Loomings 2023

LOOMINGS Th e M oment

LOOMINGS

Th e M oment

Cover Art:

Design by Liza Trettel

Quotes from award-winning prose and poetry by Rose Johnson, Catherine Harper, and Maria Foss

Published by Benedictine College

1020 North 2nd Street

Atchison, Kansas 66002

Materials appearing in Loomings may not be reproduced or reprinted without written consent of Benedictine College and the authors of each work. Writers, poets, and artists contributing to Loomings retain full rights to their work and need not obtain permission for reproduction.

Letter from the General Editor

When trying to choose a theme for this edition of Loomings, we found ourselves faced with a paradox. We wanted a theme that would be broad, allowing the magazine to be open to all kinds of art and artistic styles. At the same time, we wanted a theme that would be narrow, allowing this edition to have a unique focus.

“The Moment” fit our goal perfectly. All art—regardless of whether it is visual art, prose, poetry, music, or others—is related to this concept in some way. Drawing its existence from human life, art captures and transforms moments in order to present them to us. Furthermore, every artwork find its own starting point in an instant of creativity. “The Moment” is crucial to the existence of all art.

At the same time, however, it also serves as a specific concept for artists to explore. We invited Benedictine’s community of artists to reflect on the idea of “The Moment,” and this magazine presents the many different ways that they have explored it. Reflecting on a multiplicity of associations, including time and eternity, memory and epiphany, instants of darkness, and glimpses of light, their art allows this magazine to express “The Moment” in a special way.

I believe that the theme of this magazine is not limited solely to the artists and their creations. You, as the viewer, reader, and listener, have your own unique role in the theme. When you are presented with each work of art, you receive a moment of encounter with that artwork. I encourage you to seize this opportunity to engage with the creation before you. Take some time to examine it. Notice things. Reflect. Ask questions of it, and let it ask you questions. Embrace this present moment of encounter—I believe you will have a richer experience of what this magazine has to offer if you do.

- Landis Lehman, General Editor

THE EDITORS

Landis

Lehman,

General Editor

Landis Lehman is a senior from Lucas, Texas and is majoring in English and minoring in theology. She loves reading, cooking, traveling, and learning new languages, and she always appreciates a good pun! Producing this year’s magazine was a great experience for her. She is very grateful for Benedictine College’s community of artists and is so excited to share their work with others.

Liza Trettel, Layout Editor

Liza Trettel is a junior Graphic Design major and Spanish minor from Nebraska who has always been fond of the harmony between creativity and order. Playing the piano helped her to foster the use of both sides of her brain until she found her calling as a type A artist in the field of graphic design. Designing Loomings has been one of her favorite projects thus far, and she is excited to see it in the hands of our students.

Mitchell Bruce, Prose Editor

Mitchell Bruce is a senior double major in English and Marketing from Tennessee. He was the General Editor of Loomings 2022 and has been very grateful to act as Prose Editor this year. Outside of tutoring for the writing center, working at Atchison Public Library, and taking classes, Mitchell loves rock climbing, philosophy, and reading novels.

Rose Johnson, Poetry Editor

Rose Johnson is a senior from Colorado studying English with a minor in Philosophy. She plans on getting her MFA in Creative Fiction Writing. Aside from reading and writing, Rose enjoys skiing, baking, and scuba diving. As an avid fan of Loomings since her freshman year, Rose has loved being part of the creative process for this year’s issue. She cannot wait to share it with the Benedictine community.

Lily Yandow, Art Editor

Lily Yandow is a junior art major with a minor in education and theology. She grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont, where she first fell in love with beauty. She also loves her cows, handmade ceramics, and authentic conversations with her friends. She hopes that this edition of Loomings will bring a little bit of wonder into the lives of its readers.

Michael Stigman teaches creative writing, composition, literature, and theory. He has relished his role as the faculty advisor for Loomings for over fifteen years! He is grateful to the magazine editors for their creativity and enthusiasm for this project, and he is grateful to the college for their ongoing support of the arts at Benedictine College.

Michael Stigman, Faculty Advisor

LATTE ART

Tatiana Tawney

the scent of roasting beans softly envelops the little corner of the world like the colorful embrace of a smooth brushstroke. the hissing of the steam wand is a familiar music, stretching, straightening, relaxed, gently microfoamed milk flowing from confident hands into painted roses of brown and white and swirls in the smoothness of a porcelain mug placed into the smiling hands of a drinker, wide-eyed like a child, fingers cradling the rainbow, open to the embrace of unthinking art.

the taste of espresso, chocolate, dark, smooth at twenty-six seconds, apples and blueberry and vanilla in their watercolor dance, a delicious jumble of words and flavor tumbling like the warm golden light which leaks through the little shop and illuminates the waiting hesitancy of the people chatting in crooked lines for their daily dosage of art.

