beautiful and life-altering as people try to describe it as being, but it is something. I suppose that’s enough for the night; two people trying to fit together, to reach that deep place inside, to understand what it is to be alive. I hold on to the moment. I slow my breathing, concentrate on my hands, and the sense of skin on skin. I wait to feel it all again. And then it’s over. The sun is starting to make its hazy descent into the sky. Matt is already starting to shift away from me, to inch back to where it is safe and far away from the stolen moment still lying in his bed. “Matt?” “Mhmm?” Though he’s already closed his eyes to me, this time for good. “Number three,” I say into my pillow. “What’s that, love?” He’s pulling the covers up and over his head, adjusting his own pillow accordingly. “You’re my number three.” He turns over, starts to reach out, starts to open his mouth but then closes it. He is stiff for a moment before he turns back over into his pillow and sighs loudly, contentedly. “That’s so fucking hot.”
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Triple Portrait — photography by Juliet Wiebe-King
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Exposed 2 — photography by Sara Magin
Dead Broke, and Dirt Poor: An Interview with John Lopez By: Matthew Egan
“Film production is very, very difficult; you either need a lot of money, or a lot of bodies.” Fourteen years ago John Lopez packed his bags, left Berkley, and “travelled around for a little, while throwing parties”. When it was time to finish school, he came to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He picked up where he left off with his Philosophy degree, and added film to his studies. Not long after, he found work “slinging drinks” at the Calico Room. With all the walls of the bar covered with local artwork it’s easy to see why a creative mind like him would enjoy working at the Calico Room. Even one of the owners has a few mixed media pieces hanging on the wall. “They’re artists and they support art,” he said. That is why they were so open when Lopez approached them with the idea of putting on a screening party. Making independent films is unique in the amount of people it requires to come up with a polished piece. Networking is extremely important for people trying to get their films made. Lopez refers to this process as “connecting the dots”. With the presence of major film productions, as well as the film departments at Cape Fear Community College and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the historic city is teeming with independent filmmakers that need an outlet for their work. With this in mind, Lopez approached the owners of the Calico Room with an idea that he had for a number of years. He wanted a grass roots gathering of filmmakers of all different skill levels. After sending out messages to friends, fifteen people, now called ‘Staffers’, decided to “go ahead and create a screening party that also celebrates music and art”. Soon after, the first Dirt Poor Filmmakers Festival screened for over 200 people.
What sets the Dirt Poor Film Festival apart from other screenings is its accessible format. Lopez and the other “Staffers” create a “cross section” where “you can go out and watch films without suffering, you know, if you’re not a total film person”. This brings people to a place where, “there is a major short, and then one by a local independent filmmaker trying to grow and hone their craft, all in the same spot. It really brings up the level for everybody”. A typical Dirt Poor screening has twenty-minute blocks of film balanced out with music from local bands and DJs. Conventional film screenings contain blocks of almost two hours, which can be taxing to even the most devoted viewer. Like Lopez, the other Staffers have lives outside of Dirt Poor. Many are film students, some tend bar and wait tables, others have industry jobs, such as working on set of Revolution and the Iron Man series. What unites the Staffers is their determination to cater to independent filmmakers. While some of the original members remain, the Staffers have “sort of ebbed and flowed,” as new challenges arise. The Dirt Poor Filmmakers Festival is a place where people can screen films that aren’t necessarily ready for other Festivals. This creates a unique opportunity for amateur and student filmmakers to get their work out to an audience. As far as more polished pieces go, the next screening party will contain shorts from major festivals, like Sundance. For the Staffers, Dirt Poor is not just a name; it is the way things are done. When launching the first few film screenings, there was a temptation to charge admission at the door. Lopez and the team quickly shot the idea down. “We are adamantly opposed to a door charge, as well as charging filmmakers to submit. It seems counterintuitive, and defies the spirit of Dirt Poor.” “Dirt Poor is student based, that will always be the heart and soul of it. It’s about the dirt poor filmmaker, the struggling artist trying to come up.” www.atlantismagazine.org
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Winding Road— photography by Carson Smith
