collage by Oona Helenius
DETENTION SLIP
Name: The B-Board
Creative Director: Ava MacDonald
Director of Operations: Leila Pagel
Outreach and Events Director: Bilquisu Abdullah
Layout Director: Ava MacDonald
Marketing & Social Media Director: Serena Barish
Art Director: Lia Gilleran
Managing Editor: Alexandra Lalli
IDEA Director: Saeed Jude Samra
Mini Zine Director: Bilquisu Abdullah
Co-Merch and Finance Directors:
Robin Mcfarland & Susan Rodgers
Co-DigitalPlatformDirectors:
Isabela Gomez & Isabella Pamias
Contributors ISSUE 16
Angelina Zhao
Ava MacDonald
Logan Castellanos
Bilquisu Abdullah
Blake Bertero
Caroline Simmons
Claire Tsui
Delaney Teehan
Elaine Clarke
Matthew Lewis
Natalie Shaw
Oona Helenius
Paloma Gomez
Quisha Lee
Ruby Gilmore
Saeed Jude Samra
Elizabeth Pecoraro
Grace Ye
Isabella Pamias
Jade Fanning
Leila Pagel
Lia Gilleran
Lindsay Khalluf
Sarah Pedley
Saniya Shah
Serena Barish
Sonia Fan
Sophia Close
Sydney Hudson
Thea Jacquand
Date: Fall 2024
Layout Design........................ bossier.mag@gmail.com
Sophie Liu
Madeline Jones
Oona Helenius
Cecilia Cassidy
Lailah Mozaffar
Chloe Pascoe
Renatka Kozlowska
Ang Zhao
Ariana Ng
Natalie Price-Fudge
Editors..............................
Kate Heslin
Maggie Sansone
Crystal Hui
Ama Mensah-Boone
Callie Mitchell
Anna Lim
Maria Halter
Victoria Cheng
Claire Tsui
Ava MacDonald
Resident Creators....................
Grace Ye
Lia Gilleran
Thea Jacquand Quisha Lee
Sydney Hudson
Writers..............................
Sonia Fan
Caroline Palermo
Brendan Teehan
Lauren Santoro
Abigail Cho
Camden Baucom
Christina Gomes
Rachel Parks Angel James
Meredith Monnich
Daisy Casemore
Abby Scamardella
Natalie Shaw
Outreach.............................
Julianne Meneses
Evelyn Christina Wiredu
Ruari Bamrick Hayley Young
Social Media & Marketing.............
Candy Zhou
Claire Chen
Almitra Guart
Josie Ackell
Digital Platform.....................
Leila Pagel
Paloma Gomez
Ella Montano
Cecilio Sandoval
Finance and Merchandise..............
Claire Ozeki
Paloma Gomez
Mini-Zine............................
Kate Heslin
Mia Reilly
Anna Lim
Giselle Rasquinha
Leila Pagel
Thanks for stopping by
Billie Abdullah Come again soon!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors
Table of Contents
Editors’ Letters & Resources
Playlist
Lia Gilleran
Ava MacDonald
Ava MacDonald
Leila Pagel
Ava MacDonald
Grace Ye
Ava MacDonald
Ava MacDonald
Ariana Ng
Ava MacDonald
Oona Helenius
Gory Imagery
Quisha
Oona Helenius
Renatka Kozlowska
GSP Student Board
Leila Pagel
Leila Pagel
Lailah Mozaffar
Ang Zhao
Chloe Pascoe
Ava MacDonald
Ava MacDonald
Sophie Liu
Cecilia Cassidy
Madeline Jones
Lailah Mozaffar
Serena Barish
LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS LETTERS FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Bossier,
Since the day I stumbled upon you freshman fall, I have fallen deeper and deeper in love. You provide a space of comfort, friends, and joy, beyond what I could have ever imagined finding on this campus. The creativity, thoughtfulness, and emotion I have seen pour forth from Bossier will never cease to inspire me.
You showed me what I could do, believed in me and allowed me to be a part of creating that same feeling for others. For that I will be forever grateful.
Readers, I hope you will be just as awestruck as I am every time I get to marvel at the work of this incredible community. And to this team, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
All my love,
Leila Pagel Director of Operations
Dearest Bossier,
I wouldn’t be the same person if I never joined Bossier. I remember sitting on Regents 3, fussing over the phrasing of my application, so incredibly worried I wouldn’t get in or that the readers (the mystical dumplings, the embodiment of cool), would think I was lame. Every single semester I become more grateful to my former self for pressing that submit button anyways. I
am in awe of the sheer vulnerability and beauty I have the honor of facilitating the platform of—there is truly nothing like seeing it all come together in this beauty cacophony of voices. I am in love with Bossier and all its members. I hope every reader and contributor enjoys the Issue 16 as much as I do.
