blue moon volume 33 by Blue Moon

blue moon

THANKS TO Associated Students of Whitman College Penrose Library for their financial support

Special thanks to Amy Paldi Whitman Events Board Barbara Maxwell and Andrew Johnson Reid Campus Center The Whitman College Wire

COVER ART

Builtscape

Peter Eberle lineoleum relief

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Olivia Waltner Clara Greenstein POETRY EDITOR Iris Thwaits POETRY STAFF Clara Collins Elissa Corless Gabi Marshall Simon Ritter Gabby Rose PROSE EDITOR Michelle Foster PROSE STAFF Renny Acheson Sophie Grossman Sierra Drossman Lauren Olson Jade Strapart ART EDITOR Liv Staryk ART STAFF Rowan Brown Alex Hwang Sydney London Isabelle Keller DIGITAL MEDIA & LAYOUT EDITOR Peter Eberle DIGITAL MEDIA STAFF Ryder Brookes Elie Flanagan Jasmine Razeghi PR STAFF Hayden Cooper India Flinchum Delaney Harader Libby Hunt Nathan Smith Rayana Weller

blue moon Whitman College

2020

volume 33

blue moon, Whitman Collegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student-staffed art and literary magazine, is published annually in April in Walla Walla, Washington. blue moon accepts submissions of art, prose, poetry, and digital media. All submissions to blue moon are judged anonymously and selected by the editors and staff. Whitman College is not responsible for the contents of the magazine. The magazine accepts no liability for submitted artwork and writing. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members. The individual contributors hold copyrights to artwork, texts, and digital media in this issue. No material may be reprinted without the permission of the magazine or contributors. blue moon is a not-for-profit media organization within the Associated Students of Whitman College. All donations and gifts to blue moon are tax-deductible. Please make checks for donations payable to the Associated Students of Whitman College. Copyright 2020, blue moon For more information on how to submit and donate, please visit www.whitman.edu/bluemoon. To view a PDF version of this magazine and past volumes, visit www.bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com blue moon Whitman College 280 Boyer Avenue Walla Walla, WA 99362

CONTENTS to better understand another

poetry

If We Had Switched Places

Self-Care Sunday

Bananas

Celeste

The Tale of LL and Aven

Cross

The Tale of LL and Aven

Icarus Moment

Madwoman

Eating A Stalk of Celery

Ride

cap hill houses

Shoes

Estuary Queen

Racing

All the Colors of Love

Menlo Park

art

Miranda LaFond

poetry

Plastic in the Summer

Suspended

Em Perry

Hannah Paul Hannah Paul

Grant Gallaher Nick Sekits

Clara Greenstein Olivia Waltner Rayana Weller

Jillian Brandon

Luke Notkin

art art prose art

poetry

art

poetry

art

Rayana Weller Loa Jones

Rowan Brown

Rowan Brown Elise Sanders

Clara Greenstein Henry Adams

Alex Hwang

Peter Eberle

poetry

art

prose art poetry poetry art

dig med

art

Papa's Rainboots

Untitled

Cuddles

Roller Derby

Livvy Eickerman

Grant Gallaher

prose

art

Carrie Ann Jones

Madilyn Hofbauer

art

prose

What if

Opera of Lullabies

butt (or ocean)

The Morning After

To My Selfless Body

thank you

Self-Constructed

smoke & mirors

Intense

Internal Review

Fiona Pontin

art

Celebration Florida

Erika Goodman

Erin Lee

Michelle Foster Clara Collins

Samarah Uribe MĂŠndez Katherine Boys-Kirgis

Rowan Brown

poetry art

poetry

art

prose

poetry

Isabelle Keller Annie Means

Akane Kleinkopf

poetry art

art

joys and...

Interiors

Tobias

Animal pelts lie crooked on human shoulders

Aubrey May Casey Doe

Chloe Carothers-Liske

Clara Collins

Just Around the Corner Leo Polk

poetry art

art

poetry

art

CONTENTS Eventually the Birds Must Land

Before and After Faces

Kaitlin Cho Leo Polk

Hayden Cooper

Plumage

Rohan Press

Elle

Birth of the Creation

Waking the Witch

a DaY iN tHe MiNd

100

Spirals

102

Diagnosis

104

Veins

105

Answer My Questions:

113

Green Blanket

115

prose

art dig med

poetry

bloodless, stone gray, bloodless

Builtscape

longing during a cold spell

Rohan Press Peter Eberle

Iris Thwaits

poetry

art

poetry

Sam Montes

Rhiannon Dowling

Michelle Foster Chloe French

Grant Gallaher

Britney Mendel Kate Swisher Erika Goodman

art

poetry poetry dig med

poetry

art

prose poetry

'October Chill': Perthshire, 1851

Window

Ode to Dream

116

Loa Jones

art

Emliy Rigsby

poetry

A Deal in the Desert

Family Tree

117

poetry

Ella Crosby

Kate Swisher

Gavin Murphy

prose

Keeli McKern

art

Sepetember Sestina

118

BOATIES

poetry

Olivia Waltner

steam & people

120

Looking for Baby Bear

127

art

Stephanie Ma

Alice and Jojo in the Vines

122

Mid-Day Break

129

Oatmeal Rain

123

130

prose

Just an Observation, a Premediation

125

Godspeed

131

Haley Wilkerson

Jordan Payne

Luke Notkin

Keeli McKern

TWINz

Eduardo Cabrera

art

Sam Johnson

Eli Baez

Matthew Wieck

DIGITAL MEDIA All digital media pieces can be found on the blue moon website at:

www.bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com

Video: I. Faces II. Animal III. A dAy iN tHe MiND IV. Racing

Hayden Cooper Chloe French Alex Hwang

126 art

poetry

art

poetry

art

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Re: blue moon vol. 33 Hello friends and family, Woo! So glad a copy of this mag has made it into your hands. With coronavirus shutting down literally every other activity on Whitman campus, we feel xtra lucky to publish blue moon this year. Make sure to check out our website to watch some digital media content or read on the go → link is attached below. It’s been a 10/10 year for blue moon. We secured record staff applications by harnessing the power of the Instagram story- sorry to all our non-Whitman followers! We held the first-ever staff bonding scavenger hunt (which took all of ten minutes but gave us the perfect excuse to use ASWC funds for s’mores). This year’s re-branding of Big Art to "blue moon pop-up” prompted lots of hype, a sweet student turnout, and even one factually questionable Wire article. Keeping up with tradition, our spring staff retreat was cancelled due to extreme weather (but notably it was flooding instead of the usual snow storm). We got cozy in the Cherry instead, and, for the third year in a row, anonymously picked an editor’s piece for the cover :~) . Another fun fact: this is the second year in a row we’ve had a twin on layout staff! Big shout out to the 99 incredibly talented people who submitted this year and to our diligent staff and editors who combed through more than 250 submissions. We’ve done our best to represent art / literature / digital media coming out of Whitman College right now. We hope you enjoy it <3 Hugs and kisses, Olivia Waltner and Clara Greenstein www.bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com

blue moon

to better understand another Em Perry quietly, knowingly, walking the path of venusian doubt, we throw a coin into an empty fountain, recovering from fantasy and the seasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bounty of inconsistency. desire for subtle vigilance and love wrapped in dewy black cotton is met with frivolity as eternally sensitive fleshy thoughts are divulged. when pluto comes around again, the new will linger high as the pollen. angels always seems to appear as an answer a wealth of mirrors cage their glow, as i find water in lilies and share for free, show up before my own storms and the wells of others, speak love into, further. i face my cards up as i lay deeper into fever. i cannot divest from the universe my geometry is momentary, monumental. refuse to be cold in the light of possibility, for change is a constant gold in the uselessness of controlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desperation - magic is magic is magic

volume 33

Self Care Sunday Ha n na h Pau l Digital Art

Celeste

Ha n na h Pau l Digital Art

Cross Grant Gallaher

The muted flapping of great blue wings engulfed the dusk. Their perch had been disturbed as bikers whizzed by on the paved trail that hugged the river like its shadow. Clad in helmets and reflective armor, the bikers were unaware of any disruption. The heron, except for the thump of hollow bone and lean muscle cutting through frigid aid, made not a sound. Jeff sighed. It was nights like these, when he found himself on the bridge, when he knew he was in a funk. Beyond the river, silhouetted trees and reflections of the city skyline blurred beneath the glow of two massive, illuminated crosses. They hung in the air like a gaudy medieval chandelier. Jeff knew—could see from his window during the day, in fact—that these crosses were fixed to cathedral spires belonging to the local Jesuit university, but at night they appeared unattached, weightless. Although this bridge saw frequent traffic during the day, it was rare for Jeff to see another soul in the evening. It was a good place to think. He checked his watch. 7:38 pm. November 3rd. In the late spring, he could be out here at the same hour and still catch a glimpse of a bufflehead or a pied-billed grebe. His leather boots shuffled against the textured iron that lined the bridge’s surface. It wasn’t the kind of bridge, nor temperament of river, to jump from to kill yourself, but that didn’t stop someone from trying every few years or so. He tried to picture the dusk-coated waterfowl, the buffleheads and grebes, so he wouldn’t think about his lack of productivity that day. With three major projects piling up on his to-do list, Jeff was

blue moon

struggling to even begin on one. He clutched at the mental images of the bufflehead’s snowy hood and the grebe’s reptilian feet, but they were elbowed out of the way by his boss’s toneless email: “Need briefing details by Friday 5:00. Can u come in tomorrow? -Craig (Sent from my iPhone).” The work was fine enough, but Jeff was struggling to gain traction. Two years out of college and unleashed into the real world, he felt himself—slowly at first, but gaining momentum— slipping. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with me?” Jeff said aloud. “Well gee, I don’t know, but if you let me know where I can find him, I’d be glad to ask for you.” Jeff nearly pitched over the bridge railing. He spun around, searching for the source of the voice, and was face-to-face with the brightest pair of teeth he had ever seen in his life. They were like a set of pure-white headlights, achieving a seemingly impossible degree of illumination given the ambient setting. “Shoot, if you’d be so kind as to point me in the right direction as to find Jesus, I’d be happy to inquire,” the voice chattered. So mesmerized by the cadence of the glowing teeth, Jeff failed to absorb anything being said. Breaking free from their spell, his eyes adjusted to the rest of the human attached to those modern marvels of dentistry. Taller than Jeff, but not by more than an inch or two, the stranger sported a buzz cut, wire-framed glasses, and a leather letterman jacket with a “1979” patch - vintage. A cigarette was nestled in the crook of each ear. Suddenly conscious of how long he was staring, Jeff sputtered and said, “What- what did you say?” “I reckoned I’d help you out.” “With what?” “Well you seemed to have a question for Jesus Christ himself, and I thought I’d offer to ask for you if I ever got the chance!” A flock of ducks, common mallards, most likely, alighted on

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the watery runway below. Jeff tucked his hands into his pockets. He cursed himself for having been overcome by his frustration, and doubly cursed himself for exclaiming it out loud within range of some weirdo with freakishly nice teeth. He squinted. “No, no - I was being rhetorical,” he said, his brow furrowing like ripples in the water. “I was just…frustrated, with…work. I’m sorry you had to hear that.” “Shoot! Sorry? I’ve never seen anything wrong with asking a question.” He added with barely a wink, “Sometimes we’re lucky enough that someone’s there to listen.” His boss’s email had been evicted clear from Jeff’s mind. He started, “Yeah, all right. Well, you have a nice rest of your evening-” “Mind if I join you actually?” the stranger interjected. Having already returned to the railing, Jeff pivoted back. He snuck another glance at his watch: 7:52. “Ah, sure. I’ve got to run in a bit, but yeah - go ahead,” Jeff said. “Right, of course. I’m Niko.” He stuck out a hand. Jeff shook it, wishing he was in his apartment curled up with sweatpants, chamomile tea, and some mindless novel. Anywhere but here, really. “Jeff.” Niko broke the contact with a hint of a smirk. In unison, they rotated to face downstream. Silence settled between them like new-fallen leaves in a drainage ditch. About 40 yards ahead stood a hodgepodge of sticks and mud poking out of the south bank. The beaver dam had been constructed over the past few seasons by its proud inhabitants. Built from pine, alder, willow, and whatever other woods could be found along the river edges, in the low light the facade was indistinguishable from an industrial tangle of scrap metal. The beavers—often hard at work around this time—were nowhere to be seen. Niko plucked a cigarette from behind his left ear and twirled

