2021 Conceptions Southwest by Conceptions Southwest

2021

CSW

Conceptions Southwest 2021

Copyright © 2021 Conceptions Southwest Published by the Student Publication Board University of New Mexico All rights revert to contributors upon publication c/o Student Publications MSC03-2230 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 Printed by Starline Printing 7111 Pan American Freeway NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 505-345-8900 Cover design by Nell Johnson Cover Image, Me is We by Lacey Chrisco Magazine design by Jeanette DeDios and Nell Johnson Flyer design by Rosie Samudo and Nell Johnson Fonts: Adobe Futura, Lato, P22 Underground (small caps), Hannotate TC (Chinese). Conceptions Southwest is a fine arts and literary magazine created by and for the University of New Mexico community. Its staff consists entirely of student volunteers, guided by an editor in chief selected by UNM’s Student Publication Board. Submissions are accepted from all UNM undergraduates, graduates, and continuing education students; faculty; staff; and alumni. This issue is brought to you by the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico (ASUNM) and the Graduate Professional Student Association (GPSA). Copies and back issues are available in the Daily Lobo Classified Advertising Office, Marron Hall, Room 107. The Conceptions Southwest office is located in Marron Hall, Room 225. To order copies of our magazine, please contact us at csw@unm.edu or visit our website at www.csw.unm.edu.

CSW Conceptions Southwest

44 To being brave and taking a chance.

Masterhead Jeanette DeDios Nell Johnson Marcos Balido Rosie Samudio Deanna Tenorio Marisol Chavez Thomas Ropp Bianca Torres

Editor in Chief Managing Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor

Special Thanks Anita Obermeier and the Department of English Susanne Anderson-Riedel and the Department of Art Daven Quelle

Business Manager

Student Publication Board Amaris Ketcham Chair, UNM President Representative Cindy Pierard Vice Chair, Faculty Senate Representative Sammy Lopez NM Press Association Representative Raina Harper ASUNM President Representative Adam Lopez ASUNM President Representative Ryan Regalado ASUNM Senate Representative

Student Publication Family Alex McCausland Ally Wiesel Megan Kornreich

Editor in Chief, The Daily Lobo Editor in Chief, Limina, UNM Nonfiction Review Editor in Chief, Scribendi

From the Editor We can all agree that this past year has been tremendously hard on all of us. We’ve had to quarantine, which has left us separated from family and friends. We’ve lost loved ones to a violent pandemic, that for a while was incurable. But even in our darkest moments, we prevailed. We evolved. We never let this pandemic change who we are. I came into this year fully expecting submissions about COVID-19, but to my surprise, there were none. Perhaps it was too soon to put our thoughts and feelings about this pandemic into words, or they were secretly embedded within the pieces. Rather, we were gifted with something better: passion. This passion radiated from poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, photography, visual art and open media. We received over 150 submissions and we were able to publish 48. These 48 submissions spoke to our editors and fueled their need to read, copyedit, and publish these works in the current issue of Conceptions Southwest. Having the courage to submit your art and pieces of writing is hard. It can be intimidating and scary to be left in the dark for months, not knowing if your piece was chosen, or worse, rejected. Submitting your work for publication is the first step in proving to yourself, that your words and art are worth sharing with the world. I am grateful to everyone that submitted their work this year. It was a joy reading every submission and I encourage those that weren’t chosen to keep writing and submitting. The making of this literary magazine was no small feat. From the beginning, there were a lot of unanswered questions. I am happy to say that this issue of Conceptions Southwest was made completely online with a staff of dedicated volunteer editors who were committed to seeing it through. Without them, this issue wouldn’t be here, online or in your hands. As an Indigenous woman from the Jicarilla Apache Nation and Diné Nation, I am honored to lead this year’s staff as editor in chief. I spent years building my craft and skill on other student publications like Scribendi and Blue Mesa Review, but this year was a testament to not only what I’ve learned but what I could help teach to the staff. My greatest achievement this year is not only the completion of this issue before you, but the knowledge I was able to pass on to our editors. I have no doubt that you will be seeing them in the literary world. We chose Me is We by Lacey Chrisco as the cover image for this issue. We selected it specifically because we believe that, at this time, we need each other the most. Me is We is a call to action to celebrate that we are not alone and that we are better together. As readers, contributors, and editors, we are the heart of our university community. Let us join together as one; to smile, laugh, and create joy from everything in this magazine and hope that it will inspire new writers and artists to submit their works in the future.

Thank you editors, contributors, but most importantly, thank you— for reading. Jeanette DeDios Editor in Chief

Table of Contents

Creative Nonfiction

Poetry

Genealogy Jennifer Tubbs

An Unpretty Prequel: Lessons on Life and Literacy AJ Odasso

What I Meant When I Said We Were Seeds Kennia Lopez

I Stepped Off the Trail Zach Hively

If Wine Worked Candra Lowery

Dinner Where I Live Michael Johnson

Traveler (Caught Between Mountain and Sea) Erin Benton

Short Fiction

Buoyancy Lacey Chrisco

Bottles Blake Moore

The Cold 18 Hours Linking Shayna Marie Davidson

Excerpts from 3AM Internet Searches (Or, Possible Hauntings) Erin Benton

Third Fairy’s Son Sami Stroud

Berry & Bramble Sami Stroud

To Have and to Hold Sami Stroud

A Crumbling Foundation Lily O’Connor

A Spare Thought for the Hollywood Monster Erin Benton

The Rabbits Tail Does Not Grow Long Sami Stroud

Allé Crys LaCroix

Frantic Father Fern Nita Kelly

Woman Writer Amanda Cartigiano

Open Media

Stretch Shayna Marie Davidson

Playing Malinche Myrriah Gomez

54 72

The Los Angeles Teen Artist Audrey Wilkins Gallup Cable Hoover

Nuevo Alex Dickey CSW Award Poetry

Damn Europe Amanda Kooser

Notes on the Rain (We Must Praise Higher) Zoe Perls

Photography 9

Grace and Green Kelsey Varisco

Upstate Bridey A Caramagno

Me Is We Lacey Chrisco

Petra Meaning Rock Kennia Lopez

One, Two Lacey Chrisco

Visual Art

Villa Scene for the Dreamer Luis Diego Rigales

The Visitor Stan Hartt

La Luna Local Alicia La Rae Ulibarri

I Am Alive and It Is Alive J Landolina

Ocean Storm Melanie Griego

Don’t Tell Your Mom Jiayi Liang CSW Award Photography

Grit Armelle Richard

Autumn Aspen Sage Hughes

Want Armelle Richard

But I Like It Megan Kamauoha

Glaestig Harness Kira Gone Stephany Taylor

Waves in the Sand Robert Macdonald

Psychological Movement Andrew Swenson

Bluewater Blues Noah Hickerson

What You’re Made of Solana Armijo

The Birch Tree Kira Gone

What I Meant When I Said We Were Seeds Kennia Lopez

is that i can’t help wishing for the proverb to come true // that all we’d know is sky /and up /and growth /and ripening past white hands lowering brown bodies into the gaping mouths of graves, past bruises flowering from the knuckles of america— but all we know is endless heat and switchblade

summer— all we know is being buried and aching to bloom

Third Fairy’s Son Sami Stroud

WELL, WHEN I WAS A BOY, before I lived in this city with its motorcars and concrete buildings, times were different. They say we’re in a New Age now, where steam power and electricity are replacing the old gods, but I’m not sure the Old Age will let go that easily. Anyhow, I’ll tell you a story so you’ll know what I mean. I grew up in Liuchia Valley before there was a cargo train and a grocery store; so everyone had to either grow their own food or starve. People were real superstitious back then, the kind of stuff that isn’t allowed nowadays, and most of what we knew about the spirit world we heard from our village oracle, Third Fairy. By the time I knew her, Third Fairy was getting on in years and her skin was shriveled up like a walnut shell. When she was younger, she was a famous beauty, although no one would marry her because she lived at the valley’s top. In my hometown, you could always tell how poor somebody was by where they lived. The farther away from the river, the worse the land, and the hungrier the people. But anyways, Third Fairy’s father would send her down to the village center to sell bean cakes, seeing as beans were about all they could grow, and every day she would come down with a new black and blue bruise. I guess all that beating opened a door somewhere inside her and let the spirits in, because one day around midafternoon she suddenly started shaking and shouting about a big rain, saying that we riverfolk should build levees around our fields. That night the river jumped its banks, and Third Fairy became an oracle. It was a real pride to have an oracle for a wife back then. Soon Third Fairy had a husband who didn’t beat her and a son about my age, whom she loved so much she could scarcely breathe. Sometimes the village folk came to her for advice on things small and big. She left that little shack at the top of the valley to her father. The next poorest family moved in once he died, a few years after I was born. They were Old Chen, his wife Winter Peach, their strong son Big Bao, who did most of the farm work, and their baby son Second Bao, who was born sickly. One day during my first spring as a thirteen-year-old, Big Bao had an accident and seed drilled his own hand. I remember because I was in the village center buying goat milk for Ma, and he came screaming down the valley with his hand all drilled through and bloody. Infection took him two days later, and right after he passed, Old Chen and Winter Peach went to see if Third Fairy could do something about it. “Please,” Winter Peach begged, “Ask the spirits to let him come back.” 2

