BFEC Zine (Fall 2020) by bfeczine

Mabel B Jones “Goldenrod”

Editors Note Thank you for showing up to admire what so many people worked so hard on this semester. This zine was edited and compiled by two Student Managers for the BFEC, one on campus, and one remote, with the shared idea that we could bring a feeling of on-campus unity that we all equally missed from the BFEC community through a collection of art. Under the often-obtrusive clouds of this pandemic, it can feel difficult to feel connected to things and people which once felt close. This project has been a source of catharsis for both of us: receiving art from our fellow scattered and changed peers and mentors has often felt like a reunion of sorts. We hope that the beauty of what is compiled here can provide you some catharsis. We hope you can feel some connection to what the rest of your community has been making and experiencing during this quiet time. No matter how far from the BFEC’s beauty you might feel, we hope that this Zine can bring to you that feeling of serene and calming beauty wherever you happen to be. May this serve as a slow-forming conversation between the entire Kenyon community about beauty, what is missed, what is lost, and yet, what remains.

Ansley Grider “Forest Forage”

Lucy Adams “A Nap”

Summer Day Drive-by Ruby-throated hummingbird Whirl of whispering wingbeat Bounce from blossom to bloom Bumble through bleeding heart To archive scarlet bounty. Split tongue sips of nectar Swiftly fuel your hyper-motor Racing time and starvation. Arial trickster, dart back and forth Dodge kitten’s clawing clutch Remember danger, remember beauty Remember me; I’ll remember you tiny music box, smallest of gifts Glimpsed then gone. Anna Duke Reach

Abby Navin “Piping Plover”

Becca Wentworth-Kuhn

Dresden Lonergan “Honey Drip”

Calvin and Ray Heithaus “The Robin Tree”

Songbird Next Time I’d like to be a songbird next time to pick up things and sing to them to sift through the garbage with an old English teacher, to live the happy life an apple stole from me over time I’d evolve into a junky city bird, and be so beautiful, so goddamn annoying, to the yammering feet on the pavement and children who I once looked like would try to toss me a crumb or two, would imagine me hitting their hand, landing on a shoulder and coming to rest by their window at night would imagine me as I once imagined a songbird, as I once imagined the world (as I once Jenny Jantzen

Eva Illuzi “La Rêverie”

Madeline Hofstetter “Yolk”

Gabby Rachman “A really cool tree I saw on a walk with a friend”

Change of Seasons I used to say I hated nature. It was a gross over exaggeration to make people laugh. And they did. They laughed at the thought that I was a modernized youth who was so rot with the spoils of a luxur- ious society in which nature is treated as an accessory. And that is true. I would be the first to die in the zombie apocalypse. I would last one day at Walden Pond compared to Thoreau. I would have died of cholera without even giving it a fighting chance. I’m not afraid to admit that. I am a result of our over-industrialized society. There are ways to combat our industrialization, but it feels increasingly difficult as we continually severe the roots so intertwined with our land. I don’t hate nature. I revere it. I cannot wield it to my will. Nature wields me. I must accept that.

Shea Humphries

Corpses of rotten oaks in the middle of nowhere and everywhere, nature waits like a pregnant doe for the fawns to open their eyes. on this haunted ground I record figurines of ghosts. young adults whisper in the cornfield & pretend to be grown ups but feel smaller beneath the walls of constellations. under the soft blue pieces sowed by twisted twigs — struggling to hug each other — ancient roots poke above the surface of the earth to reach for the very living that it carries. there is nothing more unconventionally beautiful than the land preserved by someone’s ancestors who faced the sun over the horizon & planted seeds of poetry in our mouths. I catch leaves falling from drunken trees & dance in the maze & feel the spirits watching in silence hugging me over the honey-baked sky. Ocean Wei

Michael Sweazey “Sunset and Sundogs”

Mark Tuel “Autumn Filigree”

Autumn Haibun Under the bridge, the water runs deep brown, no living things in it but almost a living thing itself, the way it knows how to speak and then fall silent. The iron frame goes arching toward the sky, shedding rust. A tunnel of light above the river. Over the field of wheat, an elegant, creeping shadow, soft gray like the fuzz of a squirrel’s tail. The cars go by on the highway, the deer prick their ears among the tall grasses. Long swathes of heavy, nodding goldenrod. Tiny, violet sparks Of unnamed flowers, the last Of summer; here, now. Molly Fording