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CROSS

it between his fingers. “You smoke?” he said. “Not anymore.” “You mind if I-” “Go for it.” Drawing an orange lighter from his back pocket, Niko bit down on the filter and set an easy flame. Jeff pondered how one could smoke and still have such gorgeous teeth. Must be fake, he concluded. With their brief vigil already punctured, Niko took a long, audible drag. He said, “This used to be my happy place, ya know?” His eyes never left some distant spot on the river, but Jeff stared side-eyed at the embers hanging off Niko’s lip. He went on, “Not happy, really, but happy as in it’s where I’d go when I was mad. To get less mad.” Jeff grunted, not wanting to indicate agreement. “So less mad is a kind of happy, I guess. That check out?” said Niko. “I suppose so.” Jeff didn’t need his minor in mathematics to crunch those numbers, although he ventured it might be the first time since graduation he put it to any real use. “You ever see the trout?” “What?” said Jeff. “Trout. Rainbow. Redband. Loads of ‘em. Just off this bridge in the summertime.” “Oh.” Jeff thought for a moment. “Sure, I’ve seen them before, but I mostly come out here at night when there isn’t much to bother me,” he hinted. Niko clicked his tongue in playful admonition. “You gotta come out when there’s sun, man. You can see ‘em just glistening under the surface, looking so peaceful. But you know damn well they’re fighting every second to keep their noses poking upstream.” For the first time in a while, Niko broke his gaze and glanced at Jeff, who diverted his eyes to the beaver dam. A soft breeze

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provoked jangles of loose bolts and love locks on the bridge’s chain-link barrier. “The trout always calmed me right down. Some of ‘em are probably under us right now, you just can’t see ‘em.” Niko stared at Jeff, as though to ask if he were taking this all in. “Ya gotta come see the trout someti-” “Yes! I get it! I’ll look at the fish sometime!” Jeff’s hands had left his pockets and he found himself gripping the railing tightly, like he was afraid he would slip away. This kid, Niko, was something like his age—24 plus-or-minus five—and here he was lecturing a total stranger on fish-viewing habits! Niko dropped his head and grew still. His rhythmic breathing saturated the air. Both boys steeped in their thoughts. 8:13 pm. It was getting late. Niko was so motionless Jeff thought he might have fallen asleep. He took a single step backward as though to turn and head for home, when suddenly Niko threw his head up and let out a raucous burst of laughter, revealing a flash of those astounding pearly whites. Frozen midstep, Jeff watched Niko double over on the railing, his back shaking to the percussion of some secret joke. “Jesus, man! What’s so funny?” Jeff said, feeling a distinct urge to smack him upside the head to get his point across. Niko’s eyes glazed to the horizon, his laughter stifled. “You believe in a god, Jeff?” If there was a joke here, Jeff was failing to see it. “I don’t, and I don’t see how that has anything to do with you bugging the shit out of me in my thinking place with your goddamn trout-godcigarette-whatever talk.” These words were aimed right at Niko’s left shoulder, boring into the felt pads that gave shape to the letterman shell, but Niko’s vision never broke from some far-off point. Jeff followed his gaze and found it resting on the twin crosses blazing in the sky. He looked back at Niko and realized that he was barefoot. With a chuckle, Niko faced Jeff and said, “If you knew

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English but didn’t know Jesus, you’d just think there were two giant lowercase letter T’s up there.” Jeff stared, dumbfounded. “And if you just read them out loud, it would sound something kinda like titty.” This sent Niko into another fit of hysterics, stamping his bare feet and hollering into the night. Jeff stared at Niko’s display: cigarette and glasses nearly flying off, leather jacket puffed out, near-bald head slick with sweat. He stared at Niko, then at the crosses, then back at Niko. Back at the crosses. Titty. Against his best urges, Jeff’s face broke into a smirk. He exhaled and his eyes bunched up, and before he knew it, he was laughing too, nearly crying at the sheer stupidity of this damn sacrilegious joke and this kid who thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Alone on the bridge, Niko and Jeff laughed. Right when one would just about get ahold of themselves, the other would glace back up at the great titty in the sky and set them right off again. After who knows how long, Niko managed to compose himself enough to catch a dark shape emerging from the shoreline. “Oho, it seems all our giggling spooked ol’ Harry from his perch.” Wiping tears from his eyes, Jeff replied, “Harry?” “Harry the heron. Biggest bird around here.” They watched the great blue heron soar for what felt like hours but was probably seconds. It touched down somewhere in the bramble of branches and thorns with a resounding crunch, and all was still. No one breathed for fear of disturbing Harry once more. Finally, Niko turned to Jeff, hands in his bulky letterman pockets, a sheepish grin just barely holding back that infectious smile. “I’m sorry I intruded on your thinking space with all my questions,” he said. “I suppose I’ll head along and leave you with it.” “Yeah. Sounds good,” Jeff said, mirroring Niko’s posture.

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“Hey, uh, thanks, though, for the tip about the trout.” “No problem,” Niko replied, allowing his smile’s radiance to break through at full force. “Just promise you’ll get out and see them sometime,” he added with another barely-wink. With that, Niko turned 180 degrees—hands still in his pockets, bare feet blue against the silver metal—and walked away. This iron bridge creaked and shook with each step, and Jeff was amazed that he hadn’t heard Niko approach him in the first place. Jeff watched him depart for maybe 20, 25 paces, then called out, “Hey, Niko!” He pivoted. “What’s up?” “What were you mad about?” Niko stared as though it was a question he’d never been asked before. He ran a hand over his peach-fuzz hair, seemed to shiver—it was hard to tell—and shouted back, “I don’t really know! Maybe the same thing you’re mad about.” And he turned one last time, walked to the end of the bridge, rounded the corner of the trail, and disappeared. Unsure if he was satisfied with that parting answer, Jeff fought to fix every detail of Niko in his mind—his appearance, his speech, his bizarre sense of humor. He slid his phone out of his pocket and squinted as the screen lit up. With a flick of his thumb, he cleared a notification for “3 Unread Emails.” He locked his phone, then brought the screen back to life with another touch. 7:38 pm. After a double take, he checked his watch. 8:38 pm. November 3rd. In all his fuss about work, it had completely slipped his mind that daylight savings had started today. Fingers bordering on frostbite, Jeff fiddled with the buttons and set the time back exactly one hour. 7:39 pm. Giving a nod to the shrubbery where he was sure Harry the heron was still watching, Jeff turned, ducked his hands into his pockets, and started to walk home.

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Icarus Moment

Nick Sek t is Woodblock Print

Eating a Stalk of Celery Clara Greenstein

Eating a stalk of celery as an act of walking in a perfect circle: As close to god as the schoolboy gets, who, all legs and Gatorade, follows a chalk diamond on the ground as another chases, until the cleat marks meet where the bat lays still As close to god as the mother gets, ass shivering against the bleacher pew when the stitches on her needle-point petal meet right without having to stretch the thread too far in any single place A man counts out a handful of dimes in a coffee shop, thumb nail ringed in shavings of dark roast, as close to god as he gets in that small black hat rolled twice, when the till comes out even on the first try That is how close to god it feels to build a perfect loop from sharp green stalk, as salt and numb distract the tongue and teeth the fibers fall away inside and any weight or trace is lost: gainless and complete.

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cap hill houses Ol iv ia Wa lt ner Digital Art

Estuary Queen Rayana Weller For years, she lay weightless on the shore of the eucalyptus beach. Salt in her hair and the space between her breasts. Behind her, a forest unexplored, a wooden cottage untouched, a garden unmade. Overgrown. Like the glossy rocks that lined her body and the ocean water that pooled in her loose hands. She damn near died waiting for himâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; stubbornly holding her breath against the judgement of others, knowing he would come. Throw me against the spades, she screamed when they left her on that island. Leave me like you abandoned all the others when you lost the fight. And so they did. And so she stayed. Steady in her pride, alone in arrogant agony, the salt on her chest from the tears, not the sea. When he came, he pulled the teeth out of her fight. How long will you love me? she asked with barnacles on her tongue. Seven years, he replied softly, quietly so she could not hear. When he left, he left gently. In a boat she had built him. With wine in the bow from grapes she had pulled from the garden. Decades of waiting for a seven year love steeped in honey and black vinegar. Not long after, she rose slowly. With eyes open, she walked backwards into the ocean, watching the fire die in the house, brined water sliding into her lungs like thick sweet olive oil.

blue moon

All the Colors of Love

Ji l l ia n Bra ndon Stained Glass

Plastic in the Summer Lu ke Not k i n 35mm Film

If We Had Switched Places Rayana Weller

That summer, I was a sweet tangerine You peeled me open and then peeled Me in half, Saving the other part Of my heart for later. And what could I do? But watch your lips Stain orange with my ego. Kiss your fingers as I rest In the palm of your hand. Follow you, sticky In your back pocket.

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Bananas

L oa jones Digital Photography

The Tale of LL and Aven Rowan Brown

Aven From five miles up, the swimming pools look like gems encrusted in the Earth. Each one a slightly different size. Each a different shade of aqua. My SeedMa showed me about the pools of the middle-state. I know the middle plane below me lies always still as I look down/not–through. The rich swim in these pools: portals to the underworld. The children who jump into the jewels of wealth feel no fear. The husbands look at their glittering bowl of liquid success, and they are shown the world below as mysterious. The rich seethe their teeth into the supple peaches of the still plane. Their grain never runs empty. They will never feel the cold hollow egg in their stomach, but they crave to see the dense/moving world below. Each swimming pool a tunnel to the underworld, a cool tube to the bottom. The downward transcendence only allowed for the people who can reflect the sky through their shiny glistening pools, a mirror. My feet have been skipping along the texture of the plane forever, barely touching the ground. The highest plane is one of fescue and it moves quick, always. Each bit of solid breathes like the grass sways. I whir with the barren–moving plane as the pit in my stomach grows bigger/colder. A white dot among the whirring. Looking down, I can barely make out some of the pools below this high plane. The still pools turn bumpy, hard, rusty, and slowly the fingers of the headwaters appear. The trickles of last winter’s snow weave their way to the sea, towards, though never reaching,

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something which ultimately won’t be found. The curves of the river are like those of a snake; they twist and contort. The river is venomous and sickly: the conniving gate to the underworld. The lungs of the water are brown and muddied. This plane and I can’t stop, and like the bugs caught in the froth of the churned water, I am pulled forward. LL The air is hot, a disease of red dirt as yesterday's sunshine forces through the cracks of the underworld. The black dye of my clothes seeps into my blood as the cotton turns to sweat. Mosquitoes fly rampant among the mugginess of the nearly gone air. I can’t hear the flap of their wings. My mouth is filled with soil; sand pushes into my pores from this underground land. The wall of sound seeps into my ears, floods my brain, never cracks. I can’t breathe. The land buries me whole. Swallows me up and has me melting from the inside out. Sick from the heat of the underground Earth, I am turned to a pool of black ink, saturating the soil. I lay in this patch of land, living among the creatures; for only the restless will sacrifice comfort for the thick life of the hungry underground. And they are wild. The creatures light fires and dance like mad men. Their mouths gape open, the sound lost, unheard, into the ceaseless ringing like white fire. Their skin boils as they scream from their open mouths, the snakes recoil, the dogs are rabid from the energy. They love the way this land feels. Thick and holding and strong. They feel the land inside them, and them inside the land. The feeling of drought in my stomach makes the dirt press further into me. I am hungry for the food bountiful of the still-state. The heart of the desert lies beneath the river. If I can find the trickle of wet, I can find the gate. I spread my fingers like snakes, parched for the river gates water. I find the patch of mud, and dig upwards until I am all in the thick water. To be still

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THE TALE OF LL AND AVEN

is to be docile, but the river’s only stillness is movement. From underneath, the water, the rocks, they whir like orange. They glide above my face as I sense the direction of the sky. Thick mud rolling over my body. A crack of light breaks on me through the bleeding Earth for the first time as I feel the tip of my nose enter the air of the still. New smelling sweet–clear space. Then I can breathe/ my eyes open/ my hair dries. I am left in a blank world. Solid. The only time passing is of the river on my body, each bubble rolling off my shoulder. Now a new minute, a lone white dot crosses the blue field of plane above me. The mud from the river’s bed lets me go. I find myself floating down the river quick. Too quick. Big gulps of the orange water rush down my throat like muck. The weight of my thick, black clothes pulls me down in the orange abyss of the river. I scream out as I see figures bobbing in and out of sight on the shore, but no response. Only ghosts of the underground figures being mirrored in the clean air. The river gates of Hell. No help. For I am really just alone, searching. I keep getting dragged farther and farther away. Above me the dot of the plane follows my line down the river. I scratch my nails along the edges of the river, digging the mud under my skin. Texture slows my pace. Bits of skin fall off, but then I fling my body onto the hot shore like a fish. My body like raw meat being dragged in the sand. My head is full of water, and the liquid presses at my eyes until they shut. Before the darkness I see the dot of white of whirring. Aven Sometimes the feeling in the movement–state slows a little space spontaneously and there is time to look across the plane, but when this happens the land below fades. The yellow fields are all there is to see. I slow enough to see the edges of the moon, resting right up against me. The movement-state is always bright, the moon always shining. I wait for a distinction in