Short Fiction Now, Third Fairy felt sorry for Old Chen and Winter Peach, because like I told you, she used to live up at the top of the valley and she knew what it was like to be hungry. But she also knew that spirits weren’t the generous type, and to get a whole life back from the other side they would need to offer a whole life in exchange. She told Winter Peach as much, but Winter Peach still pleaded with her, fat tears making tracks in the dirt on her face, to please just ask. Third Fairy looked to her own son, who she never let out of her sight, and decided to do her best. So she rolled her eyes back into her head and started talking to the spirits, mumbling words no person could make out. Every now and then she’d holler “uh-uh!” or “ahhuh!” and her whole body would twitch like she was being pulled like puppet strings. Finally, her eyes faced forward again and she turned to Winter Peach and said, “Take a cow down the valley and drown it in the river. Come back after three days.” The two parents hugged each other, thanked Third Fairy with tears in their eyes, and headed back up the valley to do as she said. The village folk in my hometown liked to talk, so by the time Old Chen and Winter Peach came back three days later, most everybody was already there at the riverside, including me and Ma. I was short then, so I had to crane my neck to see over the crowd, but I finally caught a glimpse of what everyone was looking at. It was Big Bao, hand healed and shiny

pink, dripping with river water and beaming up at his parents. They wept and hugged each other, and everyone was real pleased. People started calling it a miracle and Third Fairy a spirit-master, until Third Fairy’s voice sliced through the crowd like a knife. “My son! Where is my son?” Everyone knew Third Fairy’s son never left her side, so there was a commotion for a while as we all got busy looking for him. After a while one of the older village folk stopped, scratched his head, and asked what he looked like. Someone answered that he was short and had a flat nose, but someone else chimed in saying that no, he was tall with a long nose, and pretty soon it became apparent that nobody could remember what he looked like at all. Third Fairy looked real hard at Big Bao, his family and then at the river. Then she got real quiet and told all of us to go home. A few days later I was sent to the city to look for work. Life came along and kept me there and I didn’t make it back until after Third Fairy died, so I never got to ask her about what happened that day. But you know, just because child memories don’t make sense once you’re an adult, it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. I don’t know if city borns like you will understand, but like I said before, things are different in the countryside, without electric street lamps to keep the dark away. All I know for sure is this: Big Bao walked out of that river alive, and I still can’t remember the name of Third Fairy’s son.

Berry & Bramble Sami Stroud

DEATH GROWS OUTSIDE HER WINDOW. Past her mother’s gardenias, past the carefully watered greens and gourds, Death rises untended. His tendrils creep along the forest floor, winding up tree trunks and filling the spaces between. Leaves of lush green obscure His thorny backbone underneath. He waits for her to notice Him. She likes to play at the edge of the yard when the sun is going down. The shadows of the forest stretch their limbs in the sunset as its warm light steeps the air with the taste of mystery. She dips her toes past the boundaries of her home, watching how the light shifts on her skin. It’s as she loses her balance that He catches her hand in His. She cries out. His spines have pierced her skin. The pain is a humbling reminder of the vulnerability of her bare flesh. The sun slips under the horizon. Death hangs above her in a brambled arch, as if to say, welcome home. Something immense shifts within her as she watches the blood trickle down her dirty palms. Her mother scolds her for coming home late. “Those woods are dangerous,” she says. “I don’t want you to get lost out there.” “But, Ma, I won’t get lost. He won’t let me. He knows the way.” “Who won’t, hun?” Spring brings change, as it always does, but this time it is marked by changes in Him. Death has crept above the undergrowth, no longer left to skulk in the scrub. With her, He blossoms in buds of pearlescent white and shiny crimson berries. Their fragrance drifts into the house along with the March breeze. She blooms, too, red on white linen. She doesn’t feel any different. Blood is blood, whether from a pricked finger or the coming of womanhood. An entrepreneurial gleam lights up her father’s eyes. He leaves at once, arms crossed. Her mother weeps, because she remembers what this means. “Can I go outside again, Ma?” Her mother wipes the tears from her face. “Sure, hun. Be back before dark.” Death has called her into the trees. The pads of her hands are calloused and rough with the scars of his caresses, so she can greet him tenderly as lovers do. I missed you, says the breeze 4

Short Fiction ruffling through His leaves. She smiles. Stepping closer to Him, her foot nudges something feathery and cold – a dead raven, its beak still smeared with crimson juice. The berries gleam invitingly from His innocuous vine, and she looks at him askance. You were born with a seat at the Wild Table, my love. Do not fear the shadow cast by the passing of the light. Hours later, she can still feel the raven’s eyes on her back as she makes her way back to the house.

It’s winter. Four blackbirds flutter by the house, past the untended gardenias and a garden long ago overtaken by weeds and grasses. They land on the windowsill, cawing mournfully, before disappearing into the thicket. She feels her belly with trembling hands, and she remembers. Death grows outside her window, sweet berries nestled in a crown of blackened thorns. He waits for her to return. Dinner is prepared, the table is set. Death is here. He lingers in the cookware, breezes around the nettle tea, and settles in the pie with heady scent and glistening red. Her hands are steady as she serves a slice in front of the blacksmith’s son. Death sharpens His sword in the whetstone of her husband’s stomach, just as her son grows stronger within her own. The blacksmith’s son shudders into his chair, eyes growing dim. She stands. Seven black shapes soar overhead as she follows Death into the darkening hedgerows.

The next day, her father returns with a man, the blacksmith’s son. His brow is smeared with grease and his pockets clink when he moves. We don’t have much, her father says. Just the house and the garden. Does it suit you? It does, says the blacksmith’s son, and he looks at her like he might look at a slice of honey cake at Midsummer. But her heart already belongs to another, one to whom she’s pledged herself under hallowed arches of briar. After her parents have gone, she tells her new husband. I’ll make you forget, he says. Amidst the folds of her freshly laundered sheets, he teaches her the horrific shape of a man’s woman, the red stain that cannot be washed out. It is here she learns that demons lurk not in the shadows, but in the candlelit rooms of her childhood home. Death calls her again, but she cannot bring herself to respond.

One for sorrow, Two for mirth Three for a funeral, Four for birth Five for heaven Six for hell Seven for the devil, his own self.

To Have and to Hold Sami Stroud

HOWARD ARRIVED ON A FRIDAY AT 5:00 PM ON THE DOT. Maggie liked to work late

anyways, preferring to operate undisturbed, so she decided that sticking around for this job couldn’t hurt. With a practiced hand, she laid out her tools and unzipped the body bag lying on her table.

His body was long and lean, with powerful thighs and calves, and he had warmly-toned

skin the color of chestnut. But what struck Maggie immediately was the head; beautiful dark hair, a little mussed. Thick eyebrows that darkened his brow and lent him a serious look. And his eyes, wide open and pale green. His mouth hung open in a slight pout. Maggie couldn’t help but stare.

Her watch beeped, and Maggie realized that she had been gazing at the man for nearly

ten minutes.

“Oh, um, good night then!”

Feeling suddenly bashful, she zipped him up halfway and hurried to her car.

Maggie didn’t usually work on the weekends, but under the pretense of finalizing some

reports, she found herself walking up the stone steps to the county coroner’s office by 8:30AM on Saturday. The door creaked as she entered the autopsy room, making her wince at the loud noise. Howard was where she left him, though his left leg now dangled off the table.

“Were you comfortable last night?”

The air conditioner turned on, rattling in the corner of the room. Howard’s chin fell ever

so slightly towards his chest. Maggie smiled in relief.

“Oh, good. I know it’s not the Hilton, but I’ve been quite happy working here even after

all these years…”

Maggie liked spending time with Howard. He was clever and handsome, yet bashful at

the same time. Most of all, he was a good listener, a trait she sometimes despaired was lost in the other sex.

“I feel like I can tell you anything,” she admitted sometime late Sunday evening. Howard

did not respond, taciturn as always, but Maggie could tell he was pleased. She had always liked the strong and silent type.

On Tuesday, Mark from the county clerk’s office called. 6

Short Fiction

“Hey, Maggie—”

“Dr. Christian.”

“…okay, Dr. Christian. I’m just calling to

She assured herself and tried in vain not to think about the man still lying

check in with you about the job we sent you

on her autopsy table.

last Thursday. We’re looking to get this wrapped up as soon as possible.”

Maggie pursed her lips but did not reply.

The county clerk would just have to wait. She

This was all so sudden.

had met Howard less than a week ago, for

Christ’s sake! Surely this was moving too fast?

“I mean, did you run into any

problems? The police report seemed pretty

straightforward. The guy killed himself once his

him? She had avoided the subject for so long,

wife came clean, poor sap.”

but certainly he had thought about it too. Or

even anticipated it, just like she had.

