Cellar Door Fall 2019

C C E E LL LL AA RR

D OO O O R R

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CELL AR D O OR

CELLAR DOOR Fall 2019 i

AWA R D S ART FIRST PLACE Refreshing Swim Kat Timm SECOND PLACE Bedroom Ivy Choi THIRD PLACE Fig Leaves and Bricks Olivia Gillingham

FICTION FIRST PLACE Rats Arabella Saunders SECOND PLACE Certain Things Were Missing Whit Denton THIRD PLACE The Fall, The Crash Whit Denton

POETRY FIRST PLACE Lose Your Mother Hanna Watson SECOND PLACE Cockroach Ivy Choi THIRD PLACE the accommodating woman Tessa Mannell ii

JUDGES ART Sally Ann McKinsey is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher

working in sculpture, video, and performance. Most recently, she has called Atlanta, GA and Richmond, VA home. With a background in ceramics, Sally Ann also teaches workshops in wheel-throwing and is the co-creator of Utilities Included, an artist collective, exhibition space, and small editions publisher in Chapel Hill.

FICTION Ava Wolf is a notorious dumpster fire and author of

YEAR OF THE PIG (Ghost City Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Peach Mag, Maudlin House, and others. She resides in Philadelphia with her cats, Basil and Juniper. None of them have ever done anything wrong in their lives.

POETRY Emilia Phillips is the author of three poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, most recently Empty Clip (2018), and four chapbooks, including Hemlock (Diode Editions, 2019). Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, Phillips’s poems, lyric memoirs, and poetry reviews appear widely in literary publications including Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s an assistant professor in the MFA Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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S TA F F EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TAYLOR LAWING FACULTY ADVISOR MICHAEL MCFEE ART EDITOR REANNA BROOKS

FICTION EDITOR SAVANNAH BRADLEY

POETRY EDITOR MARINA GREENFELD

MADELINE CHANDLER

ASHLYN BEACH

MINNA BANAWAN

JENNA DEMARTINO

LAURA CONOLY

HANNAH ENSLEY

YOUNA FRANDIN

SAMUEL GEE

MAGGIE FOGLE

VICTORIA JOHNSON

GRACE KAREGEANNES

SAMANTHA KANE

ANGELINA KATSANIS

KATIE LEONARD

MADDIE POOLE

MAANSI PATEL

SARAH STEVENS

DEVYN SCOTT

LI-ANNE WRIGHT

TREASURER DEVYN SCOTT

LAYOUT & DESIGN TAYLOR LAWING

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T HA N K YO U To the Creative Writing Program and Department of English and Comparative Literature, for their support of student writers.

To Bland Simpson, for his continuing generosity to Cellar Door.

To Michael McFee, for his decades of dedication to Cellar Door and absolute support of the editors.

To the artists and writers who create every day, for letting us share their work with readers on campus, and beyond.

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S ART Up

Barron Northrup

COVER

Looking Backward

Mary Ellen Frank

3

Sending Thoughts and Prayers

Barron Northrup

7

Bedroom

Ivy Choi

16

Dead Man

Kari Spencer

24

Fig Leaves and Bricks

Olivia Gillingham

27

Inside Each Other

Olivia Gillingham

37

Refreshing Swim

Kat Timm

40

Conversations

Olivia Gillingham

47

FICTION Certain Things Were Missing

Whit Denton

1

Rats

Arabella Saunders

8

Notes on an Unsuccessful Exorcism

Kelsie Qua

19

Haunted Doll Listings

Rachel Moscowitz

29

The Fall, The Crash

Whit Denton

41

POETRY The Hurricane

Jacob Yankey

4

The Mourning Ring

Jacob Yankey

6

Cockroach

Ivy Choi

17

Beef Island

Kieran Patel

18

Raphael Scandale

25

Lose Your Mother

Hanna Watson

28

the accommodating woman

Tessa Mannell

38

longing, untitled

Whit Denton

39

Dear Success,

Kelsie Qua

45

I Wish I Sought Out the Simple Joy of Gazing at the Clouds and Finding Constellations in the Sky

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WHIT DENTON

C e r t a i n T h i n g s We r e M i s s i n g Certain things were missing. Some thumbtacks, a pair of socks yellowed at the heels, a coffeespoon. Catherine noticed immediately, but tried not to notice. Nobody likes a paranoid. Her boyfriend was an architecture student.

She couldn’t imagine him putting up with someone who ranted and raved about missing coffeespoons. An image came to her of a muttering woman with long twisting yellow fingernails and rows of old mason jars filled with urine. What were a handful of thumbtacks? Nobody likes a paranoid.

That was summer. Autumn came. Leaves scuttled into doorways, the wind bit. In the street, strangers’ eyes narrowed and darkened, collars were turned up menacingly. Catherine, she was certain, was missing more things. Pieces of her life were simply unaccounted for. A worn copy of a chess manual, a rice cooker, an unopened tube of toothpaste. All gone, traceless.

Her boyfriend had left her in August. For several days--the hottest she’d ever known--he hadn’t called, hadn’t stopped by. Any attempt to reach him proved futile. One night, three fans blowing full force, the windows open to the city (she had no air conditioning in those days), she gazed at the empty can of cheap beer she was drinking and thought--What if I made him up? This boyfriend, who was to say he had ever lived, breathed, walked the earth. Who, other than I, could testify to his existence? Catherine tried to draw his face but kept getting stuck on the chin, which grew vaguer and more distant to her with each successive attempt.

He sent her a letter from Colorado, where he hailed from. He needed space, time. The usual business. That was the phrase he used. “The usual business.”

Catherine, bewildered, seething, depressed, went to write him back but could not find any stationary in her apartment.

During a snowstorm that December--the streets a wasteland--Catherine drank Wild Turkey with her mother and watched Taxi Driver. About forty minutes in, she grew bored. Her eyes wandered, eventually fixating on a cockroach roosting beside a rubber plant. It spoke to her.

“Hey. Toots.”

She turned to her mom, and asked her if she had also heard the roach speak. “Yes,” she said, through sips of whiskey. “Now be quiet. I want to watch this.” Catherine asked the cockroach if he was the one taking her things, but all the creature seemed able to do was utter strings of expletives.

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WHIT DENTON “Motherfucking shit. Asshole. Hey, Toots, I’m talking to you. Toots. Hey. Fuck.”

With spring came weather so startlingly beautiful Catherine felt deceived, almost cheated out of certain expectations of necessary suffering. One morning, eating a breakfast of lentils and weak coffee, she realized she had been unemployed for an entire year. This fact presented itself coldly, without fanfare, and she felt not surprise or dread or apprehension but something akin to relief. An entire year. Her fridge was gone and at night she dreamt of a hand pouring out a bottle of something clear, forever pouring, the liquid strong and clean and full of a light like the first light ever perceived.

The following morning Catherine awoke in a totally bare apartment. There was nothing for her here. Or anywhere. Outside it had all burnt down, and for miles around you could see the enormous plumes of smoke billowing out of the barren earth. There were screams and there was silence. There was, yes.

Catherine exited her building. She felt the heat on her face, deep and clean.

Today was a good day. She would walk. And she did.

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M A RY E L L E N F R A N K

Looking Backward

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JAC O B YA N K E Y

T h e Hu r r i c a n e And in my version of the story, the hurricane actually does make landfall; wobbling a bit in the Atlantic, she gains a little earnest vigor and the ole girl absolutely starches the coastline.