XOXO,
Ava MacDonald Creative Director
>Von dutch - Charli xcx
PLAYLIST bad bitch bops sad bitch sobs issue 16
>dirty little secret - Artemas
>Some type of Skin - AURORA
>Mystery Lady - Masego, Don Toliver
>Liquorice - Azealia Banks
>Naked in Manhattan -
Chappel Roan
>Dancing BarefootPatti Smith
>Guess featuring billie eilish - Charli
xcx, Billie Eilish
>LuxuryAzelia Banks
resources
Dear Reader,
Bossier Magazine aims to create an experience of joy, insight, and reflection with every issue we release. We also want readers to not only be seen, felt, and heard, but also supported. You as a reader are a part of the Bossier Community and we want to promote the mental and physical wellness of each of you. Below is a list of resources that we feel uphold the values of our team in promoting an environment of emotional processing, healing, and transformative justice regarding any trauma, pain, or harm that has been experienced. Please note this is not a comprehensive list of resources and we aim to make it as expansive as possible over time.
We love you and hope you find self-care in reading our stories, seeing our creations, and connecting to our contributors.
-The B-Team, xoxo
>Garden Song - Phoebe Bridgers
>Left - Sign Crushes Motorist
>dying in a dream - mehro
>Valentine - Orion Sun
>symptom of life - WILLOW
>Sienna - The Marias
>Price on Fun - Chloe Slater
>I Found the F - Broadcast
>Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell
>Strangers - Ethel Cain
>Last Goodbye - Jeff Buckley
Georgetown University’s Local Crisis Resources: DC Victim Hotline* 1-(844)-4HELPDC
*Free consultations and Uber rides to MedStar Washington Hospital Center are provided to those who have been sexually assaulted within 96 hours of calling the hotline 24/7/365. Family and Medical Counseling Services (202) 610-3095
Community Action Group (CAG) (202) 543-4558
National Crisis Resources:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 1-(800)-662-4357
Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741741
National Sexual Assault Hotline (800) 656-4673
National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline (800) 799-7233
National Eating Disorder Hotline (800) 931-2237
Joy Resources <3: Peptoc (707) 873-7862
Happiness Hotline (574) 832-4965
The Friendship Line (800) 971-0016
5
9 art by lindsay khalluf, jade fanning, caroline simmons photography and collage by ava macdonald
art by ang zhao
watercolors by leila pagel
The Georgetown Series
(or; Student’s Descent Upon Nature)
by Matthew Lewis
i.ICC Floor 7
Ants from here are imagined. A galaxy or nebulous over the horizon of spiraled invention laid plain and bare as concrete cubes and blocks in every sense of the word from here.
Spotting the familiarity of few recognizable miniatures sliding across brick set, subsumed by an inordinate mass. Tiny outfits with tiny plates overwhelmed by great seafoam greens and Gilded edges. Not painted on nor fabricated by hand, no, simply plotted and sprouted with freedom of growth.
Aging cobblestone, or more so mimicked 19th-century plastic diorama, pronounce this view as University Campus (backdrop of City). The wish, then, to burst through window (transcend double-strength glass) and ascend higher to view of 30-minute-looping plane is actualized inside alongside the sweet realization of insignificance and unholiness of only the city. And, further still, the dream of miniature builder held in sacred, hallowed capital with a view of the whole world without same sweet realization as a dilemma to us all.
The plastic diorama persists to the unlucky few, blind to the universal existence of people in those same concrete boxes (or ornamentations of such) with the hope of verdant redemption.
ii.Copley Lawn Bench
Complete and utter failure for the gambler’s grandson’s escapades, or more so delusions of calculated sunk cost fallacies proven not to be such.
Classic shenanigans facilitating blatant debauchery, as in cheating oneself out of his night. She is an apparition, there to the eyes, sense enough to be real. These ideas coalesce in the mind as do parent’s cigarette butts, forgotten siblings, rancid and rotten as (in) apple cores.
Worming oneself out, towards light and salvation, the coming of another day and their figure once more at the end of the night.
photography by sophia close and ava macdonald
iii.HFSC Patio
Anyways it’s 6:29pm and the sunset smothers what smidgen of sky seep through thick, ivy leaves and gnarled tree limbs
It’s 6:32pm again with clean body smothered by day old clothes, cold October gusts, and uncomfortable metal table legs against spindly protruding roots.
Same deep pink sky, cold numb skin burning bright against lover’s caress, blemished as such should when spoiled after a 3 day weekend of drinking and partying and fun absent. Sandwiched remains of the unforgiving jaws of earth, between those new faces callosed and amorphous and spilling puss of the phony, and the old faces of pure, raw rotten flesh, left out in noon’s sun till purple. The question becomes, at only 6:35pm, ought the consciousness submit to masses whims, or attempt the escape into nature and her awfully cold hands.