St. Paul in the Fall

Marie Gannon

Mollusk

Daniel Fox

Doesn’t speak often, but when it does, it bubbles softly back off, bub. Likes a warm puddle, mostly a homebody everywhere alone and satisfied with its sloshy sort of solitude.

Simple: not comprised of parts.

Could be said of God and the mollusk, who is no metaphysician but keeps close to his shell, digs a clean burrow, and isn’t so attached to either that he won’t ride a wave just to ride a wave.

We humans have a saying: Happy as a clam. The mollusk has another: Happy.

Sullivan’s Caroline Stein

Hunter at Dusk

Lara Campbell

Oil Paint | 14 x 11 Inch

Sketching and Sipping

Libby Gendreau

Graphite and Pen | 9 x 12 Inch

The Masks We Wear

Sarah Zorovich

Acrylic Paint | 12 x 16 Inch

Revisions Kate Kirstein

It wasn’t a thick bubble F sprawled on the page before her. It wasn’t circled, it wasn’t even red. It was small and purple, and the test was littered with little comments and “just quick fixes!” and constructive criticism and useless criticism and a million other little things that she would never correct because that wasn’t the point. A few of her classmates stood out in the hall, chattering about their revisions, and for a moment she thought about tucking the test into her folder and taking it home, working on it, revising, turning it in and getting a C, maybe even a B-. But, the recycling bin was right next to the door, so she gently placed it in and went home.

That night, she did not wash her face before bed and lay on top of her covers, a blanket thoughtlessly strewn across her legs, the clothes she had worn from the past four days all over the floor. In little piles. Little piles scattered across the carpet, and her school books dashed across her desk, and her little plants beginning to wither in their pots. She had had those for two years; the little succulent was just starting to brown in the leaves.

“You need more light, little guy,” she told it, even though she knew it was her fault for not watering it. Then she rolled over so her face was away from the window.

After a few moments she became restless and got up and peeked out the window; the stars usually had a comforting effect on her, and that little purple F was busy floating around in her mind.

“It must be cloudy tonight,” she told her plant as she squinted up at the empty sky. The sky appeared to her as an open expanse of nothingness, a giant black chasm in the sky, but there was no cloud texture or the pinpricks of light that usually were visible in their rural little town. But not tonight. “Not tonight,” she told her succulent, and went back on top of her covers with revisions still running around in her head.

The next morning, she ignored the first three alarms that she had set after telling herself she would be productive; she rolled out of bed fifteen minutes before she had to leave and barely had time to hear her father say “Isn’t that strange, Betty?” to her mother as she went out the door. It was strange, her teacher said, and they’re still not sure if it’s important or not, when Adam raised his hand to ask about the strange phenomena that had occurred the night before.

“What could have happened to them?” Charlie asked.

“How did they just disappear?” Lily cried.

“Some things just can’t be explained,” their teacher explained. That night, she rolled out of bed and crept to the window hoping that the sky was back to normal and the comforting stars were secure in their homes. However, instead of stars, she was faced with little purple Fs bouncing up and down in the sky.

All burnt out, is what the headlines would read the next day.

“All burnt out,” is what she murmured to her little plant that night.

Star Tripping Luke Morel

Nonsense Poetry A Palindrome Poem

Julie Sellers

nonsense poetry, this writing of dreams and strange and grotesque images capturing nothing or everything, still writing, this creator, this writing still everything or nothing, capturing images grotesque and strange and dreams of writing this poetry nonsense

Liza Trettel

The Man Sarah Zorovich

Acrylic Paint | 12 x 16 Inch

Elisabeth Armour

Heart Strings

Anna Brown

Collage | 28 x 20 Inch

Staying Rose Johnson

And it is alright to be soft and solid, To shudder against one another, To barely touch hands, To beat and breathe in the ebb and flow. Because we are paradoxes, Slipping and struggling, Through time, suffering, and love. And you must embrace the paradox.