Maggie grounded her teeth in

And how would she even bring it up to

annoyance.

passed in a similar fashion. Friday morning rolled

“Listen, I’ll have the results soon, we’re

The rest of Wednesday and Thursday

just a little busy over here at the moment.”

around, and Maggie awoke with a wild sense of

determination. She put on a short black dress

“If you’re backed up, there’s certainly

room in the budget for an intern or two—“

she often wore to conferences and a pair of

pumps she hadn’t worn since her late 20s. At

“No!” Maggie surprised herself with the

forcefulness of her outburst. “No, that won’t be

the last moment, she swiped a stripe of pink

necessary, Mark.”

gloss over her lips.

An awkward silence ensued as Maggie

In the autopsy room, Howard was waiting

weighed her options.

for her.

“You’ll have my results by the end of the

“I’m sorry I left you alone these past few

week,” she said finally and hung up the phone.

days,” Maggie began softly. Her heels clicked on

Cheeks burning, she packed up her bag and left

the linoleum as she approached the table.

the room, avoiding Howard’s questioning gaze.

whispered, caressing the stubble on his cheeks,

Wednesday morning Maggie called

“I just…I think I’m ready, Howard,” she

in sick, claiming a nasty stomach virus. Her

“if you’ll let me.”

stomach was queasy.

Howard’s body shivered. Maggie smiled

and took out her tools, arranging them beside

Stroud his table.

It was time to make the first cut. She

drew her scalpel down his centerline, softly at first, and then harder, puncturing him down the middle. Blood, too red, oozed from the incision. Maggie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

“You’re perfect,” she soothed, and pulled

apart the layers of skin on Howard’s torso.

Having removed his skin, Maggie

discarded her scalpel in favor of the rib cutters. Howard’s nose twitched.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I’ll go slow.”

The crunch of snapping

bone echoed throughout

the room. Little flecks of

tissue and bone stuck to

her lip gloss.

Finally, Howard’s ribs lay in pieces next to her table. Moistening her lips, Maggie reached her bare hands into his chest cavity, savoring the pleasant warmth of his insides until her fingers found their goal. With a tug, she removed her hands, grasping Howard’s most vital organ in her hands, wet with blood.

Cradled between Maggie’s palms,

Howard’s heart shuddered and began to beat again. 8

Grace & Green Kelsey Varisco

Kelsey Varisco has loved taking photographs since she was a preteen. She experiments with both film and digital media. She loves capturing candid portraits and natural scenes.

I Stepped Off the Trail Zach Hively

to find a tree — any tree would do — so long as it hid me from puritan eyes — and I found not hiding there the kind of rock with green bedded between white-stippled black that says thank you for listening that hums you are where you need to be that whispers tuck yourself in your pocket alongside me and take yourself wherever you go

Zach Hively writes poetry, nonfiction, alt-folk music, and the award-winning “Fool’s Gold” humor column. He is the founder and publisher of Casa Urraca Press, and the author of the poetry collection Wild Expectations. He dances Argentine tango and lives near Abiquiu, New Mexico, with his dog.

Traveler (Caught Between Mountain and Sea) Erin Benton traveler (caught between mountain and sea)

the wind, the sea is not as kind a mistress as the earth, she sounds like far-off songs, there is no dust, built from gray granite set against gray sky, new streets, and so easily I I am lost amongst this new, ancient City here is northeast (hill and coast) the compass on a map says, yet when I think of her, here, my heart is filled with such childlike love I cannot bear to speak it with mere mortal mouth

home is nestled in the shadow of a giant cradled in the palm of stone breaching the earth, she sounds like Americana, smells like dust and rain, brown stucco, familiar streets I travel with my eyes shut, memory guiding me through the veins spreading across her flesh home is southwest (desert, mountain) the compass on a map says, and when I think of her, home, my heart is filled with such childhood love I cannot bear to speak it with mere mortal mouth.

I know, when I am gone, I will long for the sea, and I will name her granite streets home.

I long for the mountain, and my streets, and the smell of dust and rain.

but I am here, exposed against the salt,

Upstate Bridey A Caramagno

Bridey A Caramagno is an Art Studio major at the University of New Mexico. Previous publications include Straight Up: An Intergenerational Queer Anthology as well as numerous zines. She gets most of her inspiration from those around her.

Buoyancy Lacey Chrisco Layers of matted grass are flattened beneath my weight. For those fragile stalks not crushed, pale seed heads bend gently with the small weight of endless life. The stream flows constant behind me, before me, ahead of me. That so much water, gallons and gallons and gallons can move through seemingly unburdened; that an infinity of future grass rests, latent in the feathery plumes of seeds which brush my hand; that the yellow warbler lands and floats and lands and floats; loud only in its shadow is almost too holy for my heavy senses. I cannot believe my life-filled body to be that light, as it creaks and groans and crushes the life around me. Still, I dream of weightlessness.

Bottles Blake Moore

He presses me against his lips and says it helps with the pain that the burn of his throat does not compare to the relief I give inside his mind. He drinks me slowly when he is tired and faster when he is exhausted. The softness of his lips reminds me of sweeter times. I know someday he will drain me entirely, I will be empty and he will let me fall to the ground and into pieces that will cut him when he tries to fix me.

Blake Moore is an aspiring poet and teacher. She hopes to graduate from the University of New Mexico in the spring and earn her Master’s in order to become a professor and share her passion for English and poetry with others.

Me is We Lacey Chrisco

One, Two Lacey Chrisco

Lacey Chrisco is a visual artist who works primarily with photography as well as language-inspired art. She also writes poetry and nonfiction, and works as the assistant curator of art at the Albuquerque Museum.

The Cold 18 Hours Linking Shayna Marie Davidson

The cold 18 hours linking the evening & the morning of October 26–27, 2020 when we, and everyone it seemed, felt

that the world had tipped

over for an instant.

Though everything

seemed undone, there

was at the very least:

muffle of quiet snow,

eclairs I made

for your birthday, left

over & cold cream

filled. Carbon monoxide

dizzy, we ate them slow, late night kitchen

table all whiskey warm

& high. I will say it:

that snow fell

beyond the glow of blue

window, streetlamp flutter

in strokes

so blurred & soft.

…

How could we not believe

it? Between our four hands

we could, of course,

hold each other 18

close enough

press ourselves enough

at the seams – keep everything that needs not be undone be done. Let detail wash

away clean.

Shayna Marie Davidson is a graduate student at the University of New Mexico studying French. She is interested in the link between literature and visual media, especially within comics and poetry zines.

Villa Scene for the Dreamer Luis Diego Rigales

Luis Diego Rigales is a local New Mexican currently living between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. He is in his final year at the University of New Mexico studying Architecture, though he looks to take his education into a more sculptural practice. His work aims on refocusing ourselves to our environment through scale and proportion.

Excerpts from 3AM Internet Searches (or Possible Hauntings) Erin Benton

Want to hear a ghost story? there’s a New York Times article that asks, “Can We Inherit Trauma?” If I were to build a house, I would pull it up from the soil I would lay brick by brick while translucent hands would guide mine, into patterns I cannot break, or change and then I would walk the halls and weep, and cry for something I cannot quite remember, and cannot quite reach, against the shadows on the wall behind me. what is a ghost but a memory we inherit? and what is a story but a memory we hold dear? (and what is a star but a ghost story? passed on through light years, long dead, still watched still watching.)

and something was passed down to me through generation and generation and generation as far back as my mind can conjure, and I feel them guide my hands to bury myself with soil as protection and sculpt patterns I don’t understand and to imitate the shadows on the walls behind me.

there’s a google search that asks can we inherit trauma?

Want to hear a ghost story? I’ll give you my name.

A Spare Thought for the Hollywood Monster Erin Benton the voice of Frankenstein’s Creature is so often stolen by silver screens, isn’t it? that poor creature, cobbled together from forgotten corpses and lost souls, waxing poetic for pages in a book that is never opened. what a tragedy, that a creature lives such a borrowed life and speaks not a word in our minds. in one little hand we hold a camera that makes a silent film and in the other, we cling to the voice box of a monster. for the golden rule claims we must never allow the monster his voice. for what might happen? we might see ourselves as something monstrous our sins mirrored or (worse, perhaps) we might look into that silver screen and watch it transform into a silver mirror and see that poor creature (lost and alone searching for meaning) as something like us. Erin Benton is a recent graduate from the University of New Mexico. She has previously won the Lena Todd and Karen McKinnon awards for poetry, and has been twice published in Scribendi as well as Conceptions Southwest. She has spent the past year writing pandemic-induced stories and poems, but hopes that this creative streak will last well into the future.

The Visitor Stan Hartt

Stan Hartt is a lifetime creative with a strong emphasis on both invention (games and mechanical items, mostly) and writing. His most current writing includes a completed screenplay about future selfdriving technology impacting the life of a truck driver, as well as a short book in the works about the current divisiveness in our national politics and how a smart political movement could steer our nation out of the mess we’ve made of ourselves. This is his second time appearing in Conceptions Southwest.