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definition. Many spaces away, I see a stalk taller than others. I roll towards it. The lone stalk becomes taller and taller; now flowers sprout from the top and ribbons fall down it. The ribbons twist this way and that. West to East in my vision: trying to turn back time, and then the ribbons catch up again. And then I know Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found the only window. The one my SeedMa taught me about. She told me that if I am lucky enough to find the window before I starve completely, before I am empty forever, that the ribbons lie in the hands of 24 young boys with long blond hair. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see any boys though. A golden circle ever loops around the pole, moving just a few feet off the ground. As I stare at the golden ring, crackles of space dot continuity. Then I realize. The boys make the circle with speed. Each of the gold strands of hair dances behind their bodies, creating a circle below the pole. They move quick, sometimes one way until it is the other: creating their own plane. They hold the ribbons in their hand and pattern their movements to make the pole speak its own language, the ribbons shaping into categories of space, then breaking before I can see fully. In the middle of time, they stop moving, and their stillness becomes change for a split second. When they change direction, I see one. He stares at me from a clear eye, his hair still shifting directions from behind him. His face is young, much younger than mine. He tilts his head just as I am registered in his mind. A small bit of smile creeps up his lips, a pearl of teeth poking out. And then I feel him drawing me into the circular plane, like a never ending runway. As I take a step forward, the young boys move again, now East. I stand on the edge outside of the circle, the golden locks spinning by my face, almost touching it. Inside the ring of gold lies a window of stillness. A stillness only settled right before the boys change direction. A small sliver of time to slip into the plane below. To get closer to the middle plane of the rich and still and food, I must sift through the boys and into the stillness their everâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; movement creates. I reach my hand to the edges of the gold circle.

blue moon

THE TALE OF LL AND AVEN

I scratch my nails along the edges of the hair, digging the strands under my skin. Texture speeds my body. Bits of skin fall off, but then I fling my body into the circle. My body like raw meat being dragged into the heavenly tornado. Inside the circle lies nothing but heat, and I can’t even see within or without. I try to remember from which space I came in, but I can’t. My feet are lifted off the ground as the boys take me in their hair, and I lose up and down. I am just an older boy whirring in the change of time. I look every direction when a distinction of color catches my eyes. The ribbons: up. I try to reach my hand outside the circle to find the still side, and I can feel the circle moving even faster. Soon the boys will dance at their peak speed, right before they change direction. My SeedMa showed me I have to move out of the circle right as the boys reach the counter–stillness speed. I feel the blood from my bitten fingers leech out, searching for the cool. I follow the blood and find a bit of slick water: the inside of the circle. The stillness for me to slip through. I sneak out just as I see the boys changing direction. I see a pearly smile right before I drop below. LL I wake up and out of hell. The gate barely touches my feet as the orange river stains my toes. My feet hang on the edges like a body on a bed. My black clothes bake me in the sun as I dry from the rich liquid. The sun burns my pale underground hands. I expose my face to the rays, lifting my skin from off the ground. In front of me stand the gatekeepers of Hell, and I know that I have been lucky enough to get to the still state before my stomach is sucked dry. The dirt–creatures wrote to me that the gatekeepers hold the scepter to my mortality, the end of my hunger. They are holding their scepters of time, the ends feeding the flow of the river. Both stand with one foot in the water, one on land: neither of the under land or the middle. The gatekeepers are identical, a mirror to each other. Their long black hair lies like clothes on

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their slender bodies. As they tower over me, they raise their hands, beckoning me to get up. As I stand to meet their gaze, I look up into the sun and they tower over me. Giants. I watch them open and close their mouths and realize they are speaking to me, but the hum of Hell still rings in my ears. I look at their mouths, searching for a voice, even though I have never heard this sound before. The dirt–creatures showed me how to look for a new sense. When the ringing slows and softens and stops, the figures are still speaking, a mimicry of their past selves. “You have come up and out, but you do not yet hold the key to the gates,” they speak in unison, their voice like a hiss. “To enter the still-state, you must win the key first. Within one of our stomachs lies your mortality. You must find the key and feed it to the other one.” The rightmost gatekeeper’s long hair begins to slither on her body, moving in a non-existent wind. All the blood goes from her face, her slender body thickens, the flesh turns to pink. Her hair falls away, a curtain coming down to reveal a new creature. The leftmost gatekeeper’s hair turns to thistles and burrs, scrapes and bleeds the skin. Petals bloom out of her fingernails. I reel back and hear the hiss in my head. Now turning to blue and green scales, the right one reveals its stomach to me. The left changes again, then the right. I reach for the stomach of the left, ready to dig in, when I hear a chime from within the river. The tingling of a high pitch, two different sounds. The river’s low drum deepens. The chime turns to a rhythm. I turn and face the river as it calls me back. I follow the sounds of music from the water. At the river’s edge, I plunge my hands into the mud. My fingers find a metal rod in the mud. As I bring the key out of the Earth, I raise it to the gatekeepers. Their two figures, wild animals now, start to melt together and towards the key. Their form swallows the key whole, and they turn to the sand of the desert. Gone.

blue moon

THE TALE OF LL AND AVEN

Aven I see the curl of a lip as I slip under the cool still window to the next plane. I start to fall quick, and I wonder how far the planes lie from one another. Then I see the lines flood up my face and realize I am passing through many planes: many shapes a space. I realize my body is too straight and perforates each plane as I get faster and faster. Gravity pulls me down. I spread out my arms so as to try and catch a bit of the planes, but I am going too fast. My arm is flung upward from the speed before I can pull it back towards my body. I feel the bone separate from its socket, and then my arm just floats above me. The planes still flood across my face, but my arm has slowed me down. I am moving too fast to see below me now, but know that before I can get to the underworld, I’ll hit the middle–still–state. LL I have reached the still–middle plane, but my stomach is hollow from the plane below. From far away, I can see the trees growing their fleshy fruit. Shapes from here. I wander in the light, and the sun boils me less than it did when I was looking for the key. The sun slips away slowly, and the world becomes dim enough for me to look up. The white dot whirring from the above planes has stilled. It slides, then gets bigger. Moves again. There is no river of gates to the upper planes once you get past the middle-still state. I can’t reach the white dot. It can only reach me. I wander closer to the fleshy fruit. The sun sets below, into Hell. Closer now are lights shimmering. I hear the chime of glasses. My feet carry to me a house, a swimming pool lies outside. Now I am far away from where I was, and suddenly at the place I was once going. Inside the light is warm and charming. Inside the room is all filled with food to fill the cold egg laying hollow in my stomach. Hot potatoes cook on the stove. Pies are in the oven. A whole turkey is left on the

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counter. The white dot drops in fast and whirs so quickly I can’t hardly hear anything else but the sound of someone fresh from movement. And then I start to see the figures in the room, they all swarm around the white dot. I look closely and see a face in the white whir. A face like mine. The rich swarm and use their mirrors to look above from where the white whir came, but it’s too dark to see. My stomach aches for the rich food, and then I feel the ache of someone else’s stomach. The white whirr. The figures bring the white whirr to the table, and I sit beside them. My black clothes define their white. Their white clothes define my black. The figures sit down at the table, piled with food and firelight. Flowers are made bright in the dim fuzz of the candles. A feast all for ourselves. The sacredness of this great dinner makes me, us, feel as if most moments have been leading to this one. But as we eat, the food turns to sand in my mouth, for I know I am not here to be filled with a feast, but here to be full from my compliment. And as the dirt fills my cheeks and swells my stomach, the cold egg grows ever more hollow inside me. Aven I reach aimlessly at food, fruits and meats meet my mouth with the one arm. But the foods don’t fill me, only leaving me more hungry. Then a glimpse. I look at the girl all dressed in black’s eyes, my blue to her orange. She opens her mouth, saying something. Thick mud falls from her mouth as she speaks. “ “ “ “ my mouth mimics, lips shaping around the same requited words. The cold egg in my stomach burns out and dissipates. A warm orange fills the pit in my stomach and hangs heavy. The movement stands still and now I can change.

blue moon

The Tale of LL and Aven

Rowa n Brow n Ink and Watercolor

Madwoman Elise Sanders

What life does a madwoman lead? What is the very Essence of being that She constantly wars with? As Laocoon Struggled with the serpents ‘round his throat, What punished her for an untamed tongue? If not her, then who’s to blame For the end times to come? What price must she pay For seeking her own Revelation? She lays at night with her Duty cast To the bedside table. She only has A few hours until It’ll rear its ugly head And she’ll have to fight all over again. For now, she’ll close her eyes and imagine Night expanding out in all directions: Peaceful, unending and quiet. Nothing can touch her here.

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Ride Clara Greenstein

Lana Del Rey crouched behind an old man, on the back of a motorcycle. Grey against her lip gloss. A smoke machine coughs out nicotine and sweat and she laughs like honey dripping, cloying and slippery. The camera clicks off as his studded shoulder cuts her cheek. In a trailer packed with denim shorts, he rips her earring out accidently. She secretly hates the smell of a man’s sweat. Lana Del Rey strokes what she’s supposed to, blue eyes squeezed shut, arms jeweled with turquoise bruises. She won’t tell you there were needles, the details of the blurry times drowned out by exhaust fumes.

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GREENSTEIN

Her mother told her once that she had no fixed traits, so she turned herself into an ocean like some Greek heroine. Now she puts every brand of perfume on the same wrist, so that each of them says she seems familiar, her hair hits the sheet seams and folds right in.

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Body Text Line

Shoes

Henr y Ada ms Digital Photography

Racing

A lex Hwa ng Digital Animation

Menlo Park Miranda LaFond

Far across the way, I can see the chain-smokers gasping tobacco laden morning air at their surreptitiously cracked windowsills. A quiet transgression away from the eyes of the concierge.

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Suspended

Peter Eberle Screenprint on Wood

Papa's Rainboots Livvy Eickerman

The fog hangs over the water, making it impossible to see across the way, giving everything a soft, round edge. The water’s grey, the fog is grey, and the sky is overcast. As you walk across the sand, laced with rocks and seaweed, every area of skin that is not completely bundled up has the cold morning air pressing and prickling against it – your face, your hands. Your whole body is tingling. When you breathe, you contribute to the foggy mess, cold air pressing against cold air. You’re in your sloppily thrown on hat, your coat with a hole in the left pocket, your pajama pants that are hand-me-downs, and your borrowed vest from the beach. You have your Grandpa’s – Papa’s – fishing boots on too, cold from the air that they had been in all night, freezing from the water that had never dried out of them from the day before, and although you’re wearing thick grey wooly socks, they do nothing to prevent your toes from going numb. Every once in a while, a foghorn – low and steady and monotonous – blares through the fog, and almost gets stuck inside, rebounding through the dark white, clinging to the air, and rolling along the strait; but other than that, the only sound is the gentle lapping of quiet waves on a waiting shore. On the shore, walking towards the old boat rails, it’s clear enough to see, not dense and hazy, like it looks on top of the water. But you can imagine walking through the soupy stuff, grasping a handful of thick air, and releasing it back into everything around you. Everything is moving slowly. Getting to the rusty bars protruding from the rocks, and sitting down, the freezing air envelopes you; and the distinct smell of early morning water, frozen

blue moon

stillness, and seaweed on the rocks seems unreal. Nothing could be this silent and still. You sit still until you feel like your nose must’ve fallen off, but eventually you know you have to start the long walk back. You try to find the energy to move, the task of unprying your body from its position seeming monumental, so looking for the right rock to skip is a helpful motivation. Trying to get up is hard, but you manage it and find a smooth, ovalish stone, and skip it. You skim the stone across the water, and after a few seconds, kerplunk! You can hear the water reclaiming the stone, somewhere out there in the grey, but you don’t know where it is. You then rub your hands together, blowing on your fingertips and begin the slow-moving walk back, until you’re back at the house with the yellow paint, and the big silver buoy that you said you would paint three years ago. You walk through the door and close it behind you with a final seal. The warmth is instantaneous and unbelievable, and everything seems loud. A constant, low hum coming from the refrigerator, and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes is enticing; taking off all your layers makes you feel like you were out there for a million years. Your nose starts to tingle with warmth, and you begin to tell how flushed your cheeks are. People all around are waking up, or already up and greeting you with a warm smile. Conversations are happening in hushed whispers, and familiar figures look outside at the cold beauty. All the while, the fog’s still there, out the window, in the early morning cold.

volume 33

Cuddles

Gra nt Ga l la her Digital Photography

What If Erika Goodman

our minds are infested with caterpillars, weaving cocoons of doubt that metamorphose into the butterflies in our tummies certainty is salmon swimming up our bloodstreams the current doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reverse for them, yet they trek and trek up our veins because their destination is this way and of that they are certain tiny eggs nestle in the air pockets in our fists, incubated by anger and when our hands unfurl newborn sparrows waddle to the edges of our fingertips and leap into the sunlight fluttering with grace as if the creases from which they just hatched didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t taste bitter volume 33