And it’s the whole thing: sticky shingles are peeled off one-by-one from rooftops while wires from electrical poles hiss and jump and contort and purge white lightning, the reporting weatherman, wetter than he’s ever been before, stands at an angle (trying to fight against the gusts), someone’s cat gets sucked into the air by an updraft – you’ve seen the movies.

And I live.

But my home is destroyed and in an interview for national news I say something inspirational like, “the storm may have taken my house, but never our community” or some other bullshit like that. Someone 4

JAC O B YA N K E Y posts about my quote online – shares a soundbite, shares a video – suddenly I’m famous, suddenly people are praying for me and my family, donating to the red cross because of me.

And for only a moment I am erected in stone – never dead, never dying – my immortality lies in my most sincere words. I do not go the way of the common world.

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JAC O B YA N K E Y

The Mourning Ring One day, working at my father’s jewelry store, a woman walked in.

Showing me the glossy, tumbled piece of coal set in the center, this woman tells me she needs her mourning ring resized. Her fingers have grown pudgier, more round since he left her. She has not been dealing with the stress well, she says. She walks around and around the house, and she frets and she walks around the house, and she frets.

She eats every cookie and sweet in the house. and she frets. Her husband worked at the mine – the old one in Kanawha County. He got black lung. She walks around and around the house thinking about all of the expenses – new tires for the van, the dryer needs maintenance on the cylinder, she says. Bills and coins and dollar signs and zeroes fill her mind’s eye and what’s more?

Her son says he wants to work in the mines to help with all of the bills. It makes her head spin, she says.

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BA R R O N N O RT H RU P

Sending Thoughts and Prayers

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S

Rats Miss Hilda Wright had seventeen pet rats that slept in the bed with her. Or at least that’s what Susie Dellaray told me during a game of kickball in her humongous backyard.

Miss Hilda was Susie’s backyard neighbor. One night, Susie explained in between innings, her delinquent older brother, Tristan, had snuck over their white picket fence to snoop around Miss Hilda’s property. He walked around to the side of Miss Hilda’s little red cottage, with its cedar shake peeling off and empty flower pots sticking to the window sills, and smushed his face up against the only window with a bit of lamp light spilling out.

And there she was, propped up in a four-poster bed, reading a mysterious purple book, and stroking a blanket of brown rats covering her twiggy legs.

“Tristan stood there and counted them all,” Susie said proudly.

“I bet she uses them for her potions!” a pudgy boy Marty Sykes yelled.

“Or maybe she eats them for dinner,” Clara Lite said in that nasally voice of hers.

“Maybe,” Susie said. “All I know is that Miss Hilda is nasty.”

And she spelled it out: N-A-S-T-Y. “All I know is that I never want to go near that house,” I said. “Can we get back to the game?”

Miss Hilda scared me. Susie and her brother could tell all the made-up stories about rats they wanted, I overheard my grandma telling my Uncle Charlie real stories about Miss Hilda that gave me nightmares for a week.

Miss Hilda moved to the island in 1973, a year after my grandparents had bought our cottage on Fig Tree Lane, just a few blocks south of Susie’s estate on Avenue A. One morning, before the sun had peaked over the cedar trees and the last of the lighting bugs had gone to bed, my grandma left for her early morning walk.

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S When she rounded the corner onto Avenue B, there it was – a tiny red cottage with cedar shake siding and pots of chrysanthemums dancing on top of the window sills.

My grandma ran home to tell my grandpa about the house. It had appeared overnight. No construction workers, no real estate agents, no housewarming parties. The lot was a ghostland, and then all of the sudden it was home to two of the most charming people on the island – Miss Hilda and her husband, Lawrence.

They were a fine looking couple. Miss Hilda had long, blonde hair that spilled over her shoulders like silky cornhusks. She wore polka dotted dresses and always seemed to find the perfect shade of blush to compliment both her hair and her outfit. Lawrence had darker features – black hair, brown eyes, full eyebrows. They said they moved to the island from the suburbs in Virginia, but their tanned skin made them look like long-time beach dwellers.

Miss Hilda and Lawrence attended all the social events – beach barbeques, shag dancing at the Community Center, the annual Fig Tree Festival, the Fourth of July parade. They were at church every Sunday, sitting right up close to Pastor Frank. Miss Hilda would nod her head and whisper, “praise be” everytime the Holy Spirit compelled her to – which was often. After church, she would host bridge tournaments in her living room and Lawrence would prepare fried okra and pimento cheese sandwiches for all their guests.

Lawrence was a quiet man, contemplative. But every now and then, when someone funny like my grandpa cracked a good joke, Lawrence’s laugh filled the room. Miss Hilda beamed when she heard her husband’s laugh.

She beamed when her husband did just about anything. My grandma said she never saw a love as strong as Lawrence and Miss Hilda’s.

The couple made friends with everybody in town. Within a year, they were considered local – a true badge of honor on the island – and everybody knew Miss Hilda made the best blackberry jam on this side of heaven, and that Lawrence could handyman just about anything.

And then one day, they disappeared. Miss Hilda and her husband went 9

A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S inside that little red cottage of theirs and didn’t come back out. Not for Saturday night shag dancing or Sunday morning service. Their 1960 Buick Invicta collected dust in their driveway for six whole days without a trip to the beach or even the grocery store. On the third day, neighbors began dropping by.

“I knew they had to be hungry, locking themselves inside for three whole days. So I went over there with a container of persimmon pudding,” I overheard my grandma tell my Uncle Charlie. “Knocked twice, but no one came to the door. I saw shadows through the curtains and left the pudding on the porch.”

My grandma wasn’t the only one who saw the shadows. Miss Hilda and her husband kept their lacey curtains drawn, but every person that stopped by said they saw movement beyond the beige barricades. Some would cup their hands around their eyes and lean in real close to the glass. But they saw nothing, heard nothing. Something was moving inside that little red cottage, but no could make out exactly what it was.

On the morning of day six, rumors began circling around the town. Some were saying Miss Hilda and Lawrence were dead and everyone began arguing about who should have to go the house and peel their rotting bodies off the floor.

Sheriff McDowell said he would do it, but when he got there that afternoon, Miss Hilda was out on the front porch in her rocking chair – the one Lawrence had built her – rocking back and forth on the splintered wood and whistling Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”

McDowell asked her where Lawrence was and her response was short and simple.

“Gone,” Miss Hilda told the sheriff. “He’s gone.”

And then, without another word, she went back inside her little red cottage.

...

Sunday morning rolled around and Miss Hilda was missing from church.

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S On Monday, Hattie Daniel’s boy, Peter, was seen dropping Miss Hilda’s weekly groceries off on the front porch. She finally came out of the house late Wednesday afternoon, but only to sit in the rocking chair and whistle “Into the Mystic” till the sun went down. My grandma said she thought about going over there to check in on her, but decided against it at the last minute it.

In the meantime, news of Lawrence’s sudden disappearance travelled around town and the gossip spread like hellfire.

“Lawrence left her.” “No, he’d been unfaithful and she kicked him out.”

“But Lawrence would never do that.” “Well maybe she killed him, buried his body in the backyard.” “But why would she kill her husband? I’ve never even heard them raise their voices at each other.” “Some people are just crazy, I guess.”