For you will find yourself, Slanting one way and another, Cresting frosted peaks, Bleak of oxygen and empathy, Dragged deeply into whirling pools, Soaked in salt and fear. And it is okay to climb broken mountains, To slide into troubled seas. It is okay to lose your way.

But sometimes the earth will be steady, Pushing up firmly, and kindly against your feet. You will find yourself in a small valley, And the grass will be new and brave. You will breath it in, a moment at a time, And you will become alright with time. And you will become alright with you, If only for a moment.

And someday, somehow, even later than this, You will stay in that valley, always. With the violets stroking the air, And the wind wandering beside you. And someday, somehow, Though you do not know how yet, Time will no longer be time, And suffering will no longer be suffering, And love will be everything That you have tried and failed to even hint at.

But for now, for the present, You will only be in this valley, For a moment at a time. You will keep returning to ragged breath, And stinging skin. And you will be afraid. But that is alright. For we are all infinities, Thinly restricted by temporary boundaries, Breaking through, and into one another. And we are too young for total infinity. We would devastate each other.

But someday, somehow, Though we don’t know how it could be so, Though we find it hard to possibly imagine, We won’t.

Summer Storm Merry Thaden

Train Maria Foss

It’s late. Maybe some time around ten or eleven o’clock, but I can’t be certain. All I know is that my eyelids are made of metal weights, sagging heavily and constricting my vision as I stare down at the open Bible in my lap. My back is slumped, my legs are stretched out in front of me, and my mind hungers for rest and rebels against the thought of praying any further.

Just as I lift my head, my mother tip-toes into the center aisle and kneels in front of the gold-encrusted monstrance. I give another glance at the dull white pages staring up at me from my lap. No notes. No yellow streaks. Another worthless hour in the chapel. I press the rough leather cover over its well-worn pages, tucking the book under my arm, and slip out of the pew.

A few blocks down from the church is a railway that runs perpendicular to the road. It winds endlessly along the edge of the town, running behind rough brick buildings and disheveled homes, snaking along the rocky shores of the deep blue lake. Day in and day out, trains come rumbling through the town, horns blaring and wheels squealing on the metal tracks as they transport things from place to place.

Tonight, however, the train doesn’t simply take things somewhere. It leaves something behind.

Our car lurches to a stop in front of the railroad tracks as the red lights begin to flash and the dinging of the gates signals a train approaching. My eyes strain against the darkness, captivated by a shady figure on the other side of the railroad track. It sways and stumbles, transforming into a small black blob, then a stout, stocky shape, a black blob again as the figure violently jerks forward.

“Mom, do you see that?” I ask, pointing ahead.

My mom squints her eyes, peering across the railroad tracks. “Where?”

“Right…” I pause as the blob enters the yellow spotlight of the streetlamp. Sickness strikes my chest like a whip, and my hand falls to my lap.

“Mom, what do we do?” I’m not even sure if the words are in my mind or out in the open.

“Oh my gosh…”

The man’s mind must be drenched with alcohol. He stumbles forward like a newborn calf learning to use its legs for the first time.

Oh, I wish he were a calf! A little, beautiful calf with lush eyelashes and a soft, silky nose. I wish he were anything but a man.

My lungs are void of air, and my heart bashes furiously against the bones of my ribcage. I am splintered with terror.

The ominous red gates lower, trapping the drunk man inside of the train track, where he stumbles on all fours, awaiting his brutal end.

And I will be here to witness it. Me, a shy, sheltered sixteen-year-old whose life is just beginning. I open my mouth to speak - to utter some word of horror or fear or panic or something - but my throat is clenched shut.

The train billows down the railway, its horn splitting through the warm night air. I see it now, plowing down the track, a black, massive, metal mammoth ready to trample down everything in its way.

The sound of the train horn absorbs our shrieks and screams. My feet press into the floor of the car and my spine crushes into the back of the seat.

The weights have been removed from my eyes. I want to look away, but my eyes are glued ahead of me.

The train hurls itself at the drunk man. The dark night is filled with the unending blare of the horn, warning, warning, warning.

It’s fifteen feet from the man, who kneels on all fours, unmoving.

Ten feet.

Eight feet. Five. Two.

The man grips the gate and stumbles forward. He falls off the metal track. He lands in the grass beside it.

The train blows past.

The man picks himself up, sways violently, and stumbles down the black street along the railway, disappearing into the darkness.

My body melts in my seat.

My mom sits motionless, her pale face staring out into the dark nothingness.

The rumbling of the train fades. The horn passes away. There is silence.