GOODMAN

a woman reaches into the soil to grab her lover’s hand (I know they’re in love because her legs grow roots that entangle with his veins and her lips become worms that venture down to kiss his forehead) they spend the evening telling stories of fire swaying to the moon’s heartbeat, just like the reeds and picking eggshells from each other’s palms

blue moon

butt (or ocean) Er i n L ee Embroidery

To My Selfless Body Michelle Foster

Some nights you fall asleep with the light on. This morning your stomach sounded like a dove cooing, a warbling so surprisingly comforting. It’s things like this that make you look differently at this downstairs neighbor, that make you feel sorry for saying no for so long. For refusing it your daily bread, not forgiving it for nothing done wrong. Imagine its voice: all I wanted was your love. Oh neighbor, it’s just like digging ice cream out of a paper cylinder with your bare hands. It will melt from underneath your fingernails, the same way the stitches melted and fell from your gums as they healed. Back then, those surgeries meant you couldn’t eat

blue moon

anything but steamed egg and applesauce. But now, you can choose anything. Now, you can feel everything. Friend, you were made to love. Friend, you were made to be loved.

volume 33

Self-Constructed Clara Collins

Once I used construction scissors to Cut my long hair short. A Halo of clippings cradled my Miniature desk chair. That evening I Pulled itchy curls of yellow from my Shirt cuffs, clapped my hands together Above the toilet bowl to watch Little snippets of me dance downwards and Disappear. In the tepid water of the bath I lay back, moonlit, baptized. I am Ordained in vanity, kissed light at the neck When the fall breeze blows there, Wondering about the boundaries of beauty. I am Ordained in vanity, I am Baptized by the shiver of a frigid bath. I am Chilly at the neck when the fall breeze blows there. I am Wondering about the boundaries of beauty.

blue moon

smoke & mirrors

Sa ma ra h Ur ibe MĂŠndez Dig ita l Photog raphy

Intense Katherine Boys-Kirgis

“Jesus, chill out.” “Yeah, she’s crazy...” “You’re just really...intense.” When I was a child, I was a screamer - my tantrums have earned me infamy throughout my extended family as the little girl with big lungs. My parents thought I was fussy. Perhaps I was, but my fits were more than meaningless agitation. Even at three, this world was too much - too loud, too bright, too many choices, too many consequences. I was confined within my personal existential crisis from day one. Everything from picking out a shirt to struggling to spell “Hawaii” sent me spiralling down a path of selfdoubt, frustration, and anxiety. My brother was easy-going, happy, and carefree, a beaming cherubic bundle with chubby cheeks spread wide with a smile. I was intense. By the time I was in eighth grade, my intensity was crippling. Panic gripped my body everytime I crossed the threshold of my algebra one classroom. Ms. Silverman’s small frame and piercing gaze made a knot in my stomach, which, over the course of the year, became so vicious that I was swept up in dizziness and nausea at the thought of room 117. To this day, FOIL turns my hands to clenched fists. My parents begged me to relax as I wept over worksheets and studied late into the night. “It’s 8th grade math,” they said. “Just breathe.” I couldn’t.

blue moon

Just before my fourteenth birthday, I moved from the quiet suburbs of New York City to “urban” Montana. I remember my mother snapping pictures of me standing alone on the stoop of our new apartment while the hot July sun beat down on my trepid face, thinly masked with a smile that did not extend past the upturned corners of my mouth, and the smoke gathered in the mountains of the Bitterroot Valley. My intense fear shackled me to my mother that summer. She wore her own intensity as a mark of Cain and we hid the shame of our zeal together in the folds of a new city and a new way of life. I remember an October afternoon, standing outside my new high school, waiting for my mother to escort me to the doctor. I remember the fear rising in my stomach as the minutes ticked by. I remember the nails that I bit as I dialed again and again and there was no answer. I remember the moment when I squared my shoulders and walked alone. I remember the intensity of my breathing as my jaw clenched and my brow furrowed and I did not cry. I remember being forgotten. I remember a November evening, when a phone call stopped me in my tracks. I remember my father’s voice telling me not to come home. I remember hearing my mother sobbing in the static. I remember the edge of winter in the air when I walked the streets of my novel city in a thin cardigan and waited to be recalled to the little comfort and familiarity I had left. I remember when no call came. I remember when I went home anyway. I don’t remember what my father said. I remember a scar on the back of my left hand that I dug with a pushpin during Algebra Two, because I wanted to feel something other than the swelling panic in my stomach that had manifested itself on a Saturday afternoon when my father left. I wanted a new pain, a pain that wasn’t so intense.

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BOYS -KIRGIS

I remember the thin white line beneath my lips where my front tooth has left its mark after years of anxious biting when the nervous energy that courses through my body from second to second has driven me to the point of screaming and only determination and a strong jaw have kept the shriek within my tensed mouth because I’m just too intense. I remember the silence when the ground swims and black spots overtake my vision when it’s all too much and I can’t breath and the wind is in my ears but the ground is getting closer and I’m not standing anymore. I remember wondering why no one has come to help me. I remember knowing that they were there, but the bodies standing over me were ghosts of people who once cared. I could not feel the love there for me. As a highschooler, more mornings than not, I did not want to wake up. Dying crossed my mind, but I did not want to die - I just wanted to drift away. I wanted to end the intensity that plagued me and float away into the ether. I was too hurt to think of suicide, but my life was far too much for girl who couldn’t handle R rated movies. Just think how easy, I would ponder, I could just... not wake up. Sleep forever. I savored the refuge of my dreams more than an addict savors her last hit. I remember the first time I felt alive again - the first moment when fresh air hit my lungs and euphoria hit my brain. I remember a new feeling rising in my stomach, and that this one was bliss. The scent of the river and fresh grass filled the emptiness in my mind that had consumed me. I remember the wind in my hair and the sun on my shoulders on a bright June day with the beautiful women I consider sisters, women I admire with an intensity that I believe few experience.

blue moon

INTENSE

I remember when I kissed him and I felt his hands on my waist and I breathed in the smell of Old Spice and fabric softener and I knew that I loved him. I remember the ecstasy crashing over me and knowing that this feeling was so beautiful and strange and so intense and that I never wanted it to end. Now I understand. I am intense. My fury is rarely matched, my grief is nearly unbearable, my anxiety is crippling, my fear is remarkable. My joy is monumental, my laughter is booming, my kindness is endless, my passion is Shakespearean. I feel so deeply that I feel as if I have transcended the emotional dimensions of a “normal” teenager. But I am not alone, nor should I be. In our society, “intensity” is scorned and shamed, lumped alongside “nasty” and “bitch.” But we should never be attacked for our humanity. Our intensity gives us strength, it is a force that we must bridle but never suppress, it is our courage and our savior. Our intensity allows us depth, gives satisfaction, illuminates our most human qualities. To bury it is a crime against our own humanity. I am intense. And I adore my intensity. It is a fire that fuels my passion, my drive, and my dedication. It allows me to love, to empathize, to overcome. It fuels me in my life, and I will not apologize.

volume 33

Internal Review Fiona Pont i n Oil on Canvas

Celebration Florida Rowan Brown

What I can only understand as a giant, wide-eyed, clothed mouse, reaches out its gloved hand. My head turns in horror. Now I am 36 and my house is painted pink. A thick, starchy, plasticlike, and unfalteringly clean pink. My neighbors house is blue. My wife: truly devoted, endlessly unquestioning. My daughter: loves Minnie. My son: loves the pirates. But when Disney bought the land and she insisted, I found myself trapped in a destiny of false reality. A mimic of a photo of a mimic. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the outlines in my daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coloring book. I see photos of the Southwest of Chicago, and Las Vegas, and I see them as fake. I smile like a dentist is holding my mouth open with a speculum. volume 33

Untitled

Ca r r ie A n n Jones Oil on Canvas

Roller Derby Madilyn Hofbauer

Roller derby is almost always temporary in some really brutal ways. This is evident onderby gear resale sites. Selling my Riedells. Only worn once for 30 minutes. Busted my tib and fib and won’t be back up for a while. Just want them gone. $120 OBO. Buyer pays shipping. It is almost impossible to find anyone with more than two seasons under their belt who hasn’t suffered some form of traumatic injury in the name of the game. Some skaters retire after their first broken bone, torn ligament, or concussion, some after their fourth or fifth, but it is an inevitable part of the game. Why do these women come back? What perfect combination of roller skating, sprinting, and Red Rover had to be concocted to produce a game so appealing people are willing to risk permanent bodily debilitation to play? Some argue the adrenaline that pumps when you get hurt on the track makes it easy to forget the fear and physical trauma, while others claim it’s the deep, intimate comradery that forms between teammates. However, neither of these really seem like enough net good to justify maiming your body. So, why? About 15 minutes into my first roller derby practice in Walla Walla, another Fresh Meat skater fell, busting her left ankle. We weren’t even supposed to be lifting our feet. How does that even happen?? My stomach lurched watching this woman wail and vomit in pain and it took everything I had not to put my skates back in my bag and drive home. In the midst of it all, I did not recognize the pit in my chest. It wasn’t me who fell and broke a bone, so why did my instincts scream at me to dash out the door and never look

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back? Upon later reflection, I found the answer: fight or flight. I was afraid. For her. For me. No one wants to get hurt, and seeing it happen so quickly in such an unexpected accident, I realized it could easily be me, and I was faced with the ultimate question—Is it worth it? Yes. Flying across the floor faster than I could ever imagine running every Tuesday and Thursday from seven to nine, feeling my tightly bound feet glide across the smooth rink while the harsh fluorescent gym lighting unflatteringly illuminates all, for entire hours at a time, I can distract myself from every terrible possibility that comes with scooting around on eight wheels. The cheers of my teammates when I wipe out trying to skate backwards because at least I’m giving it my all reminds me of those parents who swear if you smile at a toddler when they fall and scrape their knee, they will never cry. They swear that they only freak out if you do! Now, whenever my center of gravity is lost and I suddenly resemble a wrecking ball with two kneepads and a helmet, I instinctively search for some form of reassurance from the women around me. Great fall! Way to pull in! No fingers on the track! Bruised, slightly embarrassed, and high on life, I slam my left toe into the ground, pop upright on the other, and take off running, desperate to not disrupt gameplay or take anyone else down with me. Sometimes they even cheer my wipe-out recovery speed. As a self-proclaimed ‘tough girl,’ that one feels the best. Since its genesis in 1949, roller derby has marred skaters at varying degrees, resulting in a rapid development in safety requirements and procedures. There are numerous systems in place to avoid injuries and expectations on how to treat them when they do happen as to not make them worse, but that doesn’t take away the brief temporality of the sport as a whole. People join the league and some leave just as quick. Others may stick it out for many years, but no one leaves without a newfound understanding on what it means to die for what you love.

blue moon

Opera of Lullabies Isabelle Keller

When warm milk and counting sheep fails a womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lullaby is all thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s left. With her chariot, the moon, and her dress made of flowers, she sails into my room. Her veils hide her eyes and her pitch perfect tongue while her bird coos softly alongside. I sleep in finery most nights, to not offend the opera of lullabies.

volume 33

The Morning After A n nie Mea ns Pen and Paper

thank you

A k a ne K lei n kopf Screenprint

joys and... Aubrey May

Here I am caught in the confusion of metaphors and alley kisses behind Asian Fusion restaurants. One hand rounds your back, the other clutches bike locks and a watch â&#x20AC;&#x201D; what could keep us here? what could take us anywhere but here? By the sea there is a splintered house, with a door the shade of songbirds, and a glowing flame, though the wood piles have not been touched in â&#x20AC;&#x201D; oh, how long has it been since I had loved her? A decade, a century, or was it only last week, the alley light and the gravel? In this house there are cast-iron pots and home-grown vegetables and knives sharp enough to cut the peppers and the sadness and the squash.

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Interiors

Casey Doe Intaglio Etching

Tobias

Ch loe Ca rot hers-Liske Disposable Camera

Animal pelts lie on crooked shoulders Clara Collins

The coat belonged to his mother. He pulled it from a wire hanger and hung it over me, he wanted me To wear it, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember why. It clung to me, Bristling and heavy like Sodden wool. The lick of its rabbit skins Made me feel eaten, warmed me inside. His face came close to mine and I Could taste the human smell of him in my mouth. He took my Long hair into his hands, pulled it above the coat collar so it splayed out and down and Over me. He Stood back to see me better and we consumed each other: bared, Papered in the skins of another. Two glass-eyed deer heads ask a silent question From their dim mountings on the far wall and I, Quivering in velvet crookedness, Cannot answer them.

volume 33

Just Around the Corner L eo Pol k Black and White Film

Eventually the Birds Must Land Kaitlin Cho

“Did you hear?” Eunbi asked, flipping onto her stomach. The skin of her back, bare except for the black straps of her sports bra, was indented with the carpet’s fingerprints. Sumi watched her from her perch on the bed and said nothing. “Did you hear,” Eunbi pressed. She knew already, but still Sumi asked, “About Jason?” Eunbi’s gaze fled up and through her lashes to land on Sumi, unwavering. She nodded. Sumi exhaled. “Yeah. My mom told me this morning.” The room felt too dark all of the sudden, so she leaned over and pulled up the blinds of her window. Light flung itself into the room and over the right side of Eunbi’s face, splashed into a triangle beneath her left eye. “It’s horrible.” “Yeah,” Eunbi said. “It is.” She was looking at the window now. They were both intimate with the view, the maple tree that stood nervously between Sumi’s house and the Jones’, and the chimney of Eunbi’s place just peeking out over the Jones’ roof. Eyes closed, Sumi could draw the sight out at every angle—from the floor, on her bed, at her desk. “We should go on a walk.” “Sure,” Sumi said, and slid off her bed. “Where do you want to go?” “Anywhere.” “Anywhere,” Sumi echoed. Eunbi rifled through the clothes riddling the floor. “Pick something warm,” she warned. “The sun’s out,” Eunbi replied, picking up one of Sumi’s shirts to smell. “But it’s cold.”