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Imaginary Love poetry by Mekiya Walters
Fingertips pierce the stagnant pools, dredge dentures from bedside tables, and explore stretching, empty deserts folded between arid sheets. Crack eggs, cut the day into slices, eat it toasted with butter and red jam: plan for imaginary love, and its contingencies. Toes snap on doorframes, roll under cold showers, and clog porcelain pipes with their clinking. Wield steel washcloths and waxen soap, scrub for imaginary love. Swallow the world cold off a stone plate, silver and bitter. Dreams, work, bright sunshine, patios and falling-apart days, platonic lunches held in red umbrellas’ shade, the passing of papers. Imaginary love seeps in, fine print smudges. Imaginary love ties off the clock hands, draws up a chair, and invites the absentees into an eternity of ticking. Handkerchiefs and too many pockets, ink from blue pens, signatures on the dotted line. Handshakes. Imaginary love leaves the skeletons of planets to tick on empty floors, waiting ‘til a minute past morning to break into eggshells, split the yoke, and drown in endless yellow. Imaginary love stitches the ends of eternity to shoelace and jacket lapels, burning falseness into every gesture, and hope into every stranger’s face. Walk away. Come back tomorrow. Open door brothel, family business on the curb, lights flashing, and even the prettiest backs recede. Imaginary life leaves a pile of strange bones under one nametag, and a handful of stained glass, broken. Buy a dustpan. www.atlantismagazine.org
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Maddie Deming, Submissions Coordinator
Rachel Arredondo, Art Editor
Ashley Johnson, Copy Editor
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Issue 64 — Spring 2013
Photography by Ally Favory
Sally J. Johnson, Poetry Editor
Michael Tomaselli, Web Editor
Caleb Ward, Prose Editor
Dan Dawson, Layout Assistant
Jessica Lowcher, Editor-in-Chief
Matthew Egan, Features Writer Ally Favory, Photography Editor
Shauna Seaver, Layout Editor www.atlantismagazine.org
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CONTRIBUTORS Elijah Brookie
Jay Callow
Shimmy Shimmy Ya Shimmy Yam Shimmy Ya
“Jay Callow? He’s fine, I guess.” - Jay Callow
Andrew Edwards
Andrew is a Junior at UNCW with a studio art major, and enjoys drawing, photography, graphics, and painting. He hopes to explore various other media as there are unlimited forms of expression. Art is his favored means for communicating ideas, both for their symbolic and literal references. Its most compelling aspect is how it connects a common relation to the artist, artwork, and viewer. Matthew Egan
Anna Kennedy
This is his senior year. When he is not writing poetry he is selling Freakers or throwing Frisbees. If he is not doing that, he is sleeping.
Art has given her the freedom to create visual stories through imagery.
Sara Magin
She is a student at UNCW majoring in anthropology with a minor in studio art. She hails from upstate New York, but moved down to Wilmington for school. She now lives here full-time, and intends to continue on to grad-school. She hopes to work as a curator for a museum in the future combining her art and anthropology. Naomi Spicer
Naomi is a freshman at the University of North Carolina Wilmington from Franklinton, North Carolina. A hopeful English major, she hopes to graduate as a part of the Honors program and enter the work force as an editor and writer. She also takes part in theater and screenwriting, but mostly focuses on manuscript writing with an interest in young adult literature and teen issues. Erin Tetterton
Juliet Wiebe-King
Life in inherently serious, therefore, I choose to elevate the ordinary, celebrate the silly, and proclaim the profound. Come, view life through my lens.
Juliet is an Anthropology and International Studies major interested in seeing as many places as she possibly can, documenting her experiences through her photography.
Mekiya Walters
Mekiya is a sophomore at UNCW, a creative writing major and unicorn aficionado. He has worked as a tutor in a community college writing center, an instructor at a martial arts school, and currently as a Seahawk Link. In the spring of 2012, he intends to study abroad in Hyderabad, India, and after UNCW, to pursue a graduate degree in linguistics while writing fiction and poetry. Two of his poems, “We Are From The Sea” and “Strange Kitchen,” were published in Gulf Stream magazine, and his short story “Stall” appears the online magazine in Diverse Voices Quarterly. Mekiya’s dream is to teach a creative writing workshop in a prison, and his favorite pastimes include reading, baking, cleaning, knitting, nerding out, hanging with friends, and putting googly eyes on plants. Please consult Christopher Walken on the importance of putting googly eyes on plants.
Elizabeth Oglesby
Elizabeth is currently a junior at UNCW and she is a studio art major. She is 23 years old, she transferred into UNCW from NC State and CFCC about 2 years ago. She thoroughly enjoys UNCW’s art program, and she is hoping her skills will continue to grow.