“Post-Substance”
Delaney Teehan
The term “art monster” originated in Jenny Offill’s 2014 novel Dept. of Speculation, connoting a traditionally male archetypal artist who stops at no moral, ethical, or emotional limit in the pursuit of his art. This archetype finds new definitions in Lauren Elkin’s 2023 book Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Elkin explores the female equivalent of Offill’s embittered male savant; she writes “What I think I hear in the term art monster is something to do with the way monstrosity authorizes women to thwart received ideas about how we—and our art—should be, look, behave” (Elkin 14). Elkin’s “art monsters” refer to the representations of the feminine form in art; she unpacks women’s relationships to their bodies and their representation in art, and what about the feminine form makes it inherently monstrous. The manipulation of women’s bodies has been omnipresent in pop culture in the last year. The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast dubbed 2023 “The Year of the Doll,” citing the popularity of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things. Outside of cinema, conversations about women’s bodily autonomy have regressed: the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision has jeopardized reproductive healthcare access across the country. Vice President-Elect JD Vance has publicly stated that women without children should have less voting power than those with children. The Heritage Foundation’s ominous Project 2025 seeks to overturn the FDA’s approval of medication abortion and demand every state report the number and details of abortions that take place within its borders. Outside the political sphere, new weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, the proliferation of elective cosmetic procedures, and the resurgence of aesthetic trends favoring skinniness have upended the longstanding era of body-positivity.
Afewweeks ago, my best friend and I saw the newest story about women’s bodies to dominate the cultural conversation: Coralie Fargeat’s film The Substance starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress and TV-aerobics instructor. The president of her show’s studio played by Dennis Quaid informs Elisabeth that she has aged out of commercial viability and that they will be replacing her as the host of their aerobics program. Elisabeth elects to undergo an experimental drug regimen known as “The Substance” which allows her to duplicate her genes and generate a younger, more vital version of herself. This persona, played by Margaret Qualley, goes by Sue. Elisabeth can inhabit this younger body for seven days at a time, then she must switch back to her original body. Sue’s body is dependent on stabilizing fluid produced by Elisabeth’s body, which Elisabeth can only generate after seven days
of consciousness. If she does not obey the seven day rule, Elisabeth’s body starts to degrade. Sue takes over Elisabeth’s role on the aerobics show which becomes wildly successful, then begins to disregard the seven-day rule, causing Elisabeth’s body to rapidly deteriorate to the point that she is no longer able to produce stabilizing fluid. Without infusions from Elisabeth, Sue’s body breaks down, and Sue attempts to generate another body by taking The Substance herself, producing a horrifying monster amalgam that Fargeat calls “Monstro Elisasue.” The creature crawls to the television studio and spews blood and viscera into the audience before finally collapsing on Elisabeth Sparkle’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The monstrous female form finds new definitions in Fargeat’s film; The Substance has prompted new conversations about not only the monstrosity of the body but the horrors enacted on the body in the pursuit of beauty.
Lauren
Elkin’s Art Monsters provides a lexicon of female artists’ responses to their own bodies and the portrayal of women’s bodies in art. She addresses the efforts female artists have made to represent their bodies which defy expectation of the idealized feminine form: what does the diseased female body look like? The queer body, the pregnant body, the deficient body? Fargeat’s film uses the deterioration of Elisabeth’s body throughout the film to speak to the corrosive power of the beauty industry to drive women to warp their bodies beyond recognition. I could not help but think of the French performance artist Orlan while watching The Substance. Between 1990 and 1993, Orlan underwent nine consecutive surgeries as part of a piece entitled The Reincarnation of Saint ORLAN which addresses the contrary nature of traditionally attractive female attributes found in fine art. She had her forehead surgically altered to mimic da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, her chin to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and her mouth to Boucher’s The Rape of Europa. Orlan speaks to the impossibility of attaining feminine beauty as presented by fine art, and the contradictory, inharmonious nature of these images of beauty when combined. Fargeat clearly shares this senti-
ment; The Substance portrays the futile pursuit of aesthetic ideals and ultimately the horror of chasing beauty to the point of bodily collapse.
Critics have upheld The Substance as a modern masterpiece of the body horror genre, comparing it to other bastions of the canon: Julia Ducournau’s films Raw (2016) and Titane (2021), Ridley Scott’s Alien saga, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), and the films of body horror master David Cronenberg. In a recent episode of Critics at Large, co-host Vinson Cunningham pointed out that these films all represent the experiences of white women which stem from centuries of portrayals of the white female body as pure and the invasion, manipulation, or desecration of that body as sacrilegious. Body horror cinema has a race problem. In Art Monsters, Elkin explicitly addresses race, gender, and the intersection of the two as prime topics in the body horror conversation. She is deeply interested in the work of Kara Walker, a contemporary artist whose work centers race and gender. One of her most famous pieces, A Subtlety, depicts a Black woman in a kerchief posed in the shape of a sphinx, referencing the “Black Mammy” archetype that arose in the Antebellum-era American South.