Genealogy Jennifer Tubbs ONE GENUS OF CICADAS, PERIODICAL CICADAS, spend most of their lives as underground nymphs, emerging only after 13 or 17 years. I told you this towards the end, when you visited me in Texas and we sat on the back porch, mosquitos fattening themselves with our blood. There are two possible explanations for this: the cicadas hide out down there so that potential predators that may evolve to hunt them starve in the meantime, or they emerge in such a swarm that they can stand to lose a few without threatening their survival as a species. It was months before we’d take our own stories back. The cicada would be mine again and the pata de guanaco that flowers in the Atacama yours. There will be a twelve-letter crossword space in some distant future and I will think of purple petals, of you. Except that’s not the way stories work, is it? Once they’re spoken into existence, they’re fair game. I imagine you’re telling your Swedish wife about the buckling and unbuckling of drumlike tymbals that make the cicada song right now, the way the cicada does not stridulate, but resonates. When my grandmother takes her last breath, I am texting a boy. The machines meant to keep her alive whir and beep neon next to me. In the following months, I will memorize the smooth stone knuckles of the boy’s fists, the animal heat of his hands on my trachea, the way my body shakes as if from pleasure. What they don’t tell you about dying is the sameness of it all, the way everyone gurgles like they’re drowning. After my grandmother’s body is wheeled away, my mother will turn to me, will swear she saw a white cloud leaving her mother’s chest, will place her hand over my heart and say right here. My grandfather spoke Gaelic, taught me the words to “Mo Ghile Mear,” blamed his drinking on his lineage. It’s in the blood, he told me, plopping his paddy hat atop my pigtails. Once, he hit my grandmother so hard she sustained brain damage. She couldn’t even follow a recipe afterward, and her pot roasts came out of the oven crumbling, spilling their innards on the counter. My mother was watching from the closet when the crowbar came down on her skull. Twenty years later, her daughter will read the words I cleaned up the blood so Dave, Chris, and Little Greg wouldn’t see in a yellowing journal with a broken lock. The way memory works is this now lives inside me, in my unbludgeoned brain. The real subject is memory and how we piece memories together. The subject is your assuring me I had invited you to come along, but had forgotten. The subject is your hand on the small of my back and, sometimes, around my neck. The subject is the space between my words when I could have said go, could have said leave, but didn’t. 25

Creative Nonfiction When my grandmother eventually lost her ability to speak, I joined her in silence. I didn’t talk for the three months following my third suicide attempt. We met in the space between words, a brush of hands as we passed the salt. We smiled at each other in the hallway, her body blooming larger with time and mine withering into a husk. I dreamt of a silver thread that wrapped itself from her neck to mine and woke with the weight of it unspooling across my clavicle. I often feel guilty about not holding my grandmother’s hand as she passed, how I turned away and into myself. I would like to think I was in the denial phase of grief, looking for distractions to pull me away. I would like to think it wasn’t the downward tug of fate, the way she and I both rooted around for pain like truffle hogs, snouts stuck to the forest floor. The last time I tried to kill myself, I saw a puff of smoke escaping my chest. I willed it to stay, said the words that I had learned so well – wait, stop, come back to me. The first time I traveled alone, I ordered pastel de jaiva, a sort of crab bisque, at a restaurant by the ocean. It was warm, orange, and gelatinous. It reminded me of the fiddler crabs along the Gulf where I grew up, what they would look like boiled alive and pureed together in death. I couldn’t eat it. I paid the bill, poured the bisque into my water bottle, and walked out to the shore, where I spilled its contents into the sea. A whale surfaced in the distance and I sat in the wet sand, small and human in my plastic rain jacket.

Sometimes coming home from the grocery store, I imagine our unborn child, how she would insist on helping carry the bags, clutch the handles with her tiny fists and drag the stuffed canvas behind her like a felled antelope. The blurred boundary is between past and present, between truth and untruth, between the soft folds of organ and muscle tissue that could still bring forth life, if I decided to. Tymbals are regions of the cicada’s exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, jellylike portions and thickened “ribs.” Adam’s wife was created from his costal rib, torn from cartilage and thrown into the garden, a half-formed mutant. The fracture in my seventh rib on the right side still hasn’t healed, so that each time I inhale, I imagine bits of bone traveling through my bronchioles, branching off into smaller and smaller passageways, until they reach the alveoli and begin their circuit anew. Jennifer Tubbs is a second-year MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of New Mexico. She’s thrilled to be back in the Southwest after working in India, backpacking through South America, and briefly flirting with stardom in L.A. (Read: She was on one reality show that no one’s ever heard of.) When she’s not writing or teaching, Jennifer can be found hanging upside down in acroyoga or hiking in the Sandias.

Allé Crys LaCroix Mother-womb Stretched to its limits Like patience Stretched thin At Y’s next Curious & unwise Decision Sweet boy With big head & Wild eyes all Back talk and willful Lookin’ the sweet-singing girls At church Up & down Said he’d gladly sing hymns With them Sweet boy All curiosity & quick-feet Dogging the impatient hands Of his daddy Tryna swat the trouble Out of him Momma Rose Made him whole fish Eyes & all Offered him rice & a belly full of Warm soup

Sucked her teeth impatiently When he ate it all Too fast Allé grew a stubborn boy All fiery-tongued & sure-footed Loved him good & well & fierce Loves him good & well & fierce Allé says Gros bisous ma fillebig kisses my daughter, Je vais bien ma fille I’m fine my daughter My sweet man With big head & Sweet eyes says, Welcome to the family, my love. We’re family, now.

Crys LaCroix is a PhD student studying intercultural communication. Her work has previously been published in Limna: UNM Nonfiction Review. She enjoys cooking, reading, writing, and adventures with her big-headed husband.

Woman Writer Amanda Cartigiano

People read me but can they, do they know how to describe me— my language— shrill tones that destroy even my own wild and untamed tongue. I lick words on pages, paste my name to powerful poetry, my voice louder and higher than the flaming torch I take to the streets. I stand alone; my own two feet bare and broken as I shake while reading Words Unspoken I confess, I’m ready to unfold. Remember me, my name, when you mark my words.

Amanda Cartigiano is a poet and essayist currently living in Albuquerque. She has a BA in English from the University of New Mexico and was an editorial intern for Slutmouth Magazine, where she researched and wrote essays based on trending feminist news and pop culture. She wants to study communications and journalism, where she hopes to continue research on feminism/feminist activism in the digital age.

I Am Alive and It Is Alive J Landolina

J Landolina is a junior at the University of New Mexico studying Fine Arts. Some of their passions include rehabilitating old cameras, petting cats, and eating things they find in the wilderness.

A Crumbling Foundation Lily O’Connor

“DO YOU THINK IT’S POSSIBLE TO KNOW THE GENDER, like, with a woman’s intuition? Because I’m

pretty sure this is a girl.”

Hilda’s question, so joyous it was practically sung, blared through the cramped bedroom as

she stepped out of the bath, steam flowing behind her. Dorothy looked up and regretted her decision instantly. Hilda was completely naked, her skin pink from the bath. Every stretch mark, every roll of fat, every imperfection on her roommate’s body was displayed for the whole world to see. Dorothy was reminded of a sow as the young woman slipped a fluffy white robe over herself and attempted to tie it over her swollen stomach. She shuddered as she remembered that in seven short months, she too would look like this.

“You’d better hope not. What use is a girl?” she responded. Hilda looked surprised.

“I don’t see why it should make a difference. What would make her useless?”

“Only boys do hard labor. The girls would just end up like us.”

Dorothy grabbed a glass of water. She took two vitamins from the nightstand and clambered

onto the bed to do her stretches; her lower back was killing her. Under her freshly cleaned sheets, she propped herself up with a silken pillow.

“Hey, didn’t there used to be another set of sheets here?” she asked, peering under the bed to see

if they’d fallen below.

Hilda didn’t seem to hear her question, instead protesting Dorothy’s point. “But that’s not how

it used to be. All the poor folks, even the women and children, would do work back in the old days. I’ve seen it in pictures.”

She waddled awkwardly towards her own bed across the room. Dorothy couldn’t help but notice

the way Hilda would sometimes flop violently onto the bed without a care in the world. It couldn’t be any more obvious that this was her first attempt at repopulation, and yet here she was, as carefree and healthy as ever.

“And the poor folk are all extinct, aren’t they?”

Dorothy shifted to the other side of the bed. Man, was she uncomfortable. Surrounded by every

comfort in the world, she simply could not find a position that soothed her aching back and pelvis, leaving her to thrash restlessly through the night. She imagined the ancient women in blurry photographs, hunched over fields and hot stoves, and considered whether she was really better off than any of them.

“I guess you’re right,” Hilda caved.

She grabbed her pincushion from her sewing kit and busied herself on her latest project, a

Short Fiction nightdress for Dorothy, so that when she’d inevitably

you?”

outgrow her current one, she’d have something to

“I’ll never know, will I?”

wear.

“No, but you can always imagine. In my mind,

she looks just like me.” Hilda set her sewing to the

“But we still contribute, don’t you think?

side and turned to face Dorothy.

Without us, there’d be no one left to do all that work.”

“Only her hair is longer and softer,

“You may have a point. There certainly is a

lot to do, isn’t there?”

and her eyes are blue insead of

Dorothy glanced out the window at the

brown. I’d make her a doll that looks

desolation below. Piles of garbage lay strewn against

like her, just like I had when I was a

tar black earth. Smog from the fires encompassed it all in a thick layer of ash. And there she sat, in the

little girl.”

only house unplagued by revulsion. She could think of only one sight worse than this.