I sit upright in my bed, back rigid and legs sticking out stiffly in front of me. My eyes swim through the hollow darkness above my bed. They don’t hold the same heaviness that they held in the adoration chapel. They refuse to close - refuse to do anything but search that dark space surrounding me

He will never know how close he was. He will never know that he was given a second chance to live. He will awaken tomorrow to the afternoon sun, head pounding and sickness penetrating his body… but he will never know that his head was almost pounded on the metal tracks of a railway.

I know, though.

A horn tears through the silence, breaking through my open window. It screeches at me and screeches at the world.

You don’t have forever.

You don’t know when you’ll die.

One day, you will be gone.

Homer Emma Kaminski

Graphite | 12 x 14 Inch

Standing in Awe

Julia Nemec

Wanderer

Libby Gendreau

Late In the Night

Miriam Del Castillo

Late in the night,

I am a plane searching for a place to land, not searching but hoping, praying, sobbing, approaching the earth at break neck speed, flashing red sirens screaming in my brain as if I was unaware projected crash course is imminent

sun, and breathe. Then I will see the tearing and testing me. life pushing and pulling, out, to balance the pressure of just barely hard enough to climb shakily fly with my nose in the sky or I can find the strength to pull up, hard, and

He Is Not His Father

He runs in dark alley-ways; glances beside him and sees the specter of father’s faults laughing as he leans on father’s strengths for support.

Joseph Rice

Stopping Time

Anna Skiba

Dear California DMV

Mary Nuñez

I refuse to separate

‘I cannot’ and ‘I could not’.

I would blame myself for both.

I do not do anything.

I filled out my application for an ID with a brand new phone I was terribly proud of owning.

‘ARE you a resident of California?’ You ask me, and I check my box. Then my next box, and the next.

18. Hispanic. Woman.

Here’s my name - but here I pause. You won’t take my ‘ñ’. I try it three times but three times your site tells me my name does not belong. The ‘ñ’ is not a letter.

(I read between the lines, I do not belong)

So what am I to you?

You will take my age, my life, my vote, my raise, but that letter is too bitter to taste.

You celebrate my voice, my culture, my heart, then spit them out of the choices I am allowed to make. You say ‘be you’, yet mean ‘be me’.

So I enter a name that isn’t mine. I enter a name I hate that I recognize. And you reply: “Time for this session has expired.”

Dreaming in the Dust

Kristina Schueller

Becalmed Galahad Carmack

Acrylic Paint | 16 x 20 Inch

St. Peter Beholds the Ascension

The Color of Fall Austin Nobis

Beaters Levi Huston

People here put on new friends like shoes. They slip me on and off when I fit the occasion. I spend time under beds, making friends with forgotten graded papers and the TV remote you always seem to lose. I am tucked away in moldy closets whenever the parents visit. I get tired of everyone else, but I never get tired of you. I slip into you like a pair of old beaters. You are my Reeboks, and I am yours. Paint, puke, mud, and grime mark you as mine. You’ve followed me to every drug deal, been thrown across the room during every drunken one-night-stand. I love you. You are my only friend. I love you. Cigarette burns litter your smooth soles, peppering treads that were all worn down three years ago. I even kept the box you came in. There are letters from old lovers, the reed from the first swisher I smoked at the abandoned drive-in on my 16th birthday, the police report from my dad’s suicide. I want to see it all. I have to see it all. Because just like I keep bits and pieces of myself where you once were, bits and pieces of you are all that the world will have of me when I’m gone. An aglet here, a scrap of shoelace there. When they’re done with me, they’ll throw me away—donate me if I’m lucky so I can live again. But you are my beaters, and to me that means something. When the time comes and your seams come undone and stitches reopen and I feel the water rushing in around me, I’ll take you off for the last time and hold you like a lover. I’ll toss you over a power line somewhere where everybody can see that you were mine and I was yours.

After Patrik Phillip’s “Having a Fight With You”

Joseph Rice

Summiting a Mountain

is like taking off my socks at the end of a long day, or picking fresh blackberries.

It’s like turning onto a dirt road and seeing an impressionist sunset arrayed over soy. Or the first time you realize your friend is beautiful.

Summiting a mountain is never, ever less satisfying: I have conquered.

It’s winning that first kiss or smoking a Cuban, whiskey in hand, on the back porch with a good friend.