Once there were bees Once there were bees not so long ago a host housed at the BFEC that swept up pollen from open blooms professional pollinators of fruit and flower We drew too near the droning edge of the white boxes of hives where the workers dance in patterns jabbing my intruding fingers with stingers as they die prisoners of sweetness and speak in that buzzing old promises as the weeping trees weeping nearby finish with a harvest of sticky honey But think what it was before you heard its name R.W. Rhodes

Katya Naphtali

Ruby Rosenfeld

From my Window There’s a storm blowing in, silent clouds for now. They’ve covered the sun, making it set a few hours early. The wind ushers in the dark clouds, tears brown leaves from where they still cling to trees. A flock of something—vultures, crows, I don’t know—wheels in the air, like the leaves. Among them is a single hawk with a white underbelly. It looks like the sun is shining on the hawk alone, illuminating it above its winged brethren. I am transfixed. Now the birds are gone, the wind has quieted to a breeze, and the sun is out again, casting weak light on the increasingly-barren branches of the tree outside my window. This, of course, is only a last-ditch attempt to resist the rain. A roll of thunder in the distance—or was it just the sound of construction? Now I am impatient for the downpour to begin. The stage has been set and the audience has been seated. I expect a show. Thinking about those crows: Last fall, the band was running our halftime show on the practice field. It was a Friday afternoon in late October much like this one. I was on the podium, conducting the show, and to my left, a crowd of vultures flew in wide, low circles. I kept getting distracted watching them glide around. It was ominous and beautiful. I wondered if flying is as smooth as it looks, or if really it’s as turbulent as things are down here. I know it must be turbulent. There’s nothing that isn’t. I can’t stop staring at these last yellow leaves against the rain-heavy sky. There is nothing like these two colors next to each other, leaf-yellow and cloud-grey. The leaves remind me of sunlight, like all that light they spent the summer absorbing is left over after the chlorophyll dies and the green pigment fades. I know this is unscientific, but even so. That’s what it looks like. Sun and storm, framed by the panes of my dorm-room window. It hasn’t started raining yet, but a student just walked by holding an open umbrella. My anticipation rises with each gust of wind that yields no rain. Molly Orr

The Farmhouse of Amish Neighbors The farmhouse dwarfs the hastily planted “For Sale” sign at the end of the gravel drive. Lurking in back are drying lines where the bed linens and rows of bleached clothes do a gentle dance -- like the white crucifixion of Emily Dickinson’s dress. Cold souls of shovels lean in a line outside, like props for a sagging wall. In the airless kitchen the new widow whose relaxed body, as solid as a hard chair next to the iron stove polished with newspaper, is surrounded by older women waiting around, each with a wide stance like a family cupboard hoarding things in hidden compartments, all crafted by practiced hands out of local wood. Sitting or standing, they are storehouses of many things known and taken out to view, item by item,

bits of observation, until they are carefully locked up again. You can hear cicadas. And the flaring ruffles on ironed curtains mysteriously shimmy over the closed windows. In the embracing fields, blind sunflowers nod dropping heads after searching out the light they cannot see. R. W. Rhodes

Madeline Hofstetter “Cataloging Poets No. 1”

Michael Sweazey “Erupting Volcano”

Ulysses Yarber “Garden Song”

man on the moon i am waiting for the man on the moon. a long time ago, i could clearly make out his figure among the stars. but years have gone by now, and i’ve grown to like the indoors and care about what’s on this earth and focus on the present. so only once in a blue moon, can i spot him. we are far too apart. hopes, dreams, and satellites float in the distance between us. for if i am lonely down here, then he must feel planets away. but on those rare nights when i catch sight of the shooting star he sent me, i wish upon it to be with him on the moon. Shea Humphries