She looked at Dorothy, expecting a reaction, but

She had woken up to a fever and a pain like

a knife to the abdomen, but she didn’t cry out until

received none. “Don’t you have any kind of dream,

she saw the blood, flowing out like a river on her

anything you’d wanna do once your service ends?”

formerly pristine white sheets. The doctors said

she continued.

nothing, but one look at their eyes told Dorothy

everything she needed to know. Whatever it was, it

on this bed.” Dorothy shifted uncomfortably again,

was gone. All she could do now was wait for a new

attempting unsuccessfully to change the subject.

man to enter her bedroom so she could try again.

She made eye contact with Hilda, who was watching

And he did, just a few months later.

her intently, waiting on her to open up. “There is one

thing. It’s silly though,” she started before cutting

That was three years ago, and many women

“I swear to god, there was another pillow

just like Hilda had come and gone since. She

herself off. Hilda leaned in closer.

wondered what Hilda would do when her service

ended, in what could only be a matter of weeks. She

and relaxed a bit. There was a sort of warmth to

looked down at her own stomach, flat as always, but

Hilda that made it impossible not to confide in her. It

with a new growth bubbling beneath the surface. If

was a shame she’d never be a mother.

this one didn’t work out, she wouldn’t get another

chance.

in the most beautiful house, like this one here.”

She reached into the crack between the bedframe

“You know, I think I still want it to be a girl,”

“You can tell me.” Dorothy caught her eye

“Sometimes, I like to imagine myself living

Hilda murmured dreamily. “I wonder if she would

and the mattress and pulled out a worn, folded

look like me. Do you wonder if yours will look like

up photograph of a classically beautiful mansion,

O’Connor surrounded by flowers and greenery.

resided, but she’d never thought it would one day

reach her own home. Her father had run back into

Ivy climbed to the big sunlit windows where

young people in t-shirts and jeans stood, smiling and

the flames as the foundation crumbled, looking

waving at the camera below.

for a single memory of the legacy their family had

Hilda breathed a sigh. “It’s incredible.”

cultivated so carefully. The house was nearly gone

“I’d have hundreds of rooms dedicated to my

by the time he had emerged, and was reduced to

interests, and I’d never have to share with someone

rubble not long after that.

else ever again.”

finally answered.

“Wait a second, you mean I couldn’t come

“It was under the bed when I got here.” She

with you?” Hilda looked at her with such hurt in her

big brown eyes, Dorothy amended her statement.

disappointed. “Why don’t we hang it up where we

can see it? Just something new to dream about.”

“Fine, you can come. You can have a room on

“Oh,” Hilda said, sounding slightly

the other side of the house so we wouldn’t disturb

“Sounds good. I’m out of tape though, do you

each other.”

have any in your sewing kit?” Dorothy reached under

“Yes! Right outside the gardens.”

Hilda’s bed for the box. Hilda’s eyes widened.

“Sure. I want to be closer to the library

“Don’t open that!” She yelled frantically, but

anyway.”

it was too late. In silence, Dorothy pulled out the

little homemade doll, made up of stolen sheets and

“We could have a massive ballroom for

dancing the night away.”

pillows. Hilda winced and hid her face, bracing for

the reaction. Nothing happened for several seconds

“Yeah, alright, but don’t forget about a dining

hall fit for feasts every other night.”

as Dorothy took in the gravity of the situation. Then,

she stood with the illicit doll in tow and started

“Ooh! Ooh! Plants and flowers throughout

the hallways.”

towards the window.

“Dorothy, wait. It’s not what you think!”

finest silks.”

“You’ve gotta get rid of this, Hilda, and now.

That thing hasn’t even arrived yet and you’re already

“I want closets filled to the brim with the “And finally, a huge apple tree on the hill,

overlooking the entire property! It’s going to be

fantasizing about a life it will never have with you.

beautiful.” Hilda fell back with a satisfied smile

I’m only doing you a favor.”

across her face. “Where’d you find that picture,

Dorothy?”

window as hard as she could until it begrudgingly

opened. She felt Hilda’s nails press into her wrist.

Dorothy didn’t answer right away. She

Putting her back into it, she pushed on the

debated whether or not to tell Hilda about how it

“Stop. I mean it. It’s mine, I made it.”

had once been her home, when she was barely old

“So what if you made it, that doesn’t mean it

enough to remember it. The fire had first taken the

belongs to you. We need laborers, and it’s your job

shacks down the street where the poor had once

to create them. We can’t afford to lose a single body.

Short Fiction When that thing comes out, you have your place,

just as it will have its. Just follow the path that’s

daughter.”

been set out for you and you can have everything

you want.”

to get down the stairs?”

“I guess I’m just gonna have to figure it out.”

want, but you don’t actually know what Iwant.”

She closed the bedroom door. Dorothy

Hilda retorted, more desperation in her voice than

listened to her footsteps, heavy on the staircase

anger. Dorothy responded in an even tone.

but relentless nonetheless. She pulled the curtains

shut. That final look in her eyes told her Hilda had

“You just think that because it’s what you

“Either way, this is more important than

“I’m going to get the doll back for my “This is ridiculous, how are you even going

what you want, it’s about what everyone wants. The

forgotten all about that beautiful old house in the

beautiful house I showed you? Somebody’s gotta

country, yet Dorothy could see it clearer than ever.

build it. All you have to do is give up that one thing

So she’d live there alone. So what? She turned her

and it will serve you forever.”

attention back to her photo, her property, and her

“It’s not that simple.”

resolve strengthened out of spite towards all those

“Then how come it is?” Dorothy broke free

who’d left her behind.

of Hilda’s grip, launching the doll out of the window

and onto the barren earth below. “It’s that simple.”

“I’m going to finish it this time. This t hing may be

inside me now, but someday it’s going to build me

Hilda stared out the window for a few

“I’m going to finish this job,” she said aloud.

eternal seconds. Dorothy watched as the playful

my home with its bare hands.”

light drained from her eyes.

onto the ground.

“I was wrong before, Hilda. Our role as

She felt blood trickling down her leg and

women? It’s not unimportant. It’s the only chance we have of recreating our legacy. We can’t give up

Lily O’Connor is a first year student at the

now.”

University of New Mexico, studying English,

Philosophy and Spanish. She is new to Albuquerque,

Hilda struggled to look back up at Dorothy.

“Not all legacies are worth

coming from Fort Collins, Colorado. Conceptions

Southwest will be the home of her first publication.

recreating,” she said. Then, without another glance towards her room or her friend, she made her way towards the door and turned the knob.

“Where are you going?” Dorothy said in

disbelief.

Stretch Shayna Marie Davidson the belly is a precipice, all tensile & cusped. this I know, still I teeter on the shower ledge, studying burst flesh of stomach in the mirror, then it is inward to the stirred-up dream of a daughter. here is solid press of her weight, pushing me forward into moon slivered, body tethered – here is fear of my own construction. flaky salt in the womb, I am bitter product of my own preservation, body turned object turned sharpedged & solitary. is skin not the most tangible thing we know, still somehow never at all fixed, moving through this life as river stone, water worn & glad to be touched, tossed. so then plunge me deep into that freshwater, herring & lake trout should know my taste, let them suck saline from my bones until they are bones sturdy enough to hold, still sturdy enough to stretch. for all my mechanisms fleshy & full, take from me this conception of a daughter’s palm. let her become tiny pebble of thought rolling slowly, slowly through my brain. for sudden water rush, for placing of that stone inside my mouth: I hold my own hand & leap from the ledge, stepping into a world so swollen & trembling with birth of some ending too fragile, too formless to ever really be known Shayna Marie Davidson is a graduate student at the University of New Mexico studying French. She is interested in the link between literature and visual media, especially within comics and poetry zines.

Playing Malinche Myrriah Gomez When I was 6 years old, I buckled white, patent leather shoes over white stockings that hid scraped knees. I affixed a wiry white veil over delicately curled hair, and I slipped into a white Communion dress 2 years earlier than the church required. I read the lines of a perfectly rehearsed history de los Matachines To Anglo tourists assembled in the dirt plaza of the governor’s palace in Santa Fe. Just before the Feast Day of our blessed Virgen de Guadalupe. I told them that I was La Malinche, mistress and interpreter for Cortes: One of the most interesting examples of the combination of European and Native American history can be seen this time of year during the pueblo performances of El baile de los Matachines. This dance is strikingly different than other Pueblo ceremonial dances.” and it was. I heard the words but didn’t understand them. My elders taught me to place my hands on my hips así and told me which way to turn when the violin changed chords: Duh duh, duh duh da duh duh, duh duh da duh duh, da dun du dun dun Duh duh, duh duh da duh duh, duh duh da duh duh, da dun da dun dun Da duh dun dun dun. I twirled around masked figures, monstruos of my dreams. Satin ribbons the colors of Catholicism draped down their backs. Every golpa echoed against frozen ground. Farolitos flicked in the night.