The sculpture is 35 feet high and 75 feet long and constructed out of 80,000 pounds of sugar; it was displayed at the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from May through July 2014. The sculpture prompts the viewer to consider Plato’s mimesis/ antimimesis dichotomy of art in the context of racist caricatures by prompting: do caricatures of Blackness beget racialized violence? Or does anti-Black racism result in caricatures of Blackness? Does response to images inform behavior, or are images created in response to behavior?
In the Critics At Large episode on The Substance, Cunningham also mentions Toni Morrison as a key figure in the world of body horror. The manipulation and warp-
ing of bodies, especially women’s bodies, are abundant in Morrison’s canon. One scene from her 1977 novel Song of Solomon characterizes Morrison’s masterful command of body horror. In the novel, the character Hagar is spurned by her romantic interest and to regain his attention, has her hair done, and buys new clothes and makeup. On the way back from the store, Hagar is caught in the rain and the new things she has purchased are ruined. Morrison describes this scene in gruesome detail saying “she was thoroughly soaked before she realized it was raining and then only because one of the shopping bags split…Rain soaked her hair and poured down her neck as she stooped to repair the damage… Hagar scraped up as much of it as she could and pressed the wilted cellophane disk back into the box,” (Morrison 335). This scene is replicated by Fargeat in The Substance. In one scene, Elisabeth prepares herself for the date; she dons a bold red dress and styles her hair and her makeup, but before leaving for the date, she violently wipes off the makeup, redoing it several times, each time more garish than the last. These scenes recall a quote by critic John Berger from his film entitled Ways of Seeing: “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself…she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.” This constant surveillance leads characters like Hagar and Elisabeth to mental collapse; the endless quest for self-improvement is underwritten by the supposition that perfection is not only attainable but necessary.
Elkinwrites in Art Monsters “Woman ‘inspires horror in man: the horror of his own carnal contingence that he projects on her.’ Women have reckoned with this legacy in various ways—by making themselves un-monstrous,” (Elkin 16). She presents us with two modes of responding to criticism of the female body; those who take The Substance, and those who reject the tyranny of the ideal woman and choose to find joy and power in their bodies. In The Substance, Fargeat uses Elisabeth’s transformation to argue that the attempts to make ourselves less monstrous are in fact the more unsettling path. At the beginning of her book, Elkin proposes approaching the phrase “art monsters” not only as a moniker but as an action: art monsters. She writes “However we read it, as a noun or verb, the art monster idea is a dare to overwhelm the limits assigned to us, and to invent our own definitions of beauty,” (Elkin 14). The Substance shows us that there is something endearing about monstrosity; by the end of the film, you find yourself more repulsed by the beautiful Margaret Qualley and her relentless pursuit of beauty than by the poor, wracked body of Monstro Elisasue. The Substance invites women to develop empathy for themselves and recognize both the horror and the beauty of the endless struggle women hold in their bodies.
19
painting by Sarah Pedley
theajacquand
untitled
in the blink of an eye, the months have passed by… it’s october now.
soft music plays and i seek solace in a lonely tear. it’s halfway through the fall.
the ticks are silent, the clock is a shy one, and i am losing time.
but i am here now too, and it’s kind of nice to wait, just learn the shape of my heart.
where it dips, where it cracks, where it blooms, and how it glows, see it in orange leaves.
there’s hate in me, there’s love to create. and in words i find a place for these things. i am sorry, again..
now, everything is abstract: where is the sense? well… is that not the sign of the times? where is the way?
chaos, i guess, is the way things are. where is the way, you say? well maybe it’s in the beauty, it’s there, i hope.
fall through the cracks, trip into the well. it’ll be okay–because when you fall, all your love will be waiting there for you. i hope.
conversation
my friend told me to leave some space between stars and planets, she says. that’s how a constellation is traced, without it, you have no galaxy, she says.