Sights and Sounds of the Caples’ Tree As I scanned the area near my residence, looking for an ideal tree to observe, my eyes took a while to settle on one specific tree. Ahh, which tree was the fairest of them all? This was such a difficult question to answer, especially since there was a lot of competition on the Kenyon campus. But then I saw it: the large, looming tree with dozens of extending branches fanned out like a crown. Some of the leaves on its branches had refused to submit to the seasonal cycle. Strangely enough, its right side seemed to have more of the stubborn leaves with shades of yellowish green. While on the left, many more of the leaves had turned into a fiery orange or iridescent red. As I looked up further, observing the patches of sky beyond the tree’s reach, I could see a turkey vulture gliding gracefully through the sky. It’s barely noticeable red head was looking down at the ground below. A series of clicking sounds soon followed. Not from the turkey vulture, but from the squirrels and other mischievous creatures that were residing in the nearby trees. As my ears tuned in on the sounds of nature, I heard a call that I’ve never heard elsewhere. It was almost like that of a dolphin’s clicking but lower and more abrupt. Such a bizarre cry took me by surprise. And it lasted for quite some time! I wondered what message it carried. Perhaps some feisty animal was claiming parts of the tree as its own. I also noticed the wind tugging at my thin jacket, like an irritating sibling trying to beckon me to follow them. Its cold, rushing current had picked up many leaves. I could hear them rustling in the grass and onto the sidewalk as they collided into each other. Some of the leaves on the tree had fallen during my time there. Each leaf fell with a twirling gracefulness. And when two leaves were falling close together, they seemed to mimic two people performing the Cha-cha dance. I was surprised to find that there was not as much distracting background noise as I thought there would be. Only the faint sounds of car music could be heard, or the occasional footsteps of students entering or leaving the caples’ building. As my listening session came to a close, a gust of wind swept through the trees. While passing through the trees’ branches, it caused many of the leaves to violently shake. Such noise heard from a forest of trees imitates the sound of a light drizzle that comes before a heavy storm. Jada Swearingen

Gabby Rachman “Nest”

Robin Hart Ruthenbeck “The Prince”

Dear Deer These days you are everywhere in my dreams. And I can’t even tell when I’m dreaming: some days I walk into the shower heavy as soot, try to lie down in the water. Do you ever get clean? Do you take to the river of beer cans and broke rafts, or does the rain rush to clean your back? These days you are everywhere: I saw you and your family, four, I counted, grazing by somebody’s redrust apartment, the crack of my steps sending you scattered like a shot through the gray morning. You are cautious. That’s ok. These days I can’t help but pick people apart, crack twigs in their heart. I do not settle. Do you settle? I am sorry for answers I will not receive, for remembering you as the turn of a leaf, or the answer to every prayer I’ve prayed while selfish or alone, Love, Jenny Jantzen

Wyatt Henneman (@wyatts.wheel On Instagram)

Wyatt Henneman

Benjamin After forty-thousand years, none of us had forgotten the spears and the two-legged hunters who ran like rivers. They could have pursued the sun until it extinguished itself. Only we and the kangaroos evaded them: them the leapers and we the cowards, concealed in the trees and little caves from dawn till dusk, when we emerged in the fuzzy twilight that sent the humans back to their writhing fires. It didn’t feel like cowardice then. Then came the dingoes, killing the hens out in the heat of day while we hid, until we starved and then our pups starved. So then only the leaping kangaroos remained. They didn’t have to take the hens. Dingoes can eat anything. Tasmania became our name. We hid in the soft, flowering trees during the day, in the hills, where we would go unseen. At night, we roamed the heath, breaking bones and unwrapping flesh with our jaws that closed like two interlocking mountains. But the heath withered under us. Our prey weakened and thinned until there were only bones to break and no flesh to unwrap. Marrow only goes so far. Our pups growled and shrieked for the pain hanging from their bellies, summoning dangers that would make hunger irrelevant. Some unseen force had taken our food from us once again. Nothing was ours. Nothing could ever be ours, so we would take what wasn’t. The sheep—we had watched their long-surrender. Ages of compromise, learning to love the shepherd that ate them and the pasture that fattened them. They forgot the mountains where they climbed above the sky in forests that seemed to root themselves in the clouds; heights where the humans could not run with their spears. Their mighty horns shriveled to nubs, until the shepherd was satisfied with their uselessness. But most of all, the humans drained the life from them. Dead sheep begetting dead sheep. Dead sheep with dead eyes and dead hearts. It felt like mercy to creep into their pastures at dusk and crush their necks, drag them to our pups. The humans had taken enough from them; it didn’t seem right that the sheep should fill their bellies. They filled our pups instead. Jaws grew strong and stripes dark. In the end the humans found us. They found us in our caves and in our hollows. They were weaker and paler than they had been before. They couldn’t run like they once had. Instead, they threw death after us with a sound like thunder. We died thrashing the earth,