And so that’s what the town settled on: Miss Hilda was crazy. With her absent from church and the Community Center, it was easier to come to this conclusion. Before long, the town agreed to keep away from Miss Hilda and that little red cottage. And no one, not even the sheriff, bothered to search the home for a sign of Lawrence.

“I think some people we’re better off not knowing,” my grandma told Uncle Charlie.

“More to talk about on this island where nothing worth talking about ever happens.”

And that’s when they started talking about the cottage, how it had appeared on Avenue B in the middle of the night. Talk of the supernatural made its way between church pews and oyster roasts. Soon enough, everyone in town was convinced Miss Hilda was not only a murderer, but a witch.

Hattie Daniels said she remembered walking home from the Community Center late one night, about two weeks after Miss Hilda and Lawrence arrived on the island, and seeing the couple walking hand-in-hand through the church cemetary.

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S “It was almost midnight, and there they were,” Hattie said. “Just strolling along like they were at the beach.”

Mr. Sykes, said he could top Hattie’s tale. One afternoon, he had been helping Lawrence and Miss Hilda straighten up after a long game of bridge at their place. He went to go pick up a purple-bound book that had fallen on the floor and it flipped open in his hands.

“There was a bunch of these weird curly symbols all over the pages,” he said. “I never told Lawrence or Hilda that I had seen them, but man, did that book rub me the wrong way.”

More stories about Miss Hilda’s witchy ways made their way around the town. Kids like Tristan began creeping along the sides of the cottage in the dead of night and peeping through windows. They returned home with wild tales about witches brews and demon summoning. When Mrs. Davenport’s dog was found in the woods with its throat slit, everyone knew it was Miss Hilda.

My grandma didn’t believe it though. She told Uncle Charlie she had read an article in the paper about small houses being shipped across the country on the back of logging trucks and remembered Lawrence had said, on one of those rare occasions he joined in on the conversation, that he was in the logging business before him and Miss Hilda moved to the island.

No one ever listened to my grandma when she explained the house’s sudden appearance, but she said she couldn’t blame them. That graveyard business made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and it sure was creepy the way Miss Hilda sat on that rocking chair of hers every afternoon and whistled “Into the Mystic” till the sun went down.

My grandma told me to keep away from Miss Hilda and her little red cottage, and after I heard the stories she told Uncle Charlie, I didn’t need any reminding. But it was hard at Susie’s house. Tristan was always trying to get us to sneak over that white picket fence and peep into Miss Hilda’s windows. “Hilda the Hag” they called her.

And I could see Tristan now, standing on our makeshift pitchers mound

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S – two big bags of fertilizer stacked ontop one another – and eyeing that picket fence. He was scheming up a way to send one of us, one of the younger kids, over to Miss Hilda’s, the orange kickball gleaming in his hands like the sun.

Clara Lite was up to kick next. She stepped up to home plate and pulsed her heels up and down in the soft grass. Tristan rolled it to her hard and fast.

The side of Clara’s foot struck the ball with a loud schmack! and the it sailed through the air and over that white picket fence, right into Miss Hilda’s yard.

Clara hadn’t even tapped first base when the question started ringing through the air: “Who’s gonna get the ball back from Miss Hilda?”

Nose goes and I was the slowpoke. I looked around at the hungry eyes begging me to scale that fence and daring me to return without a wild story about Hilda the Hag. “Don’t you have another ball, Susie?” I asked.

“No,” Susie said “I don’t. And anyways, it’s nose goes so you have to go get it.”

“But–” “Stop being a wimp,” Susie said.

“Fine,” I said, stomping away from Susie and the others. “I’ll go get the stupid ball.”

I shimmied up the fence and dropped down into Miss Hilda’s backyard. The yard, and the house, looked just as I had remembered from the few times I’d defied my grandma’s orders and gone near it: unkempt.

At Susie’s house, the grass was as green as the tip of one of those felt markers Mrs. Parker used to write on the whiteboard at Sunday School with, neon almost. Over here, everything just looked dead. I could hear the crunch of the dull-colored grass under my sneakers as I tip-toed over to the side of the cottage. When I reached the house, I saw a pile of cedar shake

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A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S shavings pooled up on the ground along the perimeter. It was like the little red cottage was shedding little red hairs.

And then I saw the orange kickball, stuck right in the empty flower pot on the window sill, like an oversized, rubbery chrysanthemum. And of course, it was right near a window. I reminded myself to “accidentally” peg Susie with the ball when I got back.

I inched closer to the window, my hands shaking as I reached for the ball.

And then I stopped, dead-still, frozen. There she was, Miss Hilda Wright, hunched over at her dining room table, cornsilk hair limp in her hands.

I dropped my hands and ducked my head down, leaving only the top of my forehead and my eyeballs exposed to see what was going on behind the window.

I focused in on her arched spine, the way her shoulders rose and fell, and I realized she was crying. No, sobbing. Big, breathless sobs. The kind of crying you do when you’re all cried out and there’s no tears left to give, but you just can’t stop the gasping and the shaking. I remembered the last time I cried like that. My tabby cat, Boots, had run out in front of a truck and been smushed down to a pulp. Just stretched out flat on the asphalt. I cried until my tears turned to breathless sobs and my grandma carried me inside and put me to bed.

But I had never seen anyone Miss Hilda’s age cry like that. My Uncle Charlie didn’t even cry like that at his brother’s, my dad’s, funeral. He cried what my grandma called “church tears” – two polite little streams running down his cheeks as he shook hands with Susie and Tristan’s parents.

Miss Hilda’s tears were not church tears. I stood there for what felt like years, watching her doubled-over at her dining room table, sobbing. I scanned the table for a sign to explain the crying – a letter, a photograph, a piece of burnt toast. But there was nothing. Just Miss Hilda, her tears, and an empty dining room table.

Before long, she shifted her weight and I ran, scared she would straighten-up again and see me in the window. I ran and I didn’t look back, hopped over the fence again and met Susie and the others, breathless with 14

A R A B E L L A S AU N D E R S adrenaline and fear.

“Where’s the ball?” Susie asked.

I looked down at my empty hands. The ball, I thought. I had left it in the flowerpot.

“Oh, uh, I couldn’t find it.”

“Well, did you at least see anything?” Tristan asked.

I thought of Miss Hilda hunched over at that table, weighed down by her breathless sobs.

I wondered if my Uncle Charlie cried like that after everyone left the church and he was alone with my dad’s casket. I wondered what made Miss Hilda cry like that.

Was it Lawrence? The stories? Both?

I looked around at the hungry eyes begging me for a wild story of my own.

I paused, took a deep breath.

“Rats,” I told them. “I saw rats. Tons of them.”

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IVY CHOI

Bedroom

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IVY CHOI

Cockroach You make no sound when I strike your body three times, four, with the broom.

Nothing sings for you.

Silence. Garbage grave. Plastic bag tied five times, six, unceremonious launch into the bin’s hungry mouth, hands scoured until palms glow.

But who else will live in the dark, hidden, feeding on anything?

Next time you emerge from your narrow home to our bright wooden floors, I’ll hum a little. Leave the bag open.