In their right hands, la palma, a three-pronged trinity: El padre, el hijo, y el espíritu santo. Crosses of mass destruction. A sword that smacked me across the eye and left a scar when I was 8. In their left hands, a rattle. Semillas popping against the shell of the Indigenous gourd trying to escape Spanish captivity. Mimicking the sound that a rattlesnake makes before it strikes. In dance 6, I pulled out my red shawl, a stark contrast to my pure, virginal costume. The plaza became a bullring once again, and I engaged in a fight with el torrito. The little bull charged and the rebozo whirled through the air. I stamped my tacon and taunted him more until finally, exhausted of playing war games, I turned my back to the little bull once and for all. Imaginary blood was spilled and mixed with the real blood of my ancestors who in 1680 erupted into the first Civil War on what would become United States soil nearly 200 years later. The abuelo castrated the little bull and tossed his huevos out to a chaste-looking white woman. Her husband laughed nervously,

because kids mimicking Spanish virility still managed to insult his masculinity. In dance 7, we made “La Cruz.” We sought redemption: Dee Dee, Dee Dee, Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee, Dee Dee, Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned? What had we done? Whose blood was on our hands? For 6 years I played Malinche, a little girl dressed in white. Until I gave up that innocent act when my own blood came. Malinche didn’t need a weapon. La mujerona Malintzín Tenepal, La Doña Marina, La Madre de la raza cósmica, she had words to guide her in battle: Nahuatl y Español. Too many nouns for love, for loss, for redemption. Negotiator extraordinaire and voice of her people, she was armed with a differential consciousness and a forked tongue. This Malinche ain’t nobody’s virgin, ain’t nobody’s mistress. These hands on my hips are my own, and I now dance to my own tune.

Myrriah Gomez grew up in El Rancho, New Mexico, in the Pojoaque Valley. Her academic work has been published in various places, but this is her first poetry publication. Her poetry is inspired by the people and places of Nuevo México.

Nuevo Alex Dickey

CSW Award Poetry

At first, I remember, I thought maybe if I told him no more that the conquistador wouldn’t come to drink the gold from my body. I was wrong. His cave-pale hands crept under my clothes and took what they wanted from me, time and again. I thought then, maybe, if I cried blood like the horned lizards he may start to understand what he was doing. I was wrong. And so I opened the door and walked outside. I bathed in the sky above the mesas, and baptized myself in the sunset. The Rio Grande put her oil-soaked hands on my head as I knelt by her side. I dined with coyotes and drank morning dew with quails. I danced with the tumbleweeds as they raced past the altar and I began to smile at the moon.

The mountains, in their deep gray purple, spoke between the drops of a desert monsoon and granted me absolution. I realized that he couldn’t touch me if I left cactus thorns in my wake. For I have received the sacraments of the sands and left that conquistador to history. Hush, now. The sun is rising.

Alex Dickey is a queer, non-binary Chicano and undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico. They are currently studying English literature with a research focus on intersectionality in contemporary poetry.

La Luna Local Alicia LaRaé Ulibarrí

Alicia LaRaé Ulibarrí is a native New Mexican, born and raised in Albuquerque. She comes from a family that has called New Mexico home for nearly 30 generations. She loves to venture into the mountains, Bosque, and enjoys taking road trips through Northern New Mexico, where she grew up visiting her great-grandparents and family. She enjoys painting, listening to music, photography, and writing.

CSW Award Photography

Don’t Tell Your Mom Jiayi Liang

Born in Changsha, China, Jiayi Liang is an artist working with photography and performance art. She received her BFA degree from the University of New Mexico, where she currently resides. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and China.

Ocean Storm Melanie Griego

Melanie Griego is an undergrad at the University of New Mexico majoring in Art History with a minor in Museum Studies. She has lived in several places, including San Francisco, California. Her passion for art is reflected through her determination to complete her degree and desire to preserve art for the future.

Grit Armelle Richard

Want Armelle Richard is currently enrolled in the OILS Master’s program at the University of New Mexico. In her work, she draws out the complexities of seemingly simple and mundane objects by exploring patterns and texture, shadow and light, typography and words. Very often it is in the title that she plays with words to glean more meaning from each piece. Armelle was born in France, grew up outside Philadelphia, lived in Northern California for most of her adult life, and currently lives in Albuquerque, NM with her husband, two children, and cat.

Glaestig Harness No.2 Kira Gone Stephany Taylor

Autumn Aspen Sage Hughes

Sage Hughes is an alumna of the University of New Mexico. She graduated in 2018 with a BA in Theatre and English Studies and a minor in Honors Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts. Normally a stage manager, she turned to photography as a creative outlet while live theatre is on hiatus due to the pandemic.

Psychological Movement Andrew Swenson

Andrew Swenson hails from Minnesota and is a graduate student in the Painting & Drawing Department at the University of New Mexico. His art practice is strongly influenced by his psychological and biological background.

What You’re Made Of Solana Armijo

Solana Armijo is a junior at the University of New Mexico, studying English and German. She is a twenty year old New Mexico native with a passion for literature, visual art, and poetry.

The Los Angeles Teen Artist Audrey Wilkins

Watch the Film

The Los Angeles Teen Artist focuses on teen artists overcoming a stigma that is tied to young creative people living in Los Angeles, California. Themes of living in a hyper-active environment, individualism and creative expression are present. The film strives to break down the stigmas placed around artists and give insight to the way they see themselves, each other, and the world around them.

Audrey Wilkins is a nineteen year old photographer and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California. She creates both fiction and nonfiction work, aiming to provide a beautiful visual experience and evoke different emotions within the viewer.

But I Like It Megan Kamauoha

Megan Kamauoha has been shooting photography for ten years. Through the years, she has adapted the fine art mentality to refine her creative eye for the world. She focuses on portraits and utilizing the human form to show abstract thought. Through her work, she hopes to help people and the way they 59 think.

兔子尾巴---长不了 (tù zǐ wěi bā ---cháng bù liǎo) The Rabbit’s Tail Does Not Grow Long Something That Cannot Last Sami Stroud 死猪不怕开水烫 / sǐ zhū bù pà kāi shuǐ tàng lit. a dead pig doesn’t fear scalding water / fig. to be unaffected or undaunted. It should be written that I still love you. Our time together was an eddy in the current, but one that can suck a man under if he isn’t careful. It doesn’t do to dwell on love lost, yet when the weather grows hot and humid, I can close my eyes and remember the night you came to me, wiping monsoon water out of your eyes and huddling under a stag’s coat. I should have known when you killed that sow, not with a knife but with your sharpest fingernail. You ate it bloody, and I watched you while mine still cooked. The juice dripped down your chin, glistening on your skin and teeth in the firelight. The shoes and clothes I gave you seemed to grate against your skin. You walked stiffly next to me on the path towards the waterfall. I was too busy wondering what I had done wrong. I didn’t see you trip, falling face down onto a tree root. I should have known then, too, when I kissed your face where you had been cut. No other girl ever bled so prettily. 引狼入室 / yǐn láng rù shì lit. to show the wolf into the house / fig. to introduce a potential source of trouble. Wolves lurk in the trees, and they will ask to be let in. They howl so prettily, wind ruffling through their fur, that when she shows up at your door, you will forget what a howl means. You will for get that when the moon sinks below the horizon, these howls flee back to whence they came, carried away on the breeze brought by the sunrise. If you’re lucky, they won’t pull you along with them. This is a story mothers tell their sons before 60

Short Fiction sending them to far-away logging camps and

In Tianshan Military Base, they don’t often

military bases in the mountains. The wolf is a

speak of Jian Ling. When they do, it is long past

huntress, one who wears many pelts. The men

dusk, every man’s belly heavy with food and

who would hunt her are her greatest prize.

their tongues softened with wine. Some, who were there before he disappeared, claim that

狡兔三窟 / jiǎo tù sān kū

he was a model soldier, surely murdered by a jealous underling or a superior who thought

lit. a crafty rabbit has three burrows / fig. a sly

his rise through the ranks too bold. Others are

individual has more than one plan.

quick to disprove this theory, remembering how Jian Ling changed near the end, wandering back

In my dreams, I am running alongside you in the

to the barracks hours after roll call, speaking

forest. I let you lead me, chasing moonbeams up the mountain and screaming with a wildness

to others with a glassy look in his eyes, as if

I had never known before you came. We run

his soul was already somewhere else. Then some newbie who feels left out will say it

so fast and so hard that I can no longer tell

doesn’t matter how he disappeared, only that

whether I have two legs or four.

he’s probably not coming back, alive or dead. All the men will grunt in agreement, some

A single thought consumes my waking hours when you left me, why did you leave me alive?

barking out nervous laughs, and pretend that

I know, now, what you are, what you must

they aren’t afraid that what happened to Jian

be. My throat is softer than a sows, and more

Ling might happen to them. Yet, on nights like

willingly offered.

these, when the moon is strong and the howls of wolves echo up the mountain, they walk back to the barracks in pairs, sending furtive

Evening is settling in, and I can only think (hope)

glances into the darkness and the hairs on their

of one reason. This is what steadies my hand

backs standing straight up. Is it from fear, they

as I pack my bag before my comrades return to

wonder, or from longing.

the barracks. If I reach my destination, I wonder what I will find. Death, perhaps, or just one more breathless run under the moonlight.