Play Dead

A MUSICAL COMPOSITION

Daniel Fox

A Ship for You and Me Catherine

Harper

A box, a stick, a piece of cloth, Some teddy bears for crew, She sails as far as dreams can go, This ship for me and you.

If you but take the helm and sing, No matter where we are, Our ship will sail the seven seas, Beneath a lucky star.

We’ll reach the edge of memory, Pass shining shores of thought, And ride imagination’s swells, Where leaping dreams are caught.

Ahead against the twilight sky, I’ll spy a wild land, With ancient trees on mountain slopes, Behind a golden strand.

The sailor bears unship their oars, I beat the rowing-drum, We feel the keel bite into sand, How far our ship has come!

The seafoam plays about our feet, With joy we disembark, Adventure waits beneath the trees, In mountain-valleys dark.

We make our camp upon the beach, Around the fire bright,

We dance in circles, reveling, Our laughter fills the night.

As dawn light breaks above the peaks, Of misty mountains tall, We wander through the wild woods, And hear the ravens call.

But then we long again to feel, The sea-wind in our hair, To see the rainbows in the spray, To smell the salty air.

We leave the mountains far behind, Go walking hand in hand, Beneath the trees in dappled light, From grass we pass to sand.

But somehow, when I glanced away, The ship became a box, The bears lay limp, the sea was gone, The mountains were but rocks.

And we, oh, we were far too large, To board the ship once more, And couldn’t quite recall the way, To find that shining shore.

But in our dreams, a ship remains, That sails across the sea, On swells of memory and time, A ship for you and me.

The Discovery

Caroline Stein

Ephemeral

Therese Pivarunas

A distant, glassy ocean where waves break so gently: there shall I meet you. Don’t cry, I’m fine. I’m learning how to sing.

My Last Mental Health Day

Augustine Iseman

Acrylic Paint | 9 x 12 Inch

Acrylic Paint | 12 x 16 Inch

We Thought of God

Maria Wurth

How could we not?

That summer is near to me now, still.

The sun rose and fell quickly like a ball Tossed between two young friends Yet the hours stretched in undulant ribbons.

Hours enough for too much dark coffee, Hours enough to speak freely and listen well, Enough to walk along the thundering Niers And hear the deep-toned sway of the trees.

At dusk our long, leaping shadows flamed across the earth Their stretching, tumbling reach telling of the days repose And hinting at how much we’d grown.

Yes, the days thumped along with the health of a young man’s heart And we remembered something — slowly at first, then all at once, Like a child waking.

A memory of homeland, older and kinder than the Niers, than the rustling trees.

We remembered, and marveled, and lived well. And as our nightly Salve rose —

God thought of us.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Michael Stigman and the Department of Art and Design, especially Bryan Park and Sue Leo, for their guidance and assistance throughout the process of creating this edition of Loomings. We greatly appreciate the time and energy that they have put into helping us.

We are also grateful to our judges for the work that they have done. We would like to thank Hannah Voss, Dr. Julie Sellers, Dr. Mariele Courtois, Sr. Diana Seago, OSB, and Sr. Jennifer Halling, OSB for judging the poetry submissions; Dr. Daphne McConnell, Sr. Judith Sutera, OSB, Dr. Gail Blaustein, Dr. Jamie Blosser, and Danielle Blosser for judging the prose submissions; and Chris Lowrance, Merritt Vaughn, and Dr. Katherine Hinzman for judging the studio art and photography submissions.

Finally, we are deeply grateful to Benedictine College for its commitment to the arts and continued support of Loomings

The Patricia Hattendorf Nerney Poetry Award

The Thomas Ross Young Writer Award

Saint Peter Beholds the Ascension Peter Zuzolo

2 Wanderer Libby Gendreau

PLACE STUDIO ART

Hunter at Dusk Lara Campbell

Armour, Elisabeth

Brown, Anna

Campbell, Larissa

Carmack, Galahad

Del Castillo, Miriam

Foss, Maria

Fox, Daniel

Gannon, Marie Gendreau, Libby

Levi

Augustine

Kate

Kopec, Ethan

Magner, Sean

Morel, Luke

Nemec, Julia

Nobis, Austin

Nuñez, Mary Therese

Pivarunas, Therese

Rice, Joseph

Schueller, Kristina

Sellers, Julie

Skiba, Anna

Stein, Caroline

Tawney, Tatiana

Thaden, Merry

Trettel, Liza

White, Ava

Wurth, Maria

Zorovich, Sarah

Zuzolo, Peter