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K I E R A N PAT E L

B eef Island the steel drums shimmied their way up the pipes of the house every evening at 6 PM sharp, tumbling we found ourselves dancing the shower line, bumping hips chopping peppers in the kitchen. the ice cooling our guava juice shivered in time to the beat. we took our plates to the back porch, where the sun was squeezing its fat body into the space between two mountains on the horizon, and failed, like it did every night, cracking open like a runny egg. we sopped it up with toast, laughing. even the banana leaves wiggled in the breeze, like happy ears.

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K E L S I E Q UA

No t e s o n a n Un s u c c e s s f u l E x o r c i s m I thought about going to the funeral. I really did. Even after you read those poems you weren’t supposed to, and blocked me on Instagram and Snapchat, and told my mother I was a raging dyke. I chickened out at the last minute. It was too easy to picture the crowd crying as the speaker compared you to Mary or Ruth or some other quiet, submissive Biblical woman you had nothing in common with, and I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I stayed home, got high, and tried to paint that little spot of golden hair on the back of your knee that you always missed shaving.

Is that why you started haunting me? Leaving my shit in random places, and slamming doors at three AM, and generally gas-lighting me with juvenile Scooby-doo-esque pranks? Is it all because I didn’t go?

If it is, I think you know how petty that is. You destroyed my relationship with my family. You told all my secrets. And what did I do? I loved you. I loved you until loving you got too hard, and then I loved you some more. I loved you until I hated myself, and then I missed your last party.

Boo-fucking-hoo.

Unless. Unless. It’s always the same with you, isn’t it? The ambiguity. The leaving things a mystery, and never giving anybody a final answer, so you’re always the one with the power and the only one who ever fucking knows what’s really happening.

It’s like that night we put pans beneath all the leaks during the August storm at your grandmother’s house and laid together in the dark of the attic when the power went out, staring up at the water stains and listening to each other breathe.

I’ve had a lot of good sex in my life, and none of it was better than the sex we didn’t have that night. That night, when you finally told me your birth birth mother’s name like a sacred, forbidden spell, and admitted you thought you were broken, right from the start, in some way that could never be fixed, and my pinky grazed the edge of your thigh and you didn’t move away.

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K E L S I E Q UA Why didn’t you move away?

It doesn’t matter, ok? You’re dead. DEAD. And I don’t want to be haunted like this anymore.

Noah said he thinks I’ve been a bitch since everything happened. He used a nicer word than that, but we both knew what he meant. I don’t know why, but I decided to show him the paintings. All of them. He stood for a while taking them in, and then he looked up at me after he’d looked over Possession, which is the one that shows the time you tried to smother me.

He’d been through something similar with an ex of his.One day he just woke up to someone biting his ear, but nobody was physically there. He told me about it so casually, his tone like the shrug of shoulders.

“These things happen,” he told me, “but you don’t talk about them with people they haven’t happened to, because then they’d think you were crazy.”

Noah gave me the number of a woman downtown who handles this kind of thing. Her shop smelled like cat piss and burnt hair. The consultation cost twenty dollars. I sat in a green plastic chair. She had a crystal ball, but it seemed like an afterthought.

“You have ghost,” she said, in a stage-y Transylvanian accent. “You have ghost, and you want to get rid of ghost. You get rid of ghost by getting rid of all that ghost has to cling to. Is really so simple.”

As I went to leave, she put a leathery hand on my arm. “Be careful,” she said, “about what things you leave in this world.”

I didn’t ask what she meant. I didn’t need to.

I couldn’t have known how much of my past belonged to you until I tried to extricate you from it. Noah and I had a bonfire out back, flames made of technicolor braces-laced smiles and sepia-tone summers. Years of useless memorabilia. Concert tickets. Notes passed back and forth in church.

Napkins with game scores.

He brought whiskey and made me laugh until I was sobbing. I can only be

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K E L S I E Q UA tricked into so many of these things, including grief. We came back in and slept with our shoes on, flung out on the bed like dirty laundry. In the morning, he said he thought I should try to get my work shown in a local exhibit at the community college, unable to recognize that this suggestion was more depressing than appealing. I thought you were gone and was so relieved I spent the whole day laughing at nothing. Then I went to bed and woke up with your nails digging into my sides, and wondered at myself for ever thinking you would leave me alone.

“Maybe you need a cleaner break,” Noah said when he saw the bruises.

“A cleaner break,” I repeated. I saw bones snapped, exposed in their ivory-white vulnerability through the blood and flesh and torn clothes. A cleaner break. “Ok,” I said. “Ok.” The couch we got at the thrift store and then left in your father’s barn all winter because we were afraid of fleas.

The albums I first heard you singing in the shower.

The dresses we bought together, or that I bought because I thought you’d like them.

The ring I wore every day of the summer I lived with you as a teenager.

All the cinnamon, and cardamom, the hot cocoa mix, and the cayenne pepper.

The Great Gatsby, and Great Expectations, and Gone with the Wind.

By the time I was done, there were more things lined up by the fire pit than there were left in my apartment.

The bonfire was bigger this time. It made me sick to look at it. When did you get in so deep? How did I let you take so much from me?

“How do you feel?” Noah said.

Raw, like flesh with the skin pulled back.

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K E L S I E Q UA When I got home, you cried tears of salt in all my wounds, and no matter how many times I begged you to tell me what was wrong, you wouldn’t.

I went back to the shop with the fake psychic. “I’ve given up everything,” I told her, “and the ghost is still there.”

She muttered something under her breath and turned away from me. She came back with a little plastic figurine. It had a plaque at the base that said, St. Jude.

Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

I bought the idol and laughed at how far your love had taken me from our childhood God. I told St. Jude all about you that night. The words unraveled from my tongue with a speed that frightened me. He listened and listened and then when I was done he was quiet for a long time.

“You know she’s haunting your paintings,” he said, with the help of the holy spirit of mescaline. “She’s been haunting them all along.”

I contemplated the water stains on the table in front of him. I didn’t say a word.

It’s not so hard to stop creating art. One day you just slit yourself open from the sternum down, and let your soul out, for good.

We took the paintings out back and put them on the ashes of the previous fires. Noah brought gasoline. For a long time, I stood very still holding the container over the art, thinking about how I’d arrange this scene on canvas.

The burnt fur of an old teddy bear, the blackened grass, the warped burnt plastic and the heavy gray wetness of the air.

Your laughter was echoing, even then, from the woods.

I stood for a half an hour, thinking about the poet Rosetti, who buried a to exhume the poems seven years later. I thought about how ashes cannot be exhumed. Then I put the gasoline down and took my paintings back into 22

K E L S I E Q UA the house just before it started to rain.

That night, I smelled your hair on my pillow, for the first time since I was a teenager. Rose-scented Herbal Essence, coconut oil. The fresh-salt smell of the ocean and tears.

I squeezed my eyes shut, flooded with memories more physical than mental.

“Say something,” I said. “Say anything.”

But, like always, you were too chicken to respond in a way I could understand.

23

KARI SPENCER

Dead Man

24

R A P HA E L S C A N DA L E

I Wi s h I S o u g h t O u t t h e S i m p l e J o y o f Gazing at the Clouds and Finding Constellations in the Sky I. STREET ARTIST IN MALAGA, SPAIN A girl (blonde bored charmed beautiful) draped on the chair, and grey upon the canvas.

She winks at me with both eyes(left: blue, right: blue) I leave in a hurry, jumping over fountain stream and well-bloomed flowers. On my return; our grey girl had grown a mouth. The blonde?