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CHO

Eunbi sighed, but grabbed a sweatshirt, one Sumi wasn’t sure which of them owned. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.” It was cold, but the sun was out. The light was severe, bright without sentiment, a cool wash of white that brutally revealed the asphalt street’s uneven complexion and the brown freckles of rot on their neighbors’ hydrangeas. Above them, the sun grimly scrubbed the sky to a pale sickly grey. “Fuck,” Eunbi said, squinting the moment they stepped out the door. “It’s bright.” Sumi stepped on the back of her shoes, and Eunbi shoved her shoulder, and Sumi laughed and pulled on the handle of Eunbi’s backpack. “My eyes hurt,” Eunbi added. “‘Cause you spend too much time inside.” “You sound like my mom.” “Well, I like your mom,” Sumi said, because she did. “Well, I hate you.” They set off in the opposite direction of Eunbi’s house. “Do you have any money on you?” Sumi gave her a look and said, “No.” “That’s OK, I do.” “Of course you do, Backpack Asian.” “Who’s paying your bills?” “My mom?” “I hate you. I really do,” Eunbi muttered, steering them to the right. Sumi immediately recognized the path they were taking. “We’ll see what you do when we’re at 7/11 and you’re like, ‘Oh, Eunbi-ah, can I pleaseeee have a…’” “I don’t do that!” “You do!” The 7/11 register was manned by a boy from middle school they both knew but didn’t quite remember. They made hushed guesses about his name, drifting between the chip aisle and the candy aisle. Sumi begged Eunbi for a bag of peach rings after all, and she even called her unnie. When they went to check out, bickering under their breath about whether he was Aaron from biology or Brandon from pre-algebra, he was smiling. “Hey,”

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EVENTUALLY THE BIRDS MUST LAND

he said. “No time no see.” “Yeah,” Sumi said as Eunbi unzipped her backpack. “Did you hear about Jason?” “Yeah,” Sumi said again. Eunbi fished for her wallet, her hair curtaining her profile from view. “We did.” “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Do you remember …” And then he shook his head. “Never mind. Sorry. Um, that’ll be seven fifty-eight.” Eunbi provided it in exact change. “Thanks,” she said when he gave her the receipt. “No problem. Hey, have a nice day.” “You too,” they said, their voices barely async. The moment they were outside and the glass door swung shut, Sumi said, “See, it was Aaron.” “I know, I know, you’re right. You’re always right!” Eunbi’s breath bloomed out in petals of white haze. “He was pretty good friends with Jason, wasn’t he? In middle school, at least.” “I think so.” “God,” Eunbi said. “That’s just terrible.” “I know.” “Can you put my chips in my backpack?” Sumi did, and tore open the bag of peach rings. “Can I have one?” “You’re just full of demands today.” “My money, my rules.” “Now you sound like my mom.” Eunbi scoffed. This time, Sumi took the lead, directing them towards the golf course fields. They were well-maintained and beautiful, even on a day like today, vibrant green hill after vibrant green hill, every plateau in between inlaid with ponds emerald from duckweed, an army of evergreens hemming the course’s perimeter. They settled under a weeping willow dipping its fingers into a pool of water. It was quiet here, true quiet, absent of even birdsong. Eunbi broke the silence: “I’ve been thinking.”

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Sumi mock-gasped in shock. “What?! Eunbi, thinking?! Oh no.” “Ani, Sumi, I’m serious.” Sumi offered her a peach ring. Eunbi took it. “I know,” Sumi said. She rubbed the remnants of sugar off her hand. “Sorry. Just.” “I know.” Sumi said, “What have you been thinking about?” “Jason. I don’t know about you, but my parents told me about it last night. They were hunched over talking in the living room and I was getting a glass of water and I asked them what was wrong. “I was, you know. In shock. And then I got really sad. But then I got really scared. Do you remember when I called you last night?” Sumi nodded mutely. “I was so terrified, Sumi. The whole time.” “Of what?” Sumi managed. “The world.” “Oh,” Sumi said. Their reflections shivered in the water. “I—” She faltered. “I know what you mean, I think.” The light seeped through the weeping willow’s canopy to illuminate rivulets of their skin. “It’s just so unfair. And it’s just so fucked up, and cruel, and awful, and just—and that’s just how it is. People. The world. Life. And we just—we just have to live like this.” “Yeah,” Eunbi said. “That’s it. And that—it’s just going to be like this. Forever.” Their gazes met in the pond, and Sumi said, without thinking, “I wish I’d never been born.” She wanted to take it back the moment the words left her mouth, but it was there, ugly and bare, and it was true. Eunbi didn’t say anything, but just quietly, tenderly, awkwardly, held Sumi’s hand. Like that, they stood, listening to the wind whistle through the weeping willow’s leaves, watching the

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sun ooze over the world like an open wound. After what must’ve been minutes or hours, footsteps sounded behind them. Immediately, they divorced from one another and wheeled around. But it was just Mr. Park, Annabelle’s dad, stepping forward, gripping a white baseball hat in both hands. “Hey,” he said. The corners of his eyes were tight. “Girls. It’s dangerous to be out here. You could get hit.” “Oh, thank you,” Eunbi said, and they began to move out. But quickly, before they could even take two steps away, Mr. Park said, “Did you girls know Jason?” “Yes,” Sumi said warily, clutching the bag of peach rings close to her chest. “We did.” Mr. Park nodded. “He was a fine young man. Annabelle really—” He stopped abruptly and looked down to his shoes, a perfect pristine white, and then back up to them. “Sumi and Eunbi, right?” he asked. Sumi sometimes forgot that they had both been close friends with Annabelle in elementary school. “Do you girls want to play a little golf?” He gestured up the hill. “You can just take a few swings.” “That sounds nice,” Eunbi said, to Sumi’s surprise but not disagreement, and so they all trekked up to where Mr. Park had been golfing. A few other Korean fathers were there—Eunbi and Sumi greeted them in Korean quietly. Sumi thought one of them might be Karen’s dad, but she couldn’t quite remember. Most of her parents’ friends were from a church in another town, two hours away. “Have either of you golfed before?” Mr. Park asked, taking a golf club from one of the men, and a golf ball from maybeKaren’s-dad. “No,” Sumi said as Eunbi shook her head. Mr. Park handed the golf club to Eunbi. “How about you go first? Hold it like—that’s right, actually. Perfect form. You’re a natural.” He placed the golf ball before her. “Stand sideways—

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right, but move a little forward, no, a little more, now that way, yup—and now align the club to the ball—that’s just right.” “Where should I aim?” Eunbi asked. Mr. Park furrowed his brow and turned to survey the roiling sea of green before them. “Anywhere you’d like,” he said, after a beat. “Wherever. Anything’s fine.” “All right.” “Now, to swing, you’ll want to pull back and up, your arms like—” He demonstrated. Eunbi mimicked him. “That’s it. And then just— ” He mimed the swing. “You want to commit to it. To the end of the swing. Carry it all the way through.” “Alright,” Eunbi said again. For a moment, poised to strike, she seemed almost frozen, like a painting. But then she swung in a beautiful glorious steady arc of motion, and the sound of the golf ball being struck thundered in Sumi’s ears—and the ball flew, up and up and up, impossibly high, like a miniature of the sun. And Sumi knew that the ball, like the sun, had to come back down—but still she allowed herself to be awed by its brief defiance against inevitable gravity, to believe in its fragile fleeting inertia, to love the transience of its flight. And for that short-lived moment, it seemed as though that awe and belief and love could trump even the horrific tragedy of falling, seemed as though the world could be bearable.

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Before and After L eo Pol k Color Film

Faces.mp4

Hayden C ooper Digital Art

Plumage Rohan Press

This too is horse-like, with back wet and stamped downward. Impressions on rye grass where the heron molts. I heard the heron her powder down her great arched ribs foot-stirring the boundary of morning harvest. Her motor and rubber gloves dragging the horse-corpse, drowning out the rain.

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bloodless, stone gray, bloodless Rohan Press

They say stone birth is like any other birth, but I know itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more alone. I know its hillside is graying, sodden, unhorsed. I heard its dry soil, its gray eyes, rattling in a jar. Rolling off its bookcase. Flaring its gray, sagging its saddle. Its painted lodes pale as snapped necks. Mount Finley must be filled with horses. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why moss grows, you said. Why moss grows

volume 33

Builtscape

Peter Eberle Lineoleum Relief

longing during a cold spell Iris Thwaits

outside is twenty-five degrees and ice crawls up my windowsill. In stubborn rejection of the cold, I sleep naked for the first time since I was very young, before I learned to blush even in front of the bedding. Now the gentle cotton settles over my skin, and it feels a bit like an old friend, or a lover I wrongly turned away. Between pilling blue sheets I graze hand over thigh, hip, hollowedout then kindly-cushioned stomach. I long for hands which are not my own, fingers adorned with rings, palms with something left to memorize. Tangled hair and furrowed brow, rosy cheeks and calloused skin: come to me, please. In darkening hours, brush beneath my ribs. The ice is ever-creeping, the flame is burning low.

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'October Chill': Perthshire, 1851 Kate Swisher

A lifting breeze moves the tall grass, the leaning reeds, and the hair of Millais. It catches his palette. Where is his lady? Her portrait? He brushes gold on water, strokes left and out Leaves a space for Ophelia, to drown. He lets tree touch tree touch clouds, and turns his thumb to touch the pale yellow sky.

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Window

L oa Jones Film

A Deal in the Desert Gavin Murphy

On the side of the highway going into Moab sits an old uranium tailings pile, which from a distance might look like a construction site. It’s surrounded by a high wire fence, and the tiered sides of it are speckled with various unmoving vehicles. Driving by at night, Bill didn’t recognize this wasteland as being any different from the red desert he’d been surrounded by for the last few hours. With one hand, he unconsciously fiddled with the radio, catching a snippet of a religious talk-show or the chords of a banjo between long bouts of static. Far ahead of him, he could see the lights of the town, and the dark gleam of the Colorado river. Glancing at his wristwatch, Bill saw it was a quarter to twelve. He hoped his motel would still have a clerk. He thought about his trip, and the lengths he was going to, all to make Linda happy. Why had she married some hippy so far out in Utah? His family had lived in New York for three generations, and he considered himself quite the urban man. Yet here he was, driving to a ceremony that would be held in the middle of Slickrock, probably on the side of some public vehicle trail. He pondered the possibility of an ATV slamming through the wedding cake, and maybe his new son-in-law in the process. His son-in-law’s name was Jim Tree, which to Bill sounded like a brand of cheap detergent. He didn’t have a real job, as far as Bill was concerned, and instead spent his days protesting nuclear water and similar things. Linda loved his passion for his ‘work’, and how determined he was to make the world a better place. This total passion, however, meant he had little time for

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things like shaving, or owning a house. Bill knew that once his daughter woke up from her starry-eyed dream of him, she would be miserable. As his eyes and thoughts returned to the road, the outline of a human being became visible in his lights. Bill slammed on the brakes as hard as he could. He shut his eyes tight as the rented sedan screeched to a stop, and only when he felt his head touch the seat behind him was he able to bring himself to open them. Standing in the warm glow of the sedan’s headlights was a tall, painfully thin man. Wearing nothing but a fuzzy gray bathrobe and bunny slippers, he looked like he had just emerged from a bedroom. Only when he started to move towards the side of the car did Bill notice his raised thumb. Before Bill could think to accelerate, the bathrobe-clad stranger had entered the car. “Hey there, buddy! I didn’t think you were actually going to stop!” he said. “Listen, I—” “I know, I know. You’ve got to hurry because Arches Motel doesn’t have a desk clerk after midnight. Don’t worry, I’m sure someone will be there.” The stranger winked and grinned. “What? How could you possibly—” “But enough about you. My name’s Bub. Well, it’s Beelzebub, really, but who wants to say that over and over again? I happen to be travelling to that motel as well, so you won’t be put out of your way. Why are we still sitting here anyways? Doesn’t this car work?” Bill held up a hand and closed his eyes again. He was starting to wish he’d stopped in Green River and driven to the ceremony in the morning. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you were doing in a bathrobe on the highway in the middle of the night. Also, I’m pretty sure my passenger door was lock—” “Very well, very well,” Bub interrupted. “It’s fair that you