Sami Stroud is a senior at the University of New Mexico finishing up her degrees in Geography

飞蛋打 / jī fēi dàn dǎ

and East Asian Studies. Her passions include

lit. the chicken has flown the coop and the eggs

storytelling, chai tea lattes, and her roommate’s

are broken / fig. a dead loss.

dog Kenneth.

The Birch Tree Kira Gone

Kira Gone is in her final year as a Presidential Scholar at the University of New Mexico, studying in the Art Department with a focus in drawing and small-scale metals. Outside of the university, she performs in the Albuquerque-based band Da Terra Meiga and has toured with them in the U.S. and in Spain. More of her work can be viewed in the upcoming ASUNM Arts and Crafts 2020 Digital Artbook.

Waves in the Sand Robert Macdonald

Since Robert Macdonald was a youngster, he always had a camera in his hand, exploring photography wherever he found himself. After a life pursuing other endeavors, he returned to complete a degree in the arts, fulfilling a long-standing promise to his mom.

An Unpretty Prequel: Lessons on Life and Literacy AJ Odasso

WHEN I CONSIDER LITERACY, AS A WORD AND AS A CONCEPT, broadly accepted definitions come to

mind. Do I consider it the ability to read and write? Yes. Do I conceive of it? Do I think of it as working knowledge or expertise in a specific field? Double yes.

I’m forever holding at least two meanings to any given word in my mind simultaneously. This

is hardly a unique skill. We regularly hold words in the heart and mind with multiple meanings resting neatly side by side.

It’s the “neatly” that has gotten me into trouble for as long as I can remember. I learned to speak

and read early, and when I share this information, I get a reaction of “But you’re autistic?” more times than I’d care to consider. There’s a saying in the autistic community, and even in the broader disability community: “If you’ve met one [INSERT DISABILITY] person, you’ve met one [INSERT DISABILITY] person.” I remember being 3 years old when words first made sense on a page. At that point, I had been speaking since about the age of 11 months. My first words were “what’s that?” and “pretty,” in that order.

That might not smack of trouble, but that’s exactly what it became when I started kindergarten. I

was so far ahead of my classmates that when, on the first day of school, all Mrs. Lefevre had us write out our full name, I wrote it backwards so that a mirror would be needed to read it. I had contrary ways of expressing my boredom. My parents got a call about this, my first transgressive act of writing, and had to go in for a conference. My classmates didn’t understand what the hell I was doing, and they mocked me for it.

Elementary school didn’t treat me much better. At least, not where language, self-expression,

and peers were concerned. My ability to guess the word in the game of Hangman (and, for that matter, while watching Wheel of Fortune) with only two or three letters present quickly earned me a nickname: The Dictionary. I didn’t like it at first. It set me apart from my classmates when all I wanted was to fit in. The more blanks that were still on the chalkboard, the more points your team would win. That’s how Mrs. Bowley played Hangman with us. My classmates liked having me around for the easy victories, but instead of sitting beside me at lunch, they’d just whisper, what’s up with the Dictionary today?

By about second or third grade, I liked being the Dictionary. I liked that it meant I never got a

vocabulary word wrong or missed any points on spelling tests. I liked that in third grade it finally got me pulled out of what I considered to be a dull, mundane classroom and into my school’s gifted program. I met a cohort of about 8 or 9 other kids there who understood where I was coming from or, if they

Creative Nonfiction couldn’t, they’d at least try, or didn’t care. They

and written, with dauntless inquisitiveness. When

were happy to natter at me about their interests

my idea of an end-of-year final project in fifth grade

and obsessions for hours. I was allowed to read

was to write my own Choose Your Own Adventure

whatever I wanted, to research whatever I wanted,

book, she told me I absolutely should. In sixth grade,

to write whatever I wanted.

she exposed me and my cohort to an entire term of

world religions. She had Amit’s dad, Dr. Patel, come

All of us in Mrs. Briggs’s classroom did our

own thing, except when we were talking to each

in and talk to us about Hinduism for an entire class

other about what our own thing was. That was what

period. She did the same with a friend of hers from

made Carole—in adulthood, and even retroactively

the next town over—a Muslim lawyer, who talked

(I think of her by her first name)—such a visionary,

to us about Islam. Judaism and Buddhism followed.

at least to those of us she’d rescued from the slow,

I share these things because, for the 1980s-90s in a

dull banality of our original classrooms. There wasn’t

town as tiny as mine in rural Western Pennsylvania,

just one rusty wheeled book cart at the back of her

this was a really big deal. Some parents didn’t like it,

room; there were five. I recall at least three different

but the school district always had her back.

dictionaries. There must have been two full sets of

encyclopedias. On one bottom shelf, there was an

had taught me that literacy was the state of being

eclectic array of almanacs and record books. She’d

an irreparably weird social outcast, Carole taught me

buy the new Ripley’s Believe It Or Not every year

that literacy meant possessing vast knowledge by

without fail. One of the carts was devoted entirely

virtue of consuming and producing the written and

to issues of National Geographic, going back to

spoken word.

about a decade before I was born. Two of the carts

Even back then, I knew

held a sampling of novels, short stories, and poetry

the age-old adage; as

collections. I must have read each one at least twice.

Where my very first teacher and classmates

trite as it was and still is,

Carole introduced us to unabridged

Shakespeare plays. At the end of each school year,

I reveled in it: Knowledge

we got to perform one. I played Banquo’s murderer

is power.

and Lady Macbeth all in the same production. I

came close to getting cast as the Ariel to my friend Elizabeth’s Prospero, but I couldn’t even begrudge

Roxanne having got it because she was that good.

with the written word than the spoken. I hated

Carole taught us to approach language, both spoken

giving presentations, which was ironic given

Admittedly, I was always more concerned

Odasso how much I loved being on stage. I loved being

parents and educators teach scripting as a strategy

Shakespeare’s words, being his characters, being

in order to give them a shot at social success. I

his plotlines, being not myself. Those plays taught

learned this term when I read the work of Tony

me how to put iambic pentameter to stubborn use

Attwood, the renowned Australian psychologist

in both prose and poetry. It was poetry that stuck,

whose research on autism and other forms of

a phenomenon that even I can’t account for. At

neurodivergence in children is both compassionate

that point in my life, I enjoyed reading novels more

and groundbreaking. With another new definition

than I enjoyed poetry collections. I lived for new

in hand, I could look back through it from my

books from Lynne Reid Banks, Richard Peck, Natalie

childhood, like a telescope in reverse. Apparently,

Babbitt, Suzanne Fisher Staples, and Mildred D.

I was doing a lot of things that I hadn’t known I

Taylor. There are more names, if I were to list them

was doing—and I was doing them thanks to my

all, they’d occupy several pages of this narrative.

command of language.

What those writers have in common, at

This is how my definition of literacy

least on a quick mental review of my favorite books

expanded to include knowing how to participate

from each of them, was a staggering sense of scope

in exchanges with people who weren’t my family,

and empathy. Collectively, they wrote books set all

teachers, or gifted program classmates. Contrary

around the world, and from the perspectives of so

to the beliefs of those kids who had called me the

many age groups, cultures, and religions that I’m

Dictionary, literacy turned out to be the key to my

impressed all over again, but for different reasons

eventual semblance of success. I had read, written,

than in childhood. In addition to learning the value

and eventually spoken my way into being. Sure, I

of diversity (without realizing that’s what I was

was masking as much as I was scripting, but who

learning), they taught me how to script. I would

needed to know that?

not have the language for that phenomenon until

my twenties, which was when my neurodivergent

a number of years post-explicit diagnosis, I could

diagnosis was finally confirmed and made explicit.

never seem to share it in time to head off disaster. I

was successful only up to a point.

Scripting is both a phenomenon and a

Quite a lot of people, apparently. And, for

strategy. Some autistic kids, especially those

who read voraciously, learn how to use dialogue

more specifically, media fandoms—when I was

exchanges as models for how they might conduct

in junior high. I’d been playing with flash fiction

their own interactions in real life. Regardless of

and short poems since about the age of 10, but

whether autistic kids are verbal or nonverbal, many

producing longer work always seemed to evade

I discovered online discourse communities—

Creative Nonfiction me. Suddenly at 13, I had a host of new friends and

They can be words alone, or they can be words and

mentors whose writing—yes, fanfiction—I admired

pictures. They can be a picture alone, or a sequence

as much as (and in some cases more than) the novels

of pictures. They can be a tapestry from the 1100s

I had read growing up. They taught me about various

that turns out to have been a document produced

intersections of language and identity; specifically

by individuals to whom access to literacy had been

disabled and queer identity, long before most of my

denied because of their gender and class. They can

peers got a handle on those concepts (or didn’t) in

be as official as a traditionally published print novel,

college. Once again if I were to name the women,

or as once-contraband-but-now-hip as a piece of

men, and gender nonconforming folks whose works

fanwork.