Still had just the one.

“Is your spleen as real as those semi-parted lips, love?”

II. HALF-WAY So I dreamt I was Louis Fourteenth the other night.

I was seducing this laughing courtesan – who’d wed herself to chastity – and we compromised on going only ‘half-way’ I made love to just half her body.

Kissed one cheek, caressed a single breast.

What would Freud have said?

Forgot to ask him, last time.

III. CHAMPAGNE “Well consider this–” I said.

“I’d rather not. Actually I’d rather stop listening to you and talk to someone else.

You are awfully dull.” and off she went, throwing her hair, taking a silky flute of champagne from the waitress beside her.

I reached for a glass, but the waitress shook her head and turned away.

25

R A P HA E L S C A N DA L E IV. PARK He went to the park, but left in tears when the ducks refused him.

His heart jumped as they came from as if to eat the bread he offered.

But they would only pick it up with their pink beaks, fly it lazily to the trash bins and return with mocking quacks.

The children across the pond pointed and laughed at him, as did the parents.

Squirrels chased him past the gates, panting and miserable, until he would try again tomorrow.

26

O L I V IA G I L L I N G HA M

Fig Leaves and Bricks

27

HA N NA WAT S O N

L o s e Yo u r M o t h e r a meditation on Saidiya Hartman’s Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route The famished way - the cowrie price the capillaries in my skin feed muscles below - and red surface above when I scrape my knuckles or squeeze my fingers into a fist.

I can barely feel the spitting of the dammed blood or the rising tide when I release and break the levee. I am - there is a lineage in the holes in my bones - like the gaping mouths of the almost-weaned a child who paws at the air & presses into bosom because the dotted sucking breast has dried. I would taste my own marrow, scrape away the last layer of meat with my two front teeth to put her back inside of me. But no: what - I gnaw on in my hands

- gnaws me is not the scaffolding built by my mother. Yes: is its wreckage - pinned - penned together in her image: torn, muddied like the banks between the deltas wide and rolled and en - chanting like the river - and rich that I may touch, unknowing: Arkansas :: Niger :: Nile :: Lethe

28

R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z

Haunted Doll Listings HAUNTED DOLL!!!!! $15 or best offer.

Pictured below EDIT: (BIRDCAGE NOT INCLUDED. STOP ASKING ABOUT THE BIRDCAGE. ONLY THE DOLL IS FOR SALE!!!)

Hi, my name is Lucille. I am a witch and proprietor of a highly successful Etsy shop that sells supernatural wares. I have the gift, which allows me to COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD. If YOU want assistance contacting the dead, visit my store. I offer crystals, handcrafted Ouija boards, and scented candles for communing with spirits. In addition, there is jewelry, wands, artisan hand soaps, voodoo dolls, and AUTHENTIC potions I brew myself.

Recently, I’ve run into a few minor obstacles selling this doll. There isn’t anything wrong with my store, but I am eager to get this doll to a new home as soon as possible. So, I’m branching out a little bit to online markets, such as this. The doll is in perfect condition, and not damaged in any way.

This doll is the lovely redhead in the frilly sea-foam dress pictured below.

The spirit that inhabits this doll is named Elizabeth and she was a teacher when she was alive.

Some context, for buyers unfamiliar with my store. I live in an old house that used to belong to my grandmother. It was built almost a hundred years ago over a doorway to the SUPERNATURAL WORLD! Before my grandparents moved in, a seer inhabited the premise in the 1800’s. She conducted séances every single night. Because of that, my basement is EXTREMELY HAUNTED. I have been renovating this house since I inherited it a few years ago. I just moved onto the basement, and I think some of the restorations knocked a few more powerful spirits loose from the foundations of the house. This isn’t a total surprise to me. Sometimes massive changes in the physical world can agitate the spirit realm, especially 29

R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z since the connection between my basement and the supernatural world is so strong. Luckily, my powers allow me to protect myself AND help the victims of the past rest by placing their spirits into a vessel. Usually a doll.

I HAVE NEVER HAD A SPIRIT LIKE ELIZABETH BEFORE. Last night, I was awoken by thumping coming from INSIDE the walls. The next day, Elizabeth was in a different room of the house. She said she wasn’t the one banging, but I think that just goes to show that she likes shenanigans.

Elizabeth is a kind spirit at heart though. Sometimes, when I leave her alone for the day, I come back to find some of my things have been moved around! Just last week I found that she had rearranged all my crystals, hidden my glasses under the sink, and smeared wax all along the walls! But Elizabeth is just a troubled soul, snatched from the world before her time.

WARNING!! ELIZABETH IS A MISCHEVIOUS SPIRIT! But she is also very affectionate. Sometimes, she will come into a room at night and watch you sleep. Do not be alarmed!! This is just her way of indicating that she loves humans, and misses her own time as a living person. ELIZABETH IS HARMLESS. I have had to lock her in a birdcage, though. Elizabeth will sometimes vanish from the house for stretches of time. Being a small house, there are only a few rooms, so there aren’t that many places she could go, especially considering that she is made of porcelain. I have NEVER had such an active spirit before!!! Elizabeth is spending some time in the birdcage, because I don’t want her wander off and hurt herself. SHE IS NOT DANGEROUS. Entertaining offers of $15 or best offer. This Haunted Doll is a HOT ITEM!!!

Guaranteed paranormal activity!!!

Again, I would like to stress that there is nothing wrong with Elizabeth.

She’s a lovely spirit in a lovely doll, but she just requires a little more care than I can provide at the moment. I can’t spend every morning fishing my keys out of the air vents, haha.

EDIT: THE BIRDCAGE IS NOT FOR SALE. THE. BIRDCAGE. DOES. NOT. COME. WITH. THE. DOLL!!!!!!! ____________________________________________________________

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R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z HAUNTED DOLL!!!

Bidding starts at $20.

Lucille here again. I’m happy to say Elizabeth sold on this site less than 24 hours after I posted the ad! So, this is a great place to announce the second haunted doll up for auction.

I don’t think Elizabeth was entirely responsible for all the mischief going on. Although she was certainly partially responsible, there have been a few more complications.

The same night I shipped Elizabeth to her new home, the knocking inside the walls of my bedroom got worse. It was more frequent, and louder. Every time I thought I was about to fall asleep, there’d be another bang that would startle me awake. It got so bad, I’ve had to start going to bed with earplugs and noise cancelling headphones.

I went into the basement, and using my powers, I picked out a new culprit.

Or rather, culprits. I am now offering two haunted dolls for the price of one.

BOTH MUST GO!!!!

These twins, Adam and Abigail, love to cause a little bit of trouble! They have a tendency for sneaking off on their own. At least Elizabeth waited until I was out of the room to go off. Now, sometimes I set them down on a table, turn my back for half a second, and turn around to find them in a different part of the living room or gone altogether! I know I have special abilities to protect myself, but it can be a little bit off-putting.

Not to worry though! They’re just having fun. When they’re out of sight, I can hear them whispering to each other. I’ve heard that human twins can be exceptionally close, and sometimes like to keep secrets, so I suppose that Adam and Abigail, being spirits, are no exception.

I don’t mind the voices on the other side of closed doors, but Adam and Abigail do go a little bit too far for me.

At night, I hear a voice- Abigail’s I believe- urging me to go to the basement.