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have a few questions. To keep things brief, an acquaintance of mine, Camden Norwell, is about to violate the terms of one of my client’s contracts at the Arches tonight. I’ll be stepping in on this client’s behalf.” “But why—” “Am I in a bathrobe? Well, I like to dress to blend in, and the Arches Motel is described as cozy and homelike on Yelp. Wouldn’t you say I look cozy? Now enough chit chat. Your desk clerk just got back from her smoke break, and I can tell you it won’t be comfortable sleeping in your car when you miss check-in. Also, I think Linda wouldn’t be happy if you showed up all ruffled and unshaven tomorrow.” Bill was done with this. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel, and yelled, “I don’t care about your bathrobe! I don’t care about your client or whatever! What are you doing in the fucking desert in the middle of the night and how do you know where I’m going? How do you know my daughter? Who the hell do you think you are?” Bub sighed, and snapped his fingers. The car’s lights dimmed from yellow, before brightening to a ghastly white. Bill tried to say something, but his mouth wasn’t working. In fact, he couldn’t move at all. He looked frantically at Bub, who had put his feet up on the dash and closed his eyes. “You had your chance to drive, but I suppose I can just drive myself. We can...well…I suppose I can talk while we’re moving.” Bill watched as the gas pedal compressed below his frozen foot, and the car began to crawl forwards. He tried to scream, but couldn’t. Breathing heavily through his nose, he tried to fight back the wave of terror that was taking over his body. “Now, I don’t want to be too rude to someone so kind as to stop for me, so let’s start with why I was in the middle of the… desert, as you put it. I can only appear at sites of mass despair, and unfortunately, Moab is too boring of a place to cause much despair at all, except for the occasional Jeep accident. That uranium tail-

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ings pile, however, has environmentalists wound up all year round. It’s always something about radioactive pollution in the mighty Colorado, or please think of the fishes, or a waste of our tax dollars. The details don’t really concern me. The river looks pretty enough to me, doesn’t it?” Bill looked out the window to see his sedan floating across the dark river, inches above the water. Without Bub talking, the only sound in the car was the soft static of the radio. The movement was so gradual that Bill wondered if it was the current carrying them across. “It’s so peaceful, isn’t it?” said Bub, after a minute. “It’s nice to take a break from you yapping and worrying about the time, and just enjoy the river.” Bub shifted in his bathrobe. There was a sudden jolt as the car launched from a sandbar, and kept rising, until it was hundreds of feet above the lights of the town. Bill had stopped trying to scream, and began to realize he had control of his body again. He looked out the window. All of Moab spread out underneath him. “We’re flying,” he said quietly. “Yes! Good one, Bill! Brilliant observation.” The rest of the trip was spent in silence; Bill out of awe, Bub out of a lack of interest in Bill. When the wheels of the sedan gently touched down in the parking lot of the Arches Motel, Bill felt strangely disappointed. The ghostly headlights flooded with color back into an electric yellow, and then turned off. Bub looked over to Bill and handed him a business card. “You seem like a decent fellow. If you’re ever in a rut, and you need a little help getting your life back together, I might go easy on you for giving me a ride. I’d hurry to the lobby now; you’ve only got two minutes and thirty-seven seconds before your clerk goes home for the night.” Bub started to exit the car, but Bill tapped his shoulder. “Hey, Bub. I mean, if you can make a car fly, I can only imagine what you can do for people, but…what did the client you’re visiting ask for?” Bub was silent for a moment. He looked back at Bill, with

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a cold smile. “Well, Camden was an earlier client of mine actually, he asked me to make someone fall in love with him. That’s a pretty common contract, really. All I asked for in return was his soul.” He glanced at one of the rooms across the lot. “He hasn’t been faithful, though, and the very woman he was so desperate for has made me quite a deal to punish him. It’s like souls practically sell themselves. Just remember, Bill, if you’re in one of my contracts, I bet you’ll show up in a few more before our business together is concluded.” With that, Beelzebub exited the car and walked silently away. Bill looked at the business card he had been handed. It was plain white, with red lettering: Beelzebub Lord of the Flies, Master of Souls ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Office 1134, Hell Burn Card to Summon Or contact bubrocks666@yahoo.com Across the lot, Bub knocked on a door, then entered. A terrible scream echoed through the night. Bub returned to the lot. Bill, a fast typist on his phone, had already composed and sent an email to Bub, who walked calmly back in the direction of the sedan. Bill got out, and stood in the lights of his car, waiting. “It’s a pity you didn’t burn the card. I think it adds a little bit of flair to any business request, wouldn’t you say? Interactivity is all the rage right now, and what’s more interactive than fire?” “Look, Bub. Beelzebub. Whatever. I think my daughter’s about to make a serious mistake, and I would do anything—” “Anything! How incredibly kind of you! How paternal of you! As it turns out, helping people prevent the serious mistakes of others is certainly within my contract range. If you would like to work with me, though, we need to discuss payment, though, and I

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think we both know what I want.” Bill sighed, and absently turned the business card in his hands. “If my soul is what it takes to-to save my daughter, I’ll do it. I mean, I don’t even really know what that means, but I’ll do it.” Every streetlamp across the lot went out. Bill’s headlights went white, turning both his and Bub’s skin the color of a corpse. Any trace of warmth or humanness had left Bub’s face. When he spoke, his lips stayed unmoving, and his voice was several octaves lower than before. It sounded more like the crackle of a fire than human words. You are an interesting man, willing to sacrifice something you do not understand for someone you love. What exactly do you want done for your daughter? “I don’t want her to marry Jim Tree. I-I want you to stop the marriage.” Is this your only condition? Your soul is more than enough to compensate for such a meager request. Bill winced. “Don’t hurt Jim, I guess. As much as I hate him, I can’t do that to Linda. Don’t kill him or anything.” Very well. Jim Tree will not be harmed. The wedding will not proceed. Our business is complete. YOUR SOUL IS MINE. There was a buzzing noise, and the lot was once again filled with the glow of electricity. When Bub spoke again, his cheerful voice and demeanor had returned. “Well, well! Great deal, huh? Thanks a bunch! I’ll be on my way then, but before I go, could you fill this out?” Bub held out a Nokia tablet, with a survey embedded into it. “These are just a few questions about my service, and a chance to leave any comments about our exchange. Some of my customers have said I’m always interrupting people. Can you believe it?” “I just sold my soul. My fucking soul is gone, whatever that means, and you’re asking me to—” “Fill out a survey. It’s five easy questions, and it shouldn’t

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take more than a minute. As a bonus, you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing to reanimate a dead family pet of your choosing!” “I need to sleep. I’m sorry Bub, I don’t—” “Want to? Seriously? I guess someone never had a dog. You do look tired, though. I guess being soulless can be a little… draining. Heh. I’ll leave you to it, then! Have fun at the wedding tomorrow! I’d love to stay and chat, but my ride’s here.” There was a deep, almost inaudible groan under them. Bub took off his slippers and began to sink into the pavement. Slowly spiraling, he did a cheerful wave goodbye as his waist, then his shoulders, passed through the ground. Just before the asphalt closed over his face, he winked at Bill. “You’ll get what you asked for. Nothing more, nothing less.” Then he was gone, leaving only a pair of bunny slippers in his wake. The next morning, Bill arrived at the wedding with high spirits. As he had predicted, the ceremony was only about one hundred yards from a trail, meaning that the laughter and chatter of the wedding guests was interrupted periodically by the commotion of a passing dirt bike. He had to admit it was a pretty location, with white tables and thirty-some folding chairs set to a gorgeous backdrop of sculpted pink rock. It was 12:15, almost half an hour after Bill’s daughter was supposed to arrive. Bill sat in the front row, watching Jim restlessly pace around the ceremony. After maybe his tenth lap around the wedding, Jim pulled out a phone, which surprised Bill. What sort of hippie owns an iPhone? Also, what sort of groom checks their phone at their own wedding? Bill, like the other guests, had set his phone to silent, to ‘preserve the beauty of nature,’ as Jim had wanted. He must be seriously worried about her, if he’s the first one to break that stupid rule. Bill shifted uncomfortably. No, it doesn’t matter if he cares for her. He’s a deadbeat, he’s got no future, and Linda will be miserable with him in five years, guaranteed.

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Jim had stopped pacing. There was a collective gasp as he dropped his phone and dropped to his knees, sobbing. One of his brothers rushed to his side, with the rest of the wedding guests forming a loose circle around the pair, talking in low whispers. Bill watched Jim’s brother check Jim’s phone over several sets of shoulders, and waited with an eerie glee. This was his moment. He had done this. He tried to keep himself from smiling as Jim’s brother began to speak: “I’m so sorry everyone. I’m so, so sorry. This morning… there…there was…” He paused, his eyes brimming with tears. “At the crossroad for the tailings pile, there was a flatbed. It turned onto the highway without looking, and…and it hit Linda. They don’t think either she or the driver’s going to make it.” Jim and Bill were the last two at the ceremony. They stood in silence, watching as the setting sun turned the pink rock golden. A catering team had cleaned up the chairs and tables hours ago, and the only sign that a ceremony might have ever taken place there was a few lingering flower petals. Bill shifted his feet and stared at the ground. “Look, I’m really sorry. About this. It’s terrible. My daughter should have married you today.” Even given the circumstances, Jim was a little surprised. He had always been under the impression that Bill didn’t approve of him as a potential son-in-law. “Well, hey. You just lost your daughter. I’m sorry too.” Bill only sighed. “I’m going to the tailings pile. There’s someone that I think could fix this.” That didn’t make any sense to Jim, but he wasn’t in any mood to argue. He watched as Bill meandered in the direction of the trail, then sat down and stared up at the fading colors of the sky.

There was a loud rustle in the grass. Jolting awake, Jim

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looked up to see stars. He must have fallen asleep. A few of the stars disappeared, and he realized there was someone standing directly over him. The stranger was a tall, painfully thin man, wearing a tailored suit and a full-face motorcycle helmet. He offered Jim a hand up. “Oof. Buddy. You do not look so happy.” “Who—” “Would wear a helmet with a suit? Well, I like to dress to blend in, and I wasn’t sure if I should focus more on ‘wedding guest’ or ‘motorsport enthusiast’ so I settled for a happy medium.” Jim quickly tried to back away from the stranger. “You said wedding. How—” “Could I possibly help you, someone who has just lost the love of their life on the very day they were going to marry them? Well, it’s quite simple really.” The stranger took off their helmet, revealing an insane smile. “My name’s Bub. It’s short for Beelzebub, but that gets a bit tiring to say, doesn’t it? We have some business to discuss.”

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Elle

Sa m Montes Digital Photography

Birth of the Creation Rhiannon Dowling

Mutable are the feelings that make them writhe and rage like moths bursting from their cocoons in a wild fury of newly found life. Nothing so painful to the inner workings of a person than the sudden change at daybreak. A sweaty palm against the forehead, realization through the feverish body that there is an inner grinding of wheels inside the soul that one does not understand. Life decrepit but beautiful is an accumulation of anguish and passion, dear in its revelation, defendable in its agony and bliss. The destruction of the Creation, the denial of the hand that reaches up at the presence that looms above the abandonment forges a newness. If they cannot inspire in love they shall grow warped within fear. Human nature glorious, wicked, and ugly shies from its reflection in the desolate. The body fashioned by familiar, ambitious hands grows cold at the first breathâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; first flutter of tattered, pieced together wings.

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Waking the Witch Michelle Foster A walk in the woods sounds nice, perhaps, but have you considered what you might hear? Here, everything grows in threes— no, not trees, but threes. Mushrooms, millipedes, and mossy clumps; and when you see the three whispering pines you know you’re close. Some close their eyes, but they should really be closing their ears. Listen. Your breathing is too loud. Your neck is filled with crackling things. You’ve only been walking a short while, but it’s coming alive, the creature inside you’ve always known was there. Hear it? Something swelling in your throat as you listen to the sparrows above, the rustling leaves. You don’t leave. Because the spell surges forth and your neck is filled with cackling things. Waking. Walking. Laughing. The beetles in the grass pause, switch back, and scuttle away. volume 33

a DaY iN tHe MiNd

Ch loe French Digital Animation

Spirals Grant Gallaher

Pt. 1: Mountain View grass-stained knees and dirt-coated elbows wriggling in many-pocketed shorts and oversized baseball jersey scouring a miniature front-yard jungle, on safari for the ultimate prize in the mind of an 8-year-old: Snails. slinking lethargically over fleshy, dew-covered leaves the humble gastropod is gatekeeper to its deepest secrets why does your shell spiral? what is your favorite food? do you see the world the same as I do through your alien eyestalks? a gentle radular scraping is the only reply. i like to kiss them, the Snails plant a peck on their shell have a taste, take a whiff, arouse a sensation of the thrill and agony of a life lived with home on your back. Pt. 2: Sitka gone are idyllic pastures replaced by sore knees and rocky beaches battery heaters and yeast generators artificial manipulation of that which is already not pristine we call it science.