I’ll tell you: there’s emptiness between tides. people will tell you, life comes and goes. And time will heal you, they say… In the jumble of myriad words, hope slows.
in french, we say marée, in it, you hear the sea and water fold. you see the uncertain waves, you taste the salt and feel the biting cold.
maybe october is for the joy of letting go, i saw that somewhere recently, like tapping cigarette cinders off a parisian balcony.
i’ll listen to sad music, hopefully cry it out once more. i’ll run away again — that won’t end — to run up, and out from the bottom of the well.
it’s like connecting two negatives of a magnet, pushing it doesn’t feel right. and i would love for everyone’s pain to end.
how can a place so free have air so thick, a scene so beautiful it seems to be only gilded? and intentions so pure, are really truly deceptive…
don’t you see the sigh in these images? random things we try to make sense of. freeze them in time, with a picture, with words, they’re tired of us, of our forceful love.
i told my friend i love what she said, and i really mean it, i promise i do. but right now, i see the stars, just as they are, in vain, trying to see the magic too.
in french we say marée, i’ll accept the changing waters. like tears, like eclipses they move, and stars shoot and stories falter.
undecided is now the new aesthetic, i don’t know anyone who knows what’s going on, so until then, we’ll wait for the tides to roll in, and the stars will come back after every waking dawn.
turn to me.
the water is chasing you, the jet shouting for you to show you its face. turn to me, turn to me. you’ve only now just turned the handle to hot.
where is the water, where are the tears — what’s the difference now.
it’s hot, and maybe you’re sweating. there’s steam on the moldy tiles, and tiny drops form.
they are smaller than my pupils - that’s why they fill up with pictures. reflections. the steam, the sweat, the tears - they know one another. after all, they are all the same. they all shout out the same thing: give me your eyes.
tell me your fears. tell me why you cry, why you fall apart.
and now, your skin is red, and your fingers pruny. your face is burning, and your skin is trying its hardest not to unravel, under the tears, the steam, the sweat. the gunning waters, their violent threats.
wash them off, those who hurt you. scrub your skin, till you have shed their touch. you are like a snake, ridding yourself of their slime.
you bleed now on your shoulder, for the force of the brush, the lameness of the chemical soap. tiny pores fill with red fluid, but it’s diluted by the steam, the sweat, the tears.
you can’t cry, because you hurt too much, but you can’t stop the water. you are feeling right now. and the jet is still shouting: give me your tears.
turn to me, face me, take me on. take on your pain, take on your stains. why can’t you stay clean, why must you come back to this torturous rain?
you are supposed to be resting, letting go peacefully, surrendering calmly. but here you are again, under the vociferous attack of the waterfall, in the corner of your shower.
so cry. scream. but you scream silently. and your chest gives up. your eyes, your skin, your legs, give up.
look at me, it says. turn to me.
photographs by thea jacquand
untitled by blake bertero
Femininity in argentinian movies
The body, the blood
Christianity
Purity
Virginity
Violence
Joy
Love
Pain
The angle of the camera Who gets to be in front?
Where is the light?
All art comes from the same place
Life
art by blake bertero
When he walks in the door wearing glasses
Standing close together
When he asks to come over
I could.
I could see it.
How to be more than yourself
And I keep breathing and keep going
I am picking up his twitch
Where he rubs his fingers together
Can we rub our fingers together?
3
Not one time like the present
Satisfaction, the joy after struggle
This too shall pass
Thrill the anticipation
Cherish space
Empty and full
Do something beautiful for someone else.
Thus Saith The Rib Sophia Close
My spirit is worn on his back—loved, used—the same body, made to hold both of us, snarled in ligament and fat. There is not enough room for us two. In that gentle dawn, bearing Our first breath
He speaks intermittently; a hum trembles in our belly— a gurgling, fleshy sound; I cannot hear what he says To THE LORD.
HE does not talk with me; commands that I slide from his flesh. That I take my half. I had not known we were separate. I take less than I need.
THUS SAITH THE RIB:
How could I let go of him, ravage our chest? Pry and disfigure— until unwhole. Uneven, the substance of us on the grass between the cutting tool and most of him. Shivering with the mucus of being just-born: which half am I?
painting by Sarah Pedley
Mother’s Love
Natalie Shaw
My sweet baby born and bred
An unnatural selection as machinery enters my body In the wet mud I lay captive up to my knees in my own feces I lay waiting to be freed
My baby suckles for the milk
I make the milk they take
The sound of my baby crying as they carry her away
Please don’t give her a life like mine.
How many times can they break my heart?
My body can only withstand so many pregnancies, so many stolen births.
I call out for my child although I know it is like before I will not be reunited
I am born into a world I do not understand but I know is pain
A long row of cages around me.
My reproductive parts swollen and bruised as my legs give up under the weight of my breaking body
My milk drained from me but my body continues working only from the love within me
The love for the calf I will never see again and the babies I create to be sent to their deaths
When will the torment end
When I travel miles in the heat and sweat and tears of my neighbors
Blood on the metal grates of the vehicle as knees buckle under the falls and turns
We know danger.