It’s only a bit strange, because her doll isn’t anywhere near me. At least, I 31

R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z can’t see her doll near me.

And Adam seems to be agitated whenever I try to start renovations. In the past few days, Adam has opened drawers, slammed cabinets, broken dishes, left shattered glass lying around, ripped furniture, and made the house look especially gloomy! I think all the mess from the repairs is making him unhappy, so I recommend purchasing these dolls if you keep a tidy home.

For their comfort.

This is nothing to worry about however! These two haunted dolls will make a great addition to any family. They’re just acting out a little, because the particularly haunted nature of my house is agitating them. Once they’ve been taken in to a new home, they’ll settle down.

Minor juvenile delinquencies aside, the twins are great for display. Adam and Abigail are cloth dolls with firm limbs, heads, and torsos. They have identical black button eyes, a little scratched and dulled over time, but still functional. Their mouths are stitched into a smile. Adam is pictured below in his little sailor suit. It’s blue and white, and the stockings come up to his shorts. Adam misses his sailor hat, so if anyone with any sewing ability is interested in a haunted doll, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO HELP A SPIRIT! Abigail has long straight, blonde hair, the same color as her brother’s. Her dress is an eggshell white, with blue embroidery along the bottom where it ruffles out slightly. Her sleeve cuffs and collar are also ruffled. The blue embroidery extends up the center of her dress in tiny waves. There’s still a light blue ribbon in her hair. They are truly an adorable pair!

Adam and Abigail would like me to inform all potential buyers that THEY ARE A PACKAGE DEAL!! These siblings spent their lives together, before tragically perishing. They would like to spend their afterlife together. But all children need a home, so they’re $20 together.

If you’re interested in any other supernatural wares, check out my store!

Link Below. ____________________________________________________________

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R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z HAUNTED DOLL $5. Price negotiable.

Lucille here. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which items exactly are sources of spiritual activity. Especially for me. I’m quite sensitive to the supernatural, and my entire house is rife with paranormal energy. Now more than ever.

It took a few days, but some generous soul brought the twins into their house. I am sure they appreciate it.

However, the unusual noises have continued. At night, I still hear the whispering. It’s not that it’s gotten louder, but it sounds like the noise enters directly into my ears, no matter what I do to try and block the sound. And the thumping is worse too. It’s the same volume, but it’s more frequent. It’s almost rhythmic.

I think that I have finally found the source of all this intense activity. I woke up one morning and went downstairs to see that the basement door was flung open, even though I had locked it to keep Abigail and Adam out of the carpentry tools. I found another doll, one I hadn’t seen before, in the living room. The furniture had been rearranged. All the chairs were in a circle, facing the center of the room. Everything that had been on the tables, and cabinets had been removed and lined up in a circle around the bigger pieces. This doll is called Mabel.

She has a dirty face and short tangled black hair, cut into a bob. Her green dress is patterned with little pink flowers that have faded over time. Mabel has no eyes. Just black holes where the eyes used to be. And little scratches all around the empty sockets. Mabel is the first doll I’ve ever sold that I might classify as “malevolent.” So, I warn any potential buyers to proceed with caution and make the best decision for themselves. I’ve posted this doll onto my website as well as here, because I really feel that protections I offer on Etsy are absolutely necessary to safely inhabit the same space as this doll.

After finding Mabel in my living room, I began to have terrible dreams.

This isn’t the place to describe them, but just to give you an idea of how serious this is, I’ll let you know that the tamer nightmares involved 33

R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z gruesome prophecies of the suffering to come. I now know what it is to die and it fills my waking hours with dread. I dread the night, I dread the future, and I dread the whispering the follows me down the halls and lingers around corners, urging me to the basement.

I’ve started to see figures out of the corner of my eye. The first one I saw, I thought it was my grandmother, but the voice that spoke to me was far too low and gravely. The figure hovered a few inches above the ground. She was translucent and surrounded by a pearly glow that shifted from pink, to white, to grey in the dim light. Her hands were clasped in front of her. And she watched me and told me to knock in the support column under my feet to find what she’d left me inside.

Now, some of you have been familiar with my store and my powers for a while, since I started this business. And you’re probably thinking that it’s my grandmother who’s appearing to me. After all, like it mentions in my bio on Etsy, my grandmother also possessed the gift. But, I don’t think it’s her. My grandmother told me before she passed, that when it was her time, she wouldn’t be interested in vising this physical world. She said that she’d had enough of communicating back and forth across the line between life and death. Grandmother wanted her afterlife to be a retirement for her. So, as much as I miss her, it probably isn’t her.

If it wasn’t for my special abilities, and magics that I’ve cultivated my whole life, I would be a little bit afraid. As it is, I’m troubled. I’ve seen spirits my whole life, but they’ve never been so active and never with such hostile energy.

If you are interested in this doll, I urge you to consider any form of supernatural protection, spells, or items. These are all available at my store.

Or even your local religious institution.

Link Below! ____________________________________________________________ Possessed Spirit Slate Free. Shipping included.

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R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z I knocked down the column. I wasn’t going to, but I went to the basement.

It was dark. It’s always dark now. The electricity doesn’t work anymore. I’ve had people over, they don’t know what it is. They seem unwilling to stay for long and fix it. Bad vibes, they say. This is my grandmother’s house. It’s dirty now all the time, and full of shadows.

They appear to me in all different shapes: shimmering spectral forms, solid human figures, slightly less human with animal features such as horns, feathers, etc., crouching naked things that hold their knees and leer at me from under tables, or with the face of a loved one. They say that last one is to make me more comfortable. I see my grandparents again, but they don’t talk to me in my grandparents’ voices. It’s not them, I know it’s not them.

They don’t sound like that.

I went into the basement and I scratched at the column, knocked, and thumped. It was hollow. Support columns are not supposed to be hollow.

Inside there was a box, and inside the box there was a spirit slate.

In the old days, before my grandparents lived here, they sometimes took two chalkboards (the kind Elizabeth said they used in her schoolhouse) and hinged them together. Close the chalkboard, wait, and open it to see a message from the spirit world. I took it out of the basement and up the stairs. The steps were thrumming so loudly, so rhythmically I could feel the vibrations through my feet.

In the old days, before my grandmother sensed all the restless souls that were taken away from their lives, before she moved here to help them, before she gathered her friends and closed the door to the supernatural world that is in the basement, there was another woman here. She ripped the spirits out of their afterlife unnaturally. I don’t think she knew what she was doing. And I think when she was done with her séances, they never found their way back to the spirit world. Her name was Mabel.

I had to wade through a sea of dolls to the kitchen table. They started appearing like Mabel had. Every day there were more and more and more.

My grandparents had a doll collection–it’s what I’d been using for the vessels–but I’ve never seen these before. I don’t know how they got here or where they came from, but this house is filled with dirt and dolls.

35

R AC H E L M O S C O W I T Z I thought I could handle it, I thought what my grandmother had taught me would be enough to protect me. And, I thought that it was possible that I had been wrong. That maybe she was around, and she was trying to watch over me. But she isn’t, I know now that she’s gone from this world forever.

And there were so many other things, I was too worried about the other things. I was worried about the voices, the walls, and the dead. I am never alone.

I sat at the kitchen table by the window and I closed the spirit slate. I waited. I felt hundreds of glassy eyes watching me.