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the Snails are dying i pick thousands - tiny - out of tide pools testimony for crimes against humanity and Snail-kind alike massacred by anthropogenic existence and the actions untaken, the shells we do not kiss. oceans teem within puddles acid bubbles shells crumble and I wonder whether Snails will be happy on Mars.

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Diagnosis

Br it ney Mendel In k a nd Watercolor

Veins Kate Swisher

“underneath the skin...” Joni Mitchell, Blue Snow steadily covers the train tracks to Takayama, a small mountain village northwest of Kyoto. I watch the white cover the red of the Japanese maples surrounding us as my mom takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. I look at her other hand gripping the edges of a magazine. Her veins bulge wonderfully from under her skin - plump rivulets streaming down from her freckled arms to her delicate hands. She loves her veins, loves to move her fingers over them when stressed, loves the color and the texture they bring. I wonder why they are bigger than other people’s veins I’ve seen. I don’t think it just has to do with age. Visible veins are the physical manifestation of intricate work. Mine are fairly large as well, maybe from playing the piano. I like to think hers are so prominent because of the hours she has spent drawing. They are the late nights she would spend at the studio, sketching charcoal selfportraits. They are the warmth and life she coaxed back to her soul through her hands when she was cold, and in pain, and her broken heart needed healing. The article features a black and white photograph of Joni Mitchell and her famous Martin D28 guitar on its title page. As I watch the snow fall, I hear Joni’s flowing piano melodies in her song, "Blue," and the rhythmic, rocking motion of the train causes me to sway into the soft hollow of my mom’s shoulder. The three of

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SWISHER

us - mom, Joni, and I - have something in common: we create art to interpret our emotions. We create to heal. I imagine that for us, the piano and the art studio are places as intimate as our beds. Once we arrive in Takayama and check into the Onsen, we head into the communal baths and scrub our bodies, sitting on small cedar stools before a wooden faucet that pours out endless quantities of hot water. We go into the stone-lined baths, naked, immersed to our chins. Looking at her, I realize we have remarkably similar bodies - especially our bellies, hips, legs, and jawline. I take her hand and examine what her veins look like underneath the water. I move my fingers over them as we talk about the first love songs we felt in our hearts. â&#x20AC;&#x153;renew you again and againâ&#x20AC;? J.M., Blue

I see my mom through brushstrokes of blue, burnished pebbles of sea glass, raindrops on window panes, rippling lake water, and sheets of iridescent cellophane. I focus on her veins and her somber, wise smile, and think I know her well. I look at her thick hair - the hair I inherited. Mine is just as thick, but darker, chestnut-colored like my Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. I often try to part mine the same

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way she does. I look at her self-portraits from college that she etched on linoleum plates and then printed again and again in shades of blue and black ink. I pull out and carefully re-examine this one particular photo from an old memory box, taken when she was my age, in an attempt to see myself more clearly. I wonder what it would be like to have talked to her when she was my age. She thinks I wouldn’t have liked her. She says she was naive, over-empathetic, constantly lost in thought, and always overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Whelm is a Welsh word that means to submerge in water. Sometimes I imagine her like the painting in the Louvre of the drowned Ophelia by Millais, covered in water, with her eyes closed, blond hair streaming in the current, and flowers all around her. “I am a lonely painter; I live in a box of paints...” J.M., A Case of You At Berkeley, in college, my mom worked in ceramics. I think about her hands in the clay, and that pottery wheel spinning around in sync with her spiraling thoughts. She considered it therapy. Her fingernails became dusty gray. She found herself in this clay, and in brushstrokes, charcoal portraits, messy sketches of naked bodies, boxes of paint, and music. Every day she went home from the studio, placed the needle on Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue. Blue is the pathway to the heart. “Blue is a natural extension of emotional catharsis. It is personal therapy,” Joni says in an interview. My mom echoes Joni’s words when I interview her over the phone: “Crying was cathartic. I felt a loss of self. ” Joni says, “I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong.” “I remember thinking I could walk across the street and if a car hits me right now it wouldn't matter. I wasn’t suicidal, just

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numb to the world,” my mom tells me. “Everything became kind of transparent.” “I was raw, peeled back.” “I could see through myself so clearly. And I saw others so clearly that I couldn’t be around people.” “I couldn’t pretend. I lacked energy to put up a face.” “I was all nerve endings.” I remember when I was all nerve endings too. In the last months of my senior year in high school, I would come back home to my mom from the city after visits with my boyfriend. I wordlessly hugged her, then sat down at the piano for hours. The music kept blood flowing to my heart, and my mom helped keep my body whole. When I left for college and had settled into my life there, I still would go back to my dorm room every day after classes and sit at my portable electric piano and sing. I played improvised lines and sang to lonely college boys who visited my room at night. I often felt cold and naked in these situations, and I felt bodiless. In the winter, I walked from tree to tree across the wide expanse of the college common and remember feeling as if other people passing in the night were walking right through me. When I looked down, I imagined myself completely invisible. “a foggy lullaby...” J.M., Blue I wonder what it would have been like to talk to my mom when she was my age. I envision her sitting across from me at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and nibbling on pieces of honeydew melon. I imagine she would be quiet and awkward, like me. I would think of questions to ask her: Do you notice anything similar about us? I would say. What do you think of me? What are your flaws? What are mine? She lived on the same floor as Jeremy, her first serious boyfriend. That’s how they met. She listened to him and calmed his bad childhood memories with her hands. She empathized

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with his sadness, stroked his hair, and sang him foggy lullabies. Once, they walked downtown together, and she thinks, perhaps, she may have stared too long at another man walking down the street, so Jeremy kicked her. She didn’t know what to do, so she decided to forgive his violence this one time. She didn’t want to let him down. But it wasn’t the only time. During the first summer away from him, while camping in the Sierras with her family, she remembers jumping into a lake and thinking suddenly, something had changed. She submerged herself in the bitingly cold water. In the fall, she left him. “part of you pours out of me...” J.M., A Case of You

Sometimes I would come home from visiting the boy in the city wishing my mom couldn’t see through me so clearly. I felt she understood the meaning behind every note I played when I sat down at the piano. I imagined that she could sense even the pattern of the veins in my hand as the blood filled them. I knew she saw her own mistakes in me, saw parts of herself pouring out of me through my music. One night I was driving home after a particularly frustrating sexual interaction with my boyfriend, followed by guilt, an

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argument, then another insincere apology from him in my car. I felt disoriented and outside of my body, as though I was too high and on a bad trip. I remember thinking that a police officer could have easily pulled me over for a DUI. The unique red-orange paint of the Golden Gate Bridge swirled in psychedelic patterns under the bright art-deco street lights overhead and created a fuzzy haze of wild colors circling slowly around me. Once home, I found her in the extensive herb garden outside our kitchen door, cutting chives and picking mint for supper. I fell heavily into her arms, exhausted, like I do when I fall into bed. She put the green teapot on the stove and leaned across the wooden island in the kitchen, and looked at me with turbulent sea-green eyes. She felt sad for me that evening, but knew I needed to grow. She reassured me, “This is not uncommon in relationships at your age. Boys, especially young boys, have a hard time stopping, even when you say “no.” It's a situation that many young women have to deal with.” These were the only words she ever said that weren't enough. They were over-simplified and hurt us both. I thought to myself: was it because we were both naive, over-empathetic, constantly lost in thought, and overwhelmed that this happened to us? That these young men assumed dominance over us? Was this all my fault, all our fault? I looked down at my hands but could not find my veins in the dim light of the room. My heart felt empty of blood. I think hers did too. In my room, I stared at the Chinese lantern lights strung above my bed for an hour, picking at my fingernails until I eventually knelt down beside my record player and put the needle on Blue. I watched the record spin in time with my spiraling thoughts and I cried through all ten haunting songs. I let myself fall into Joni’s reassuring words. “you can make it through these waves...” J.M., Blue

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On the train to Takayama, I lay my head on my mom’s shoulder and find that melody I am searching for - the intricate piano melody with the soft, nylon-stringed acoustic guitar track behind it. I feel her hand in mine and squeeze back. I think to myself of the time when we were blue. Images of sea glass by the ocean flood my thoughts, like a tidal current. We were blue and smooth like sea glass. We made it through these waves. I touch the back of her hand and fall asleep. I hope Ophelia woke up from her dream of death. I hope she sat up from the river, picked all the flowers out of her hair, and walked away, a stronger woman, to a new reality. At night we go into the communal baths. The village lights from behind the waterfall shine on our bodies, and so does the moon. We are full of moon. I look at her hands underneath the glistening water and lift them above the surface. We talk about the first love songs we felt in our hearts, smile solemnly, then like the swirling water, move to different thoughts. “blue, I love you” J.M., Blue Joni said that she will never write an album like Blue again. The songs required too much of her. In the song that starts the album All I Want, she writes, “I want to belong to the living.” The album overwhelmed her entirely. She said she felt exposed, uncomfortably clairvoyant about everything and everyone, and transparent like the cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. My mom felt the same in her young twenties. Now she is no longer blue - more precisely, she is not blue like that. She has a wonderful life as a teacher, and a mother, and has been happily married to my dad for thirty years. But I do still love her blue self. I am no longer blue like that either, but I too still love my blue self. Sometimes I get nostalgia for that raw pain and honesty I used to feel so deeply. I listen to Blue to try and summon it once more, but

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I never will feel that pain the same way again. My mom does not do as much art anymore, besides the art she does with her second graders. She says she is too busy. Perhaps she may not need art to pump the blood back to her heart. But I may just buy her some paintbrushes for Christmas. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t play piano at night, alone in my room that much these days, either, which saddens me but also makes me feel lighter. At the end of our phone interview, about writing this piece, about both of our pasts, the last question I ask her before I press the impersonal red telephone icon on my cell phone screen to end the call is: what is it like to have a daughter? She hums and then pauses. She admits, for the first time, that she was nervous to have me. She said she was worried about how different we were going to be, and she even thought I was going to hate her. As tears well in my eyes, and the line goes dead, all I can think of is how much we are inseparable parts of the other.

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Answer My Questions: Erika Goodman

Do you notice that bumblebees surf the soundwaves of human laughter a giggle makes her lips curl makes the tide rip, curl, engulf a tiny pollinator in a sonic snuggle the rhythm of joy streaks the air just long enough for a bee to grab hold and coast to shore, tip toeing upon a flower, left listening for the cadence of a being beyond itself I wonder if the soil beneath our feet has a birth certificate In a basement I walk on a map four carpet squares meet at a corner like Colorado Utah Arizona New Mexico and I wonder if the dirt knows its name Will we trample on earth until our footsteps turn every mountain flat and every valley a vat into which we toss our misunderstandings, bad habits, regret we pack them down with shovels until a valley is not a valley, in fact, the ground is smooth enough volume 33

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to lick like an envelope and all thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s left is an empty coloring book Will we then reach down and touch the soil with thirsty hands, the ones that have cried to touch their mother since the day they were born, skin cracked like the ground that bears the weight of our viscous guilt Do you think we will try to carve mountain out of brittle rock or will we remain deaf to the silence and trot on the grave of life before a wrong turn

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Green Blanket

El la Crosby Oil on Canvas

Ode to Dream Emily Rigsby

The doodle sketched into a dream, Then prancing like young children out the door, They frolicked the night away until the sun gleamed. The doodle's steps collected into a theme, Dashing diligently, their flounce became a chore; The doodle sketched into a dream. Together, the doodle marched to the stream. As the fluorescent moon shone down on them at four, They frolicked the night away until the sun gleamed. The doodle's characteristics grew to the extreme, While their colors blend - like nothing seen before; The doodle sketched into a dream Together dancing, they made a scene! While the familiar moon set over the dance floor, They frolicked the night away until the sun gleamed. A painting is touched by the sun's beam. Now altered down to the core The doodle developed the dream See them frolic the night away until the sun gleams

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Family Tree

Keel i McKer n Pen and Paper

September Sestina Haley Wilkerson

In Texas, September isn’t the end of anything, heat seeping into my chest, my chest like the concrete after a cathartic rain. If I were cooler, I would get high. If I were nicer to myself, I would listen to what my body says. Heat and scratchiness when it’s cold outside, out of the side of myself that wants out. My cousin Doyle thinks the end of days is near. He hands me scraps of paper with book titles, says “These will really open your eyes.” On his chest he wears an evil eye. My mom says he’s just high, but his high and my high have nothing in common, not even the cough, the imagined rain. Rain that loves you like a mother loves the rain, scooping her sopping, cerulean love out of her chest. The rain wishes you weren’t so high all the time, wishes you would follow one something through to the end: the guitar, the banjo, folding all the sweaters in your chest of drawers. If I listen too hard, the rain says nothing. “Will you love me in December as you do in May?” says Jack Kerouac. I ask the same of you, September rain. Stuck between August’s suffocation and October’s velvet chest, your heart is woven from sage and newspapers old and thrown out. In Texas, you are a continuation. In Washington, a beginning of the end. In any here, any there, any highway in between, September has never been so high

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as to think herself important. In that way, September’s high and my high are the same high. No one cares what September says. She signals the end of blackberries, the end of apricots, the end of sweetness. Every time she speaks, she opens her mouth to catch the rain. Every time I speak, I wish my tongue had the guts to fly up and out, wings unfolding in my mouth like a feathery chest of treasures, unlocked and springing out of the in-between. My chest of treasures is the burn, the apology after the high. The apology is for my mother, and my need to be amenable follows it out. On being high, my mother says, “It has never been for me.” She prefers the rain and the secrets it whispers to her on flooded Texas weekends. In my chest there is a drawer for things my mother says. One drawer for the high, one for the quench. September opens her mouth to catch the rain. I think she is calling out to me, but I can’t tell when she started or when she will end.