Our handlers do not feed us we are useless once we have no more life to bear
Only our meat
Our skin
As we face death we cry in fear
No water for days we have no hope
If only I could scream and run but we are completely conquered
My womanhood is nothing but for profit
violent dancing in my bedroomby bilquisu abdullah
there are times in life, when screaming won’t suffice when that dark, dark hole you try not to go down starts to look…quite nice. when thoughts creep in, take their shoes off, and get comfortable…. so comfortable, that you give up and let them win.
those are the times when i wish i was ordinary and when i wish the clock wasn’t ticking so fast…. too fast for my mind.
when these times come, i dance violently in my bedroom.
and just for a while… the thoughts leave for a smoke break and a walk around the block.
bird bones bird bones
Claire Tsui
Chronicle of a Death Foretold opens with a quote by Gil Vicente: “La caza de amor/ es de altanería.” The pursuit of love is like falconry.
For the record, I don’t think the pursuit of love is anything like falconry. But I do appreciate the side-by-side of something tender with something bestial. I wonder what it is like to have hands that are capable of breaking someone. Arsenic in a cup, slotting a knife between a person’s ribs—these are profoundly different textures of violence than the sharp crack of a skull or the crunch of a jugular as their throat spasms between your fingers. Viscera all the way up to your elbows like gloves; hot, mindless brutality before it abruptly ends. It is one thing to be capable of rage and another to be capable of realizing it on a body. It must feel terrifyingly powerful.
You are holding the wrist of a girl and you think you might be in love with her, but all you notice in that moment is how strickeningly easy it would be to crush the slim, bird-like bones of that wrist if you ever gave yourself
over to the intrusive thought.
So the bones snap ***
until you can practically
palpable that the world narrows creaking before see it, hear it, feel it, and give way like twigs beneath your grip.
I imagine gentleness must feel radical coming from hands with a latent propensity for violence. For someone to know this and still bare you the pale underside of their wrists, pulse thrumming like a rabbit’s against your palm.
a thing with feathers
Sonia Fan
hope sleeps in the pit of my stomach hooded, tethered, vicious difficult to hold sharp-feathered hope and i, guarded and gloved thrown to the wind slicing through space triumphant, and a little field mouse dies, and a family waits in a parched meadowdid someone forget to hope for rain?
rising, falling, stomach-curdling my hope lies still.`
tonight i eat well
Blake Bertero
Design by Felix Rice
To Believe in Him
by Isabella Paimas
If God were a woman, maybe I would be inclined to believe in him. But creation bears the scars of masculine design. In war-torn fields where mothers search for children in soil that drinks blood as easily as rain, while prophets claim this, too, is divine.
Perhaps then the burning bush would bloom with wildflowers and Eden’s snake would be a friend, not foe. Teaching wisdom through the taste of knowledge while angels wore sensible shoes for their long journeys. Between heaven and our mortal shores.
I’ve seen her sisters kneel in empty churches begging for salvation from men who claim to speak For a god who never knew what it meant to bleed for seven days and still rise to bear the fruit of pain and call it holy.
If divinity wore a woman’s skin she would know how it feels to create. Time itself remembers when we worshiped in circles, not hierarchies.
I might find faith in Sunday services If psalms were sung in alto, not bass And prophets spoke of birthing stars Instead of smiting enemies to dust While miracles came wrapped in ordinary grace.
But here I stand, looking skyward. At a heaven built by ancient men Who carved their God in their own image While somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps she weeps for what we’ve made Of this world, she dreamed into being too beautiful and brutal to be saved.
photography by Blake Bertero
A Response Letter to Mr. Freud,
Father tell me how my mind works
Super ego bullshit because my morality is kindness and love and it does not come from religion or authority
The primal instinct you describe does not apply to me
To conquer to take to fight for dominance of land of object, or Shall I say women
What can you tell me Father of psychology
About the complexities of a woman’s mind?
Are we simply just pawns in the tormented
Conflicted
Immorally instinctual minds of men?
I challenge you to explain the pleasure principle for women Can you tell me what a woman’s pleasure is?
Or are we simply prescribed eternally to oblige and settle for our safest place in your world?
Is physical safety, security from men all we can ask for, hope for?
I would call you an idiot but my nature prevents me from doing so
Because I’m so full of care and empathy
No, sympathy
Because I will never know what the instinct to conquer
Dominate Destroy
Possess
Populate the planet with my seed Is like. (“Primal”) –And I never will
Loving Habits
I listen to a million conversations about your dreams and money
Your industries and calculations
When I cannot even speak your language of fractions and fortunes
And I sand myself away under your opinions and presumptions
To prove to you that I know who you are, what you want—I think Endlessly about your irritations, how to ease these peeving wounds I apparently Becauseinduce my way of loving you is Giving you the world
But there are only so many worlds of mine I can give before I am colonized.