I can’t live here anymore, this is too much. My spells, charms, and wards are only prolonging this. It only keeps them creeping in, instead of flooding all at once. I was looking at the slates and I opened them. There was just one word.

Stay I want someone else to take this, I can’t just throw it away. I threw Mabel away, but she just came back and she brought more of the dolls with her.

I’m surrounded by frills, and empty faces. I need to know someone else has this and can keep an eye on it, keep it from finding me again, from coming back. I can’t help them, there’s nothing I can do for any of these spirits. I can’t help them find peace, I don’t know how to send them back to where they came from. I can only tether them to this world, and keep them conscious for a little longer. I’m not my grandmother.

I need to leave. ____________________________________________________________ House Best offer.

Great location. Historic. Large backyard. Furniture included.

Accepting any bid.

36

O L I V IA G I L L I N G HA M

Inside Each Other

37

TESSA MANNELL

the accommodating woman In 2018, Olay recalled its newest line of honey-jasmine crème body-washes, citing the unexpected toxicity of select inactive ingredients.

Instead of asking if this was the reason you no longer touched me, I threw the bottle out.

A study popularized by Wall Street Journal’s lifestyle section warned that while 84% of adults in the New York tri-state area drink coffee at least once a day, 69% of the same population sample found coffee-breath to be a serious turn-off.

I switched to black tea, hoping you’d kiss me again.

Blue was my favorite color, but the Food Network explained to viewers at home that blue walls in a kitchen can naturally decrease one’s appetite.

I wanted you to be hungry for me, so I painted the walls yellow like a mustard seed. I waited for us to grow from this.

In the spring television season of 1991, Oprah invited a marriage counselor to her talk show. Apparently, women felt much higher rates of depression following divorce than men. This was thought to be due, in part, to the guilt. Their mothers’ voices told them they could have made it work.

I try to go a day without hearing your voice in my head. I come back to myself whenever it is quiet.

I watch Gone Girl and laugh when it’s over. That could have been me.

Sherwin-Williams formulates a paint shade named ‘Secure Blue SW 6508.’

For me, it’s a toss-up between this and ‘Endless Sea SW 9150.’

I like the thought of being secure again. I repaint my kitchen without thinking one sad thought.

38

WHIT DENTON

longing, untitled an ache like evening, like claustro phobia drowning in the two inches of water that i call self– less because of an impoverishment of language more because i am lazy & life is so goddamn short. outside, a hurricane brews. leaves flutter like my brother’s defective heart.

(where is he now?) the air is all wet with clean doom. i digress. (the ache. the claustrophobia.) right. i was talking about coming across something beautiful, looking beside you, finding empty space. the perfect swimming hole & no one to swim with. opening your mouth to sing only to find your vocal chords have vanished in the night. look at you. look at what you‘ve made of yourself. joy bubbles in your throat, like rabies, like cyanide. after all of this, finally you let loose a cough like living. it echoes in the canyon of your loneliness. the ringing of a dinner bell

(small & clear & old) that cuts through the purgatorial wood calling you home for once & for good. i digress. i have lost the thread. all i ask please is that you answer the phone. my brother, we have swimming to do.

39

K AT T I M M

Refreshing Swim

40

WHIT DENTON

The Fall, The Crash The aircraft fell through the air, dense and purposeful, a cinder block dropped into a lake. The fall was smooth. Were one to watch it from the outside, it might even appear elegant, a touch of grace in its deathward descent.

On board, panic abounded. People threw their fists against the plexiglass windows. The faithful screeched Hail Marys until their throats were raw. The faithless just screeched. Mothers realized with a strange, startling intensity that they had nothing left to offer their children. They wept openly, tears streaming onto the pale, open faces of their kids. The thin veil covering the truth of things was finally torn. Have I not given you enough in this life? Have I not earned my final moments of hysteria? The children wailed, banshee-like.

Some were totally silent, Rodinesque mutes fixed to their seats with an eerie permanence, resigned to their enormous sheet metal sarcophagus.

Strange things happened as they fell. A middle aged math teacher and a teenager with heavy black eyeliner began violently making love in the aisle. Only minutes before the plane began to lose altitude, the pair had been discussing the teacher’s wife, who wrote thick scholarly books on Samuel Beckett. The teenager, vaguely, had said she was interested in literature.

They fell. People continued to scream, weep, fuck. An elderly couple in matching oversized Hawaiian shirts began singing a rendition of “Michael, Row The Boat Ashore” but gave up after a verse and a half. A few of the flight attendants passed out tiny bottles of liquor to the passengers.

An insurance lawyer from Peoria quietly puked up bits of grey bile speckled with red.

Small kindnesses were made impotent in the enormous howling death void.

Time passed. They still fell, losing altitude with a breathtaking swiftness. It wouldn’t be much longer now. Sobs of various timbres echoed throughout 41

WHIT DENTON the fuselage. Collectively, the passengers all imagined a similar scene: the impact, the hulking body of the plane crumpling like a beer can, the hungry flames traveling upward and devouring anything not killed from the sheer raw force,the immovable meeting the unstoppable. They wondered with a furied agitation: would it hurt? How long would it take? Would the highlight reel of their lives flash before them? As they fell, the answer to the last question became starkly evident. They saw nothing of their lives–the old cliche was a false one. Their brains boiled over with purest anxiety, emaciated hopes. The injustice of the end, how it lacked poetry, a sense of things coming full circle. An optimistic few thought that it was not i nconceivable they crash into a body of water, though a look out the window quickly destroyed this dream of safety. The earth rushed joyously up to meet them.

And yet they still fell. A few of the most hysterical stopped crying, and were now looking around the cabin, blinking, confused. In the voice of one Catholic priest, which had grown vast and confident in the dark light of apocalypse, a note of hesitation could be heard. The teenager and the math teacher had finished fucking, and were now sharing a cigarette the teacher had smuggled onto the plane. Their dialogue had the feel of all postcoital chatter--it was unhurried, full of breathy recitations of memories and dreams and deeply held beliefs. “I want to move to Florida,” said the teenager. “I have a cousin in Gainesville. She loves it there, really.”

The tension of the fall was still present, but there was a noticeable slackening. The fever pitch, the shrill whine of the blade only a hair’s length away from the artery, had become a dull buzz. They fell, and after some time the coping tactics--the screeching and praying and fucking, the progressive abandoning of inhabitions--came to a halt. Most of the passengers returned to their seats, fixed their hair, wiped the smeared makeup from their faces, slowly finished their drinks. The pilot made an announcement over the P.A. system, only saying: “This is curious. This is curious.” Nothing more. This is curious. They fell. They spoke among themselves, the flight’s tenuous camaraderie returning. The ground rushed up. They fell further. The situation remained curious.

Hours passed like days, each minute stretched to its breaking point. After some time, a sort of splinter group formed among the passengers. This 42

WHIT DENTON group believed with a passionate ardor bordering on the religious that the only way they were going to end this strange limbo was by jumping out of the plane. Everyone else could toil in coach for the rest of time, but they were determined on freeing themselves. They gave long, animated speeches on their imminent leap of faith, gestured grandly, scolded those who were intent on staying put, seatbelt on. Frequently, they would all grasp hands and hum, visualizing their escape. And for a while it seemed like they really would do it, but they too stayed put, forever caught up in the business of planning.