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steam & people Jorda n Pay ne Digital Photography

Alice and Jojo in the Vines Lu ke Not k i n 35mm Film

Oatmeal Rain Keeli McKern

It’s exactly what you would picture a grandma wearing in the rain. That flat navy blue screams, “I stopped counting birthdays at 60 (time seems to stop here).” Its boxy shape is reminiscent of the body that used to fill it, and a few blonde (gray) hairs decorate the hood. It can fold up like a map and hide amongst the drugstore receipts and bus schedules that share the crowded space of the Gray Bag (famous). Women’s Reg. Small. Sure, grandma was small, but was she regular? She didn’t bake cookies like all of the other grandmas do. She toasted bread and drowned it in butter. She didn’t wear pearls around her collar. She wore a turtleneck. She was not a grandmother. She was a grandma (subtle). I gently, no, roughly (I never did learn to be careful with objects) slide my arms into the sleeves. Grandma was not one for hugs, and neither is this jacket. I zip up my torso and shift my weight around as the jacket hesitantly molds to my body (disappear). I look down and spot a single oat clinging to the sleeve of the jacket. Oops. Grandma left a piece of her breakfast here. She surely watched the news as she ate a breakfast of mushy oatmeal topped with almonds and sipped on a mug filled with milk and tea. She dabbed the spillage off of her face with a paper napkin. Her head gently but uncontrollably nodded as she spooned oatmeal into her mouth. This is why she dropped an oat and I am picking it off of her jacket (waste). She would’ve fed it to the squirrels (thoughtful). I step out into the rain, nothing like how grandma would’ve—I need no one’s arm to hold on to. Instead, my hands slip into the volume 33

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pockets of the jacket that lines my upper half. Oops. Grandma left more than just her breakfast with this jacket. “GRACE,” a green sticky note yells at me (is that Grace the person or grace the way of being?). “It’s cold season!” a cough drop shouts. “My nose is running, like usual,” a deliberately folded Kleenex tells me. It is gray outside and gray in this jacket (forgotten). I wonder if she ever washed her jacket. Maybe she let the rain do that job—it is cheaper that way. I watch as beads of water roll down my shoulder, collecting pieces of dust and dirt along the way (free). It doesn’t smell like anything except maybe damp nylon. There is no scent of grandma. No green tea—black tea upset her stomach. No hair gel—her hair held its curl better this way, though it still resembled a tumbleweed. No newspaper—she liked to clip the comics (mail). Now I see why grandma hid from the rain. She was soft like a sunrise, not harsh like the pounding rain. I let the rain dampen my unkempt hair. I am not soft like a sunrise, but I am wearing this jacket (poser).

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TWINz

Edua rdo Cabrera Pollen on glycerin jelly under microscope

BOATIES

Ol iv ia Wa lt ner Digital Art

Looking For Baby Bear Stephanie Ma

Firm, grounded, supported, and soft. Shaped to my body. Perfection in a chair Release and enjoy—soak it in I love a pristine chair, Caress my ailing body. Constant discomfort shoots up my back muscles. Aren’t I too young for this? Lower back in disarray always comin’ up short on one side. Tell me, what am I to do? Get a new bed? More exercise? Chiropractor? GOT NO MONEY. Got no healthcare. I thought I exercised enough? Got to take a trip to WEST ELM. Got to get-get-get that Instant fix Relief. Feel my body melt Stroll through, strut the store, browse my options— ooh, a “classic café dining chair” I test the goods, see what’s fit for my rump. Balance? check Back support? check Can my muscles relax into that end-of-day, long, drawn out Sigh? Hoooooooooooo, yeah, that’s the one. I melt into that chair like inhale from an oxygen concentrator. Gives me back some of that fading life and eyes droop But there it was—I read, “cozy swivel chair.” volume 33

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Don’t mind if I do! I float over, nuzzle and burrow my body Fall right into that seven-hundred-ninety-nine-dollar comfort Mm-hm, that’s baby bear’s chair. Just the right balance between soft and hard. Cozy and secure. Exorbitant luxury, but still, my favorite place. I close my eyes dreaming of the great potentials just one, perfect chair could bring, and I Drift, and drift until I am gently nudged “Hello there, are you finding everything alright?”

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Mid-Day Break

Sa m Joh nson 35mm Film

Just an Observation, a Premediation Eli Baez

Now: Signatures overwrite scrawls, Roofs stand in the place of sky, Poison is less easy in rattly bottles, But: Rocks are still knives.

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Godspeed

Mat t hew Wieck Digital Art

CONTRIBUTORS Henry Adams

Hayden Cooper

Eli Baez

Kaitlin Cho

Katherine Boys-Kirgis

Clara Collins

Jillian Brandon

Ella Crosby

Rowan Brown

Casey Doe

Eduardo Cabrera

Rhiannon Dowling

Chloe Carothers-Liske

Peter Eberle

2020 English swallow whole egg

2021 English organizing is my jam

2023 Undeclared I speak scottish

2021 Environmental Studies- Physics dog spotting

2022 English looking mad when happy

2020 Environmental Studies-Biology uploading shortly

2020 Environmental Studies- Sociology big time booler

2021 English shooting the shit

2022 Undeclared eating boiled eggs

2020 English go-kart racing

2023 Undeclared ice skating

2020 Art, Biology untying knots (rope or slinky)

2023 English making mac & cheese

2020 Art face painting

Livvy Eickerman

Alex Hwang

Michelle Foster

Sam Johnson

Chloe French

Carrie Anne Jones

Grant Gallaher

Loa Jones

Erika Goodman

Isabelle Keller

Clara Greenstein

Akane Kleinkopf

Madilyn Hofbauer

Miranda LaFond

2023 Intended Biology can chug a whole nalgene

2020 English finding coins (mostly dimes)

2023 Undeclared whistling with my tongue

2020 Environmental Studies- Biology belly rolls, webbed toes

2022 Environmental Humanities can sit like frog

2020 Classical Studies- Latin getting concussions

2020 Religion getting up without hands

2020 Economics play tennis anyone

2021 Physics estimating objects in spaces

2020 Psychology befriending feral cats

2020 Biology being a morning person

2023 English popping shoulders

2020 History, Japanese dumpling making + eating

2020 History, Theatre she summons infinite pickles.

Erin Lee

Sam Montes

Luke Notkin

Gavin Murphy

Stephanie Ma

Hannah Paul

Aubrey May

Jordan Payne

Keeli McKern

Em Perry

Annie Means

Leo Polk

2020 Politics Cameron Frye water sound

2022 Undeclared I like oats

2020 Asian and Middle Eastern Studies- China would thrive in military

2020 Biology breakup haircuts

2023 Intended Environmental Humanities peeing on command

2022 Environmental Humanities great at winking

Britney Mendel 2023 Undeclared drawing :)

2023 Civil Engineering Abstract Photography

2021 English Footjam Tailwhip to 360

2022 Art, Hispanic Studies art makes me happy

2020 Environmental Humanities flipping pancakes

2022 Art eternal wrist socket wrench

2022 Film and Media Studies competed beatboxing

Fiona Pontin

2022 Undeclared Wordscapes. On level 6997.

Rohan Press

Olivia Waltner

2023 English, Philosophy listening to Aldous Harding

2020 Biology rocking a whale-tail

Emily Rigsby

Rayana Weller

2020 Music World's best aunt

2020 Rhetoric good at stress baking!

Elise Sanders

Matthew Wieck

2023 Classics, English can impersonate John Oliver

2023 Gender Studies, Rhetoric "My words mean things"

Nick Sekits

Haley Wilkerson

2020 Art, Biology turtle husbandry

Kate Swisher

2020 English really good a puzzles

Iris Thwaits

2022 Sociology excellent hand massages

Samarah Uribe MĂŠndez 2020 Psychology overthink

2022 English friendship bracelet making

MEET THE EDITORS The blue moon staff have worked hard on the magazine throughout the 2019-2020 school year. The editors spent the first part of spring break putting the magazine together: choosing the flow, laying everything out, and braving the cold weather (and mid-March snow?!) to take editorial photos in front of a very orange wall. As the yearlong process draws to a close and students look forward to summer vacation, here’s a look into who the editors are, yearbook-style.

Clara Greenstein - Editor-in-Chief

Most likely to host 80th birthday party at a skatepark What's hot: sk8er boys, chokers, sepia filters, Olivia What’s not: rollerblading (sk8ing is life), the Fall of Rome, decaf drinkers

Olivia Waltner - Editor-in-Chief

Most likely to win the world crossword champonships What’s hot: cool race cars, sarcasm, the scientific method, Clara What’s not: overpriced wine, dead succulents, boyband haters

Iris Thwaits - Poetry Editor

Most likely to establish a women-only commune in the forest What’s hot: platonic forehead kisses, grapefruit, saxophone solos, unsubtle eye rolls What’s not: existentialism, most fruits, being mean to your mom

Michelle Foster - Prose Editor

Most likely to write an obscure novel from her grandma’s living room What’s hot: karaoke, sweaters, Google Maps, following the rules What’s not: killing spiders, skipping class, getting older

Liv Staryk - Art Editor

Most likely to host a TV show called “Liv in the Louvre” What’s hot: chamomile tea, art therapy, wearing multiple scarves What’s not: spilling the tea, mean people, saying good-bye

Peter Eberle - Digital Media & Layout Editor

Most likely to survive the apocalypse without ever knowing it happened What’s hot: Artistic Vision, being a twin, long meandering walks, European wool What’s not: American football, stepping on flowers, excessive giggling

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: How can I get involved? A: If you want to be involved in the creation of the magazine, applications will be available at the start of the school year. Anyone can be on staff; experience is not necessary. Apply to be a genre staff member or genre editor, and/or to work on public relations or layout. If you want your work in next year’s issue submit your poetry, prose, art, and/or digital media to our newly launched submissions site https://bluemoon.submittable.com/submit for consideration. Submissions will open in December and close about two weeks after winter break. You can also friend “Blue Moon” on Facebook to get all the updates! Q: How do selections work? A: The Editors-in-Chief are the only staff members with access to original submissions. They remove the artists’ names and distribute the pieces to their respective poetry, prose, art, and digital media groups, who then review them anonymously over the course of one month. Final decisions are made during a staff retreat, and notifications go out to the artists soon after. Q: How is blue moon made? A: After selections decisions are finalized, our editorial and layout staff stay on campus for the first week of spring break to finalize the magazine. Our staff members copy edit each selection before arranging and formatting the final layout of the magazine. After proofreading, we send the magazine off to print. One month later, we release blue moon, online at https://bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com and in print, for the campus and community to enjoy. Q: Is this actually the 33rd edition of blue moon? A: What an interesting question! blue moon is actually much older than you’d think: the first volume was published in 1924 and inaugurated the name “Blue Moon,” though without the characteristic lowercase lettering and italics. Volume 1, which can still be accessed in the Whitman archives, cost 35 cents an issue and was independently funded through those profits, as well as income from advertisements. In 1974, the name of the magazine changed to “Faire.” At this point, ASWC funding eliminated the need for advertising and made the magazine free for all students. In 1988, the magazine was renamed “The Blue Moon,” which is now considered to have been the “first” issue, and this is the 33rd since then! Q: Where’s the digital media? A: Due to the static nature of paper, there are certain works that can only be accessed online. This category is called “digital media,” and encompasses clips, gifs, videos, music, and other new genre forms. They’re super cool and definitely worth a peek. To access this content and view a PDF version of the magazine, please visit our website at bluemoonartmag.wordpress. com!

Coda: Thank You To Our Staff Let’s celebrate our staff’s hard work with portraits that they drew. These are the faces behind blue moon: Try and guess who’s who!

COLOPHON blue moon volume 33 was printed in Portland, OR, by Bridgetown Printing Company. The magazine is set in Minion Pro, an Adobe Originals digital typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990. Slimbach’s typeface takes its name from the old, near-arbitrary English system of designating printer’s type sizes, in which minion-sized type falls between emerald and brevier, bigger than brilliant or small pearl, but smaller than bourgeois or English. Minion is based on Renaissance-era typefaces, boasting sleek design while remaining highly personable. For volume 33, blue moon introduced Proxima Nova as a heading typeface. The magazine was designed using Adobe® InDesign® CC and Adobe® Photoshop® CC software.