toseek knowledge
Pandora's palms were soft; they had not known hard labor, but the beds of her fingernails were bloody and raw. The gods had not meant to make an anxious woman, but the hours she spent alone at home festered a sense of unease inside her. Pandora knew that there was more to the world than the walls that trapped her inside, day after day and night after night. She would sit among the soft grasses outside, but never did she dare wander further, towards the gentle hills that cradled her house. As she sat there in the grasses, she would let all her deepest thoughts crawl out of their crevices and into the open. She would think about everything she could never mention to her husband. She concluded that didn't dislike her life. Pandora couldn't even claim to be unhap-py; but she had an overabundance of free time. Every day felt the same. She wanted for nothing but she wanted everything she could never have. Freedom and agency were foreign to her. She didn't want to listen to the multitudes of stern voices telling her what she could and couldn't do. But she listened. She chose to ignore the gnawing feeling inside that something had to change.
Until she didn't.
There was a box inside the most central room in her house. It wasn't Pandora's, but then again, nothing really was hers. She felt a sort of kinship to this box. It was pretty and useless, just sitting in the corner of the room, confined to a life of inaction. It was all so suffocating to Pandora. Since her first moment of existence, she was told that she was made for her husband, made to be the perfect companion. A small moment of rebellion would not hurt. The arbitrary rules of the gods would stifle her no more. 42
Pandora’s eyes were gentle; they had seen no horrors, but they were big and ravenous. The gods had not meant to make a dissatisfied woman, but she felt trapped within the walls of her house. She wanted to see more. The voices reverberated across the empty walls, telling Pandora that it was not her place to know the truth of this container, not her place to know what it held.
Fuck that.
Everyone blamed Pandora for releasing all that the box contained, for that which would ail mankind for the rest of time. But how could she be blamed, when no one told her what would happen if she were to open it? Kept in the dark, deprived of what could have freed her from the chains of ignorance. Knowledge so sweet and tender, knowledge to feed Pandora’s curiosity, to nourish her mind, to inform her actions.
Everyone blames the woman who errs, who acts rashly, who is violently passionate and passionately violent. No one blames the society that gave her no other option.
Photo by Blake Bertero
-Paloma Gomez
Rosaarvensis
By Natalie Shaw
White petals embrace the sky revealing a yellow soul of pollen
The dark forest of hedges surround the field rose
Rosa absorbs the sunshine
Photo by Chloe Pascoe
Elizabeth Pecoraro
logan castellanos
saeed jude samra
SELF PORTRAITS
i know im strong because when you were all i had i still let you go because i loved you and knew you couldn’t love me — for all our similarities i still have hope and you’re afraid
i know im strong because when i was scared and crying i said i love you anyway
i know im strong because when i had everything i gave half to you and when i had nothing you’d taken the rest
i know im strong because if i gave you the same attention you give me we’d both be wondering why the other person hates us so much i keep trusting you to treat me right but i deserve the love i give
By Saeed Jude Samra
phoenix
i know im strong because with one hand patching my own heart my other keeps yours warm hoping you find the strength to say it back
i know im strong because as much as you hurt me i’d walk a mile by your side with a sore right knee and blistered foot over rock bridges and muddy streams just to see you smile and run away in a field of grass and i know im strong because the person you are doesn’t change the person i am i can do whatever i want i don’t need your permission to love you nor do i need it to move on.
artwork by Blake Bertero
another poem about her ex
By Elaine Clarke
She found herself saying I love you all the time, but she could never really say it. Not out loud. It was too hard, too soon, too confusing.
You’re so pretty. Thank you I love you
I miss your smell. Thank you I love you
I miss you so much. Thank you I am in love with you
I wish you were here.
Do you know what you mean to me?
She didn’t know what he meant to her. Sometimes he looked at her, with his cute eyes, grinning his beautiful smile, and told her the sweetest thing in the world, and she felt sick.
Yet other times, She thought of him always, and her heart would leap at a text, and nothing would ache more than not being with him.
But it’s too hard, too soon, and too confusing to be sure.
Still, she says I love you all the time.
artwork by Blake Bertero
coffee my beloved Bilquisu Abdullah
In highschool, coffee was something I knew tangentially. Ground inside my genetic profile is a myriad of stories. Stories by the fireplace, the porch, the bus stop, our new house and now, my trips home. You used to give my sisters and I “kids coffee.” At the time, it gave our lives a flare. It gave my mind the classical twang. And it gave me the satisfaction of feeling a little bit older.
I remember the day when I realized it wasn’t real. The placebo effect made its rounds on me.
Oddly enough, the facade of that feeling never went away. No matter what I sip in a cup, more specifically a mug, I still feel whisperings of comfort and content that only come through hot beverages and handles to grasp.
Coffee, is there for you when others aren’t. When you wake while everyone else is midway through eight hours of sleep and the only thing that is up besides you is the moon. Eagerly awaiting the sun to rise so it can go “down.”