Eventually someone realized the pilot had disappeared. The cockpit was empty, and there weren’t many places to hide on the plane.

Fewer and fewer everyday. No one quite knew what to do with this information. Sometimes the clouds took the shape of other planes, and the passengers (feeling less like passengers, more like citizens of the aircraft) would imagine a whole mystical interlocking network of freefalling flights, a synchronized assemblage of near-disasters, something with a design, a pattern. It was almost beautiful. A few wrote poems about the situation, though most didn’t bother.

As of yet nothing had happened; nothing ever did; nothing ever had. The idea of the crash took on a strange light in the minds of the passengers, distant, abstracted, a kind of future ideal they could only ever approach asymptotically. They all spoke in terms of the crash, when it would happen, what it would be like when it did happen. Every conversation, every action, orbited the negative center of gravity that was the crash, but these references were increasingly ironic. A mention of “the crash” was often followed by a wry smile or a quick, knowing wink. Yes, yes, the crash, of course. A not insignificant number of passengers refused to believe in the crash at all.

They were falling, and had always been falling. The crash was an illusion.

To many, this line of thinking was suicidal and fallacious. But to the others, those who refused, it was the only way to think. For them, to believe in the crash was to die a new death every day. Their whole world became the cramped space of the cabin. They spoke with an arrogant sureness, and rarely looked out the windows.

And still they all fell. Days on end on days on end, the stars blinking in and out of their little ovular windows as if there was a highway 43

WHIT DENTON out there with thousands of interstellar Volvos and Buicks silently honking through empty space. Sometimes a passenger would stand up and pronounce a theory about their descent. It was all a government plot. They were amnesiac actors on a T.V. show. They were dead. But they weren’t.

Everyone knew this. Things eroded, the seats grew ragged and threadbare.

The passengers drank vodka in the settling dusk, watching the light change from their portholes. The world shook and heaved like an addict in withdrawal. And yet,they still were not dead.

They were very much alive, bodies in time, falling fast to nowhere.

44

K E L S I E Q UA

Dear Success, I have slaughtered too many years on your altar.

I have taken jobs for only money, eating crisply minted bills instead of filling my belly with my grandmother’s shepherd’s pie.

I have crushed the singing sparrow in my chest for sheets of paper that say, Dear so-and-so, she is a good girl who never ruffles blue collars or misses work and only rarely bleeds on the carpet.

Now here I am, a testament to the same old bootstrap sermon, so scared someone would see behind the curtain that I became the curtain instead.

Now I cannot even steeple my hands of crushed velvet long enough to pray for mercy.

45

K E L S I E Q UA Now my stomach howls for what it lacks, howls because it knows it is too late to go home for dinner.

46

O L I V IA G I L L I N G HA M

Conversations

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CONTRIBUTORS Ivy Choi is a senior double majoring in English and Studio Art. In addition to writing and painting, she likes to drink coffee, watch movies, and listen to music.

Whit Denton is a junior Comparative Literature from Verona, New Jersey. Generally, he likes reading/writing fiction, good sandwiches, & the music of Bruce Springsteen. I promise you he is trying his very best right now despite what they say about him.

Mary Ellen Frank is a writer, musician, and artist of many trades. She is a senior at UNC majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Studio Art. Her old work focuses on spirituality and surrealism, while her newer works are geared toward living a more sustainable life. Recently, she’s been working with scrap leather, recycled wood, and songwriting about love for all.

Olivia Gillingham is pursuing a Studio Art Degree with a Creative Writing Minor. All Olivia is doing here is trying to fuel the shift of the paradigm (still holding onto a tiny hope for the humans).

Tessa Mannell is a first year double major in Global Studies and Public Policy with a minor in Korean. She is from Fayetteville and has been writing poetry in English and Spanish since she was 16. Poetry is her favorite way to connect with people across the barriers that often keep us from understanding one another.

Rachel Moskowitz is a junior studying History, English, and Creative Writing. Most of her time is spent hanging lights in Memorial Hall or at the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies’ debates. The best thing anyone could do to understand her sense of humor is to read Edward Gorey’s “The Doubtful Guest.”

Barron Northrup is a senior double majoring in Communication Studies and Studio Art, in which he is currently working on an honors thesis. He spends his (scarce) free time climbing on rooftops, hoarding small shiny things, and imbibing copious amounts of Earl Grey tea.

Kieran Patel is a junior Biochemistry major, Poetry minor from Mooresville, NC. They 48

are happiest when driving fast or herding sheep.

Kelsie Qua is a writer and English Literature major from Upstate New York. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Gone Lawn, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and The Quotable. “Dear Success” is her first published poem.

Arabella Saunders is a sophomore from Outer Banks, NC. She’s a Journalism and Food Studies double major and in her free time she enjoys going to the beach and baking vegan desserts.

Raphael Scandale is a junior Computer Science and Economics double major and Studio Art minor from New York. His favorite color is gray.

Kari Spencer is a first-year Library Science major from Graham, NC and enjoys being surrounded by books. She loves all forms of art, but spends most of her time working with her specialty - horror-themed oil painting.

Kat Timm is a Studio Art and Anthropology double major from the far north. A bird watcher, down dogger, overanalyzer, and design junkie, Kat is naturally pink and an allaround spooky person.

Hanna Watson is a senior African American & Diaspora Studies major and Creative Writing minor. Her favorite form to write in is spoken word and her favorite person to write for is Jesus, but she’s grateful that others listen in. Outside of writing, Hanna loves hiking, playing guitar, and enjoying good coffee and bread.

Jacob Yankey is a senior from Wilmington, N.C. majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry. Following graduation, he would like to get into professional beekeeping, attend graduate school, or become a trophy husband.

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I N F O R M AT I O N Cellar Door, the official undergraduate literary magazine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is published twice annually and welcomes submissions from all currently enrolled undergraduate students at UNC. Guidelines for submission can be found online at http://studentorgs.unc.edu/thedoor. Please note that staff members are not permitted to submit to any section of the Cellar Door while they work for the magazine.

All undergraduate students may apply to join the staff of Cellar Door. Any openings for positions on the Poetry, Fiction, or Art selection staffs will be advertised online. You may contact us via e-mail at thecellardoor.unc@gmail.com.

SUPPORTING CELLAR DOOR Your gift will contribute to publicity, production, and staff development costs not covered by our regular funding. Contributors will receive copies of the magazine through the mail for at least one year.

Please make all checks payable to “Cellar Door” and be sure to include your preferred mailing address.

Cellar Door c/o Michael McFee Department of English UNC-CH Greenlaw Hall, CB 3520 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520 CONTACT US AT THECELLARDOOR.UNC@GMAIL.COM FIND US ONLINE https://cellardoorunc.wordpress.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cellardoorunc Instagram: thecellardoor.unc The publication of this issue of Cellar Door was made possible by the generous financial support of the UNC Undergraduate Student Government. © CELLAR DOOR ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2019

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FALL 2019 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TAYLOR LAWING COVER ART BARRON NORTHRUP

ART

FICTION

POETRY

CHOI

DENTON

CHOI

FRANK

MOSCOWITZ

DENTON

GILLINGHAM

QUA

MANNELL

NORTHRUP

SAUNDERS

PATEL

SPENCER

QUA

TIMM

SCANDALE WATSON YANKEY