biting the air, hoping to take a piece out of their fat, flabby legs before we ended. Our pups died shrieking, but they did not die hungry. Benjamin paroles the concrete like it's something worth defending. Like the chain-link around him is there to delineate what is his. They shot his mother while he lay nestled in the pouch beneath her stomach. It was warm and dark and it smelled like milk-soaked fur. But there is no shared warmth here, no bodies pressed together in the cool, small places beneath the rocky hills. There is no smooth darkness to enjoy, because they will not let him sleep through the daylight. And no milk, either. They feed him meat so old that the blood has dried. It seems a long time since he was a pup. Eat… chew Get it down Live Benjamin stares at breakfast. Breakfast smells like it should be left alone. Benjamin welcomes the clean feel of his empty stomach, but the growls and snarls will not permit it. We hunted for you We went without meat so that you would not go without milk Benjamin lowers his head, tightening the untapped, monstrous strength of his jaws around the leathery hide. He holds it down with one paw and tears, his nose revolting and his stomach tightening itself in anticipation of what’s coming its way. Live for us I don’t want to. The round, soft faces on the other side of the fence call him wolf and t iger. They point to his stripes like they are all that keep him from being a wolf and his long snout like it’s all that keeps him from being a tiger. So he paces, turning his stripes into the light. Show them your stripes Yes. I know. He raises his slender, distinctly un-tigerish head and grins into the breeze. Get it while you can. The rainy season starts, bleeding the heat from the concrete floor. But still Benjamin emerges each morning to parade his stripes and his snout. Tries to show them what they destroyed, even though he is making a poor show of it. His stripes have long ago turned to a dull grey and the fur of his snout is falling out in patches. He hungers for the meat that

gawks at him. Just one of them in his belly, just one, would darken his stripes and thicken his fur. Then the humans would see. Then the growls that made him eat the putrid meat would leave him alone. Show them Show them He gnaws at the chain-link, but a human forces him back with a heavy boot. The chill climbs. His legs tremble at night, and, come morning, it takes a long time for the blood to flow down to his claws and back to his heart. This meat was different. It was a frozen rock. All morning he watches it, testing it with his teeth. But the growls within him will have nothing to do with it. Eat it It’s cold. And hard. Break it Benjamin hesitates, then maneuvers the meat-laden bone into his mouth. His teeth burn; he feels a surge of aggression for the dead piece of animal. A shiver seems to course through him, resonating until it concentrates at the back of his mouth. Like two mountains, his jaw shuts. The meat breaks, cracking and splintering. It thaws as he passes it around with his warm tongue. Benjamin throws his head back and forces the icy flesh down. That taste The growls and snarls have always been commands, but this is a recognition. A whiff of knowledge. Benjamin licks the flesh. It is a taste he once knew in his mother’s milk. A smell that had been dragged to him in the night. The walking, baaaahing dead that had filled his hunger. Benjamin remembers how they stood like cloudy bushes in the pastures, waiting to remember that grass existed. They were soft and plump and unsteady. They didn’t seem to see anything. Benjamin shrinks away from the fence and the round, smooth faces. Suddenly, he is afraid that—by some miracle—they will find him a mate. Afraid they’ll invent some use for his flesh. Maybe they’d wear his skin. Maybe they would wear his stripes as their own. A human stands outside the fence, fiddling with some black thing perched on three rigid legs. The object clicks madly like a swarm of insects is trapped inside.

“The tasmanian tiger, easily distinguished by his striped, unjointed tail, is also a dangerous opponent, though, like the devil, is very rare, being forced out of its natural habitat by the march of civilization. This is the only one in captivity in the world.” He smells wet, heavy clouds. Show them No. They don’t get to see anymore. Benjamin watches through a crack in the box where he has slept each night since they ripped him from his mother’s pouch. He waits for the darkness to drive the humans away. Then he attacks. The wood and the iron cuts his cheeks and bends his teeth, but he growls merrily. The hinge whines like wrestling pups. Benjamin steps out of the crate into the unseen rain, letting it fill his fur. A wheezy, frosty wind greets him. The clean feeling in Benjamin’s stomach that had begun when he skipped his second meal seems to swell in the rain’s embrace. Live for us Not for them. Benjamin curls up in the chill water, ready for a hungerless sleep. Sam Mineiro

Robin Hart Ruthenbeck

Sara Halebien

Wendy MacLeod

Jess Besca

End Note Thank you to everyone who contributed to this project, and everyone who submitted their beautiful art. Special thanks to Lucy Adams for making the cover art! If you enjoyed our first zine then make sure to submit next semester for our 2021 BFEC Zine. :) -Abby Navin ‘23 and Mabel B Jones ‘21