Ashby Reber
Ethan Sigmon
Creating my happiness in hopes of it reflecting onto my audience. Smile on.
Born in Hickory, NC. Moved to Wilmington, NC. Attended college. Became a filmmaker. Has a dog.
Carson Smith
Carson currently attends the University of North Carolina at Wilmington as a sophomore, majoring in film studies and business management as well as minoring in art history. Although aspiring to be a film producer in California, she will always continue to pursue her first love, an old 35mm Canon Rebel. Photography has never just been a form of artistic expression to her, but also a means to unwind the complexities and mysteries of the human condition. As Edward Steichen once aptly stated, “Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.” Casey Mills
Rileigh Wilkins
Casey’s favorite meal is vegan cupcakes with frosting made out of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essays.
Is a mermaid.
Sara Pezzoni
Senior at UNCW, picked up her interest for photography six years ago on a trip to Hawaii. Ever since, She’s fallen more and more in love with photography and it has quickly become a hobbyturned-passion.
Ryanne Probst
Her name is Ryanne. Yes, it’s a boy’s name. Yes, it’s inconvenient. She is a junior at UNC Wilmington, majoring in creative writing with a concentration in fiction. She loves to read and write and go to the beach. She has the best friends and family a girl could ask for. She is in the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority on campus and couldn’t do any of this without the amazing support of her sisters. She hopes to someday become a librarian, her dream job. Kelly Strawinski
She is a senior at UNCW studying film studies & English literature. She loves visual art, especially photography and cinematography. This year she is serving as the president of TealTV and enjoying every second of it.
www.atlantismagazine.org
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Come get dirty with us. Here at The Seahawk, UNCW’s student newspaper since 1948, our reporters and photographers take dirt-digging seriously. Want to get dirty?
Student Media Center Fisher University Union Room 1049 Or visit us at theseahawk.org! 44
Issue 64 — Spring 2013
www.atlantismagazine.org
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Accent Artwork provided by Rachel Arredondo 46
Issue 64 — Spring 2013
Staff Members Prose M.G. Hammond Colin Jacobs Abbey Starling Lori Wilson Mark Townsend
Poetry Anna Sutton Katie Jones Alexa Doran Becky Eades Heather Hammerback
Art Ashby Reber Jess Marrano Laney Branch Rebecca Lane Megan Frick Chiharu Higashi Kathryn Allman
Photography Rileigh Wilkins Carson M. Smith Jen Withrow Sammy Thompson
Special thanks to: Bill DiNome, Dr. Persuit, Jamie Moncrief, and the rest of the Student Media Board. Atlantis would not have progressed as it has without your patience, assistance, and tough love. Thank you for sticking with us and for all that you do. Thank you: Readers, contributors, Gene Spear and UNCW Printing Services, our fellow Student Media organizations, our staff members, Freakers, Dirt Poor, Empire Jewelry, Jeff Bridgers, doodles, childhood fairytales, bird masks, red lipstick, THAT BADASS POETRY SLAM, beautiful people, 4-day weekends, Most Golden, Clouds Make Shapes, Brother & the Harmony, private log cabins with hot tubs, adventures, Calico Room, coffee, and handmade beanies for big hair.
Interested in advertising in Atlantis? Call (910)962-3789 or Email ads.uncw@gmail.com for rates and information.
Colophon: 1000 copies of this publication were printed at a total cost of $3923.00, or $3.92 per copy. Atlantis is published three times a year at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in mid-November, mid-April, and mid-June. 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. Submissions: To submit to Atlantis, you must be a currently enrolled undergraduate or graduate student at a university within the UNC system or Cape Fear Community College. Contributors may submit up to ten pieces of art, photography, poetry, or prose to our website at atlantismagazine.org/submit. Editorial Policy: Once a submission is received, the Submissions Coordinator immediately codes it with a tracking number, keeping a spreadsheet with the contact information for each submission. The submissions are then distributed anonymously to the student staffs for review and are labeled solely with their tracking number during this process. No one except the Submissions Coordinator has access to this spreadsheet. The Submissions Coordinator does not participate in the review process and the spreadsheet is not opened until each editorial staff has made content decisions. Every submission is carefully discussed and reviewed.