It’s funny, coffee sees me from the start of my day, but it never gets to see the end.
Except, on the nights where coffee is more of a crutch rather than a comfort.
I wonder if coffee changes its perspective of me on days like that. Does coffee feel betrayed by its intended purpose? Seeing me use it while others are around: that is a change and yet still, every morning it continues to be there for me when others are not.
Nowadays I’ve fallen in love with the concept of a coffee date.
It's not always two of the things I love coalescing, but oftentimes it is.
I feel bad for the excitement I might give coffee when I walk away from an interaction saying “we’ll get coffee soon” or “let’s get coffee”
I’m sure it eagerly awaits for me to turn that into a reality or…just left looming, lamenting on the date that will never be.
I hope my teeth get stained
From mornings sipping coffee
From nights with wine and friends
I hope my teeth get stained
And with my stained teeth
And I hope I get wrinkles
Because I smile often
And my face shows it
And I hope I always dance when I’m alone
And I hope I sing when I think I know the words
And I never forget the words
To the songs I grew up loving
And I hope I wear through my shoes
And my life swells with love
And we retell stories again and again
And my curls last all day
And I feel chosen, worthy, and complete
And my freckles show through and my skin
And when it does I’ll laugh and brush it off
And I hope I never stop learning
And I cry at sad movies
Free and Gentleserenabarish
And laugh even when I’m alone
And listen to beautiful music
And I sleep well
And dream in colors that are bright and loud
And delight in cold air on my cheeks
And I hope I find comfort in my curves
And don’t worry what others are thinking of me
Because I’ll know
My life is beautiful
And I am loved
And my teeth are stained
With sips that made me smile
And those smiles are engrained in lines on my face
So I can hold them with me
And I hope I wake up tomorrow
And smile to find
I am still happy
Blood
Saniya Shah
When the time of the month comes I can smell it
The tang that Singles me out And Marks me
I Carry the blood
Of my children
Between my legs. And it hurts.
Imagine having a child
Imagine loving someone so much you had a child
Imagine not loving someone, finding a child inserted screamingly
I bear the blood
For six days
For twelve months
For forty years— 1.3 billion seconds.
For my womanness, I pay in, of all things, time.
Imagine what it would be like to create a consciousness. How beautiful is that.
Sirens’ Song Elizabeth Pecoraro
On a light blue spring day, The silhouettes of sirens cut out of construction paper
The curves of their bodies flow to songs of pleasure of heaven-granted beauty
Odysseus is curved by heaven too
His body contorted by pleas for freedom, Granted up to the deep azul sky.
He’s cut arms flailing down
His hands grasp for golden ropes.
But see the silhouettes of the soldiers?
They don’t long to join the songs of the shore
They sit straight in a line, they row on.
Their closed ears don’t ask if tales of damnation can contain
Perhaps a bit of heaven worth the soul’s fall
There on the beach, wind blowing with the trees and the birds
What a sanctified spectacle
Girls, that move with a grace consecrated by the Gods’ occasional appreciation for beauty
Embodied in its subsequent power
They dance on too, they are far too full of freedom
To worry whether or not their ravishing interests could contain the slightest bit of wrong…
Sirens’ Song, Romare Bearden, 1979
INTERSTITIAL EXISTENCE
The sun hits my face. I’m supposed to smile, so I do. Years separate me from the girl who lived in darkness
But from still to standing I still feel her between my bones, in the joints that crack and pop as I reach for the clouds, angry at their persistence.
When I sleep, I find myself floating somewhere between planets, aimlessly Alone So, when I wake, it’s with a gasp and cold sweat on my neck I grab my heart and Hope it’s still beating
They told me my heart was broken, but never told me it was fixed Do I have any more of those purple pills? I pray they worked
But I pray to no one, I guess, while carrying the shame of a thousand Eves
They couldn’t pull me from his rib, to be the perfect woman
So I carved into myself to find my own Peeled back the layers and through the blood all I found was dust
Whether self divination or sacrifice, I am complementarity to nothing and no one.
Look at me
Front, left, right, behind What do you see?
Tell me, even if it tears me apart Put me back together into some semblance of a person If my mind and it’s shell were stitched together maybe it then I’d understand
But what more is there to understand? My brain is hardly my own anymore, filled to the brim with years of fear and pain and hate
That’s all there is to it. I tried to be good And I’ll never make sense to me, The only truth can be found in isolation Am I addicted to hopelessness, too? Or was I born this way? I can’t save me, and neither can God.
I guess I’m stuck in fight or flight Or freeze Or faint.
And I think I’m falling,
Sydney Hudson 58
falling,
TRA B Y LOGAN CASTE L SONAL