I admired, we’d be here for an entire volume.

populated with individuals who made it possible

Literacy expanded again, this time to mean

Contexts were and still are the settings

belonging and acceptance in spheres far beyond

for me to grasp those texts’ significance. Carole’s

that of being an eccentric, intelligent kid. It also

classroom was a context in which I was taught

meant having specific words to describe myself

to understand and value any number of genres

(panromantic, demisexual, neutrois, QUEER); facets of

and topics, and to think critically about them

myself that I was lucky to define long before I knew

too. Clinicians’ offices, those of therapists and

how to apply specific words to my neurodivergence.

psychologists, were collectively a context in

Case in point: I knew those identity-related words at

which I could understand what being a gifted, but

that point in my history, but I wouldn’t learn neurodi

psychologically “abnormal” kid, and subsequently

vergence itself until I was nearly 30—or scripting, or

an adult with those same qualities, really meant.

masking, or accommodations.

Over the years, my various fandoms added up to an

ongoing context in which I became not just a more

These experiences went a long way to

teaching me the relationship between contexts and

astute, sensitive reader-writer, but an individual with

texts.

properly fitting identity labels and the courage to actually use them.

As far as I’ve been concerned

Of course, academia has been a context

in which I continue to read and produce texts, as

for most of my life, texts can

well as grapple with their import. (I choose grapple

take a staggering variety of

instead of grasp at this juncture for a reason.)

forms. They’re shapeshifters.

I graduated with a BA in English from

Wellesley College in 2005, but not before

Odasso spending two and a half miserable years as a Voice

I took a photograph of myself unsmiling, my

Performance/Drama major at the Hartt School of

expression unreadable. Several hours later, out the

Music. My disability had made it impossible for me

other side of meeting my second-year undergrads

to pass my Music Theory and Ear Training classes,

and going through the Late Medieval English

so I left the program depressed and dejected. If I’d

Literature syllabus I’d designed with them, I failed

known what accommodations were at that point, let

to take a second photograph. I was elated, smiling;

alone what my disability was, I might have been able

back then I still hadn’t learned to smile convincingly

to navigate my situation and to pass those classes

enough for neurotypical eyes.

with proper support. In the midst of that crisis,

I spent a semester at home taking a few classes

out. I want you to remember me that way: confident

at Clarion University. I loaded up on Linguistics

and smiling, with newfound passion for a discipline

and Paleontology, who knows why. I’d loved New

that, unlike writing, might actually pay the bills. That

England; I wanted to go back. I talked to some

was already paying the bills. I felt both fulfilled and

friends about English Departments in the region

secure, a rarity.

that had positive personal experiences, which is

how I ended up transferring to Wellesley. My two

on it, because it led to a suicide attempt, both

and a half years there were both exhilarating and

immediately before that event and after it. Out

grueling. My determination, hyperfocus, and friends

the other side of my MA in Medieval Studies at

I’d hold onto for years thereafter got me through

York, I was awarded funding to start a PhD in the

it. I met Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and their

same discipline. I started teaching in the first year

contemporaries…and fell in love. That torrid affair

of my program. Permission to do that was almost

led to an MA in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies at

impossible to come by, but my performance in the

the University of York, which is where I also gained

MA that had led to my PhD funding was considered

my first teaching experiences.

grounds enough to grant it. After a year and a half,

I passed my viva voce with flying colors and was

I was scarcely older than the undergrads in

There’s a part of this story I momentarily left

Here’s what I’ve left out. I don’t like to dwell

my classroom that day in 2007. My MA program had

permitted to proceed to PhD candidacy proper.

ended in late 2006, but, by various means, my then-

Never at any point did my advisors or colleagues

partner and I were able to stay on and find useful

have any anxiety about my ability to continue to

employment. I hadn’t known I’d fall in love with

excel and finish the program. I continued to teach

teaching. I remember getting ready to step into that

throughout all five years of my doctoral program.

classroom at the start of a biting English October;

Now, in the UK, there’s a major difference in the way

Creative Nonfiction defenses are conducted. You don’t get to choose a

administrators and the OIA’s administrators sided

whole panel of people. You don’t get to choose at

with my external examiner’s testimony instead of

all. Your supervisors are responsible for finding an

mine and my two supervisors’. At the time, it hadn’t

individual from another institution, who will serve as

occurred to me that this jerk’s family being peerage

your external examiner, and someone from within

for several centuries might have something to do

your own department at your own university, who

with the way the decisions fell.

will serve as your internal examiner.

meaning. Life lost its meaning, too.

Over the course of only an hour, my internal

For a while, literacy lost all of its accrue

examiner sat silent with her eyes downcast at one

end of the table while my external examiner began

courage to apply to Boston University’s MFA in

his questioning by asking why my supervisors had

Creative Writing program. On the poetry-focus

permitted me to prepare my diplomatic edition

side of that degree, they accept only 9 people per

of a previously untranscribed Piers Plowman

cohort. I wrote my personal statement the day the

manuscript as a print edition instead of a digital

application was due. I considered it a kind of Hail

edition for inclusion in his online archive project,

Mary: if I got in, it was a sign I was meant to give

and proceeded to rip not just my work, but me to

academia another shot. Teaching had been thin

shreds. I had experienced xenophobia and misogyny

on the ground since I got back from the UK, and

in the past, but never both at once, and with such

administrative jobs weren’t doing my will to go on

gleeful, imperious vitriol. My external examiner put

existing even after trying to not exist any favors. If

me through two rounds of grueling, unnecessary

I got into the program, I’d hopefully earn a terminal

revisions over the next year and a half—and then

degree that would make up for the loss of the

refused to award my degree.

doctorate I’d been denied, and—most importantly of

all—I would be a teaching fellow at the same time.

At that point, my partner and I had no

It took five years for me to work up the

further recourse to visa extensions. Returning to the US meant no more teaching, no more anything I thought of as worthwhile. From across the Atlantic,

Literacy meant getting

I appealed my case to both the University of York’s

myself into trouble

Special Cases Committee and, when that failed,

again, and again, and

to the UK-wide higher education ombudsman

again.

body, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. Both my university’s

Odasso I got the news of my acceptance the same day I

We were all women, gender-nonconforming, queer,

heard about my mother’s Stage 4 breast cancer

and/or POC. That hurt almost as much as what

diagnosis. That day, 3/17/15, was also my

had happened to me in the UK, if only because

grandfather’s 90th birthday. St. Patrick’s Day has

the message was still that difference was not

never meant much to my family, seeing as we’re not

welcome anywhere in the academy. I’d been open

Irish any way you hash our history, but it’s always

about my neurodivergence from the moment I got

been hilarious. Or it would have been, just like

my diagnosis; I had never been quiet about being

any other year, if not for so much fraught news. I

Jewish, gender nonconforming, and queer.

accepted the place in the program instantly, and only

later broke down over both my mother’s mortality

and over and over again. Worse yet, I was always

and the knowledge I was likely putting myself back

getting into it for passions, skills, and aspirations that

in harm’s way.

shouldn’t be counted unreasonable.

The thing is, though, that nothing awful

Literacy meant getting myself in trouble over

After applying to three separate vacancies

happened. My teaching fellowship at BU was one of

over almost four years, I started teaching part

the most meaningful things I’ve ever done for both

time at Central New Mexico Community College

my career and my personal development. My MFA

(CNM) in January of 2020. I was recovering from

thesis manuscript became my third poetry collection,

recent surgery related to my recent colon cancer

The Sting of It, which went on to be shortlisted for

diagnosis—and almost a year on, I still am. I realized

the 2017 Sexton Prize to be published in late 2019

that applying to a doctoral program at UNM was the

by Tolsun Books, and to win Best LGBT Book in the

only hope I would have of teaching full time, at least

New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards.

for a while. It would mean that I was in the thick of

it—while also studying full time.

What my MFA did not do was land me a full-

time position in academia. Between 2016 and 2019,

I applied for around 200 faculty vacancies all over

illness is my age: I’m a few years from turning 40. If I

the US, from generalist posts to creative writing

take the average of its cumulative meanings, I define

specific positions. I ended up with 3 interviews and

literacy as constantly taking risks. The message, over

nothing to show for them. I was lucky enough to be

and over and over again, is that people like me aren’t

adjunct at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in

meant to be literate, let alone audacious enough

the Honors College for a few semesters, but when

to demand professional respect and personal

a new dean was hired, more than a third of us who

happiness.

were adjuncting there got cut from the department.

Complicating matters even more than my

I would like to think that the story ends well

Creative Nonfiction for me this time, but I feel obliged to treat each new

here in my own country’s higher education system,

plot twist with suspicion. I would like to think that

of how easy it would be for another person in power

literacy can also mean survival.

to cast me as an unreliable narrator.

This is not the first literacy narrative I’ve

I began this narrative with the intention of

ever written. Two years ago, I wrote an essay called

making it a sequel to my first one, albeit a sequel not

“Being the Dictionary” that was commissioned

requiring direct knowledge of its predecessor. What

especially for an anthology from the Autistic Self-

it has become is an unpretty prequel, an unflinching

Advocacy Network’s press called Knowing Why:

and unapologetic catalogue of profit and loss.

Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism. I

Playing with words is more dangerous than playing

didn’t have that many pages of space to work with,

with what you get if you add an S. I’ve spent most

so I stuck to a specific memory from my childhood

of this essay discussing both the feel-good stuff and

and how it connected with my identity as an autistic

the ugly things that nobody wants to hear.

writer, reader, and educator. The names of things

in the world have always been important to me;

here. You are now complicit in my definition of

I’d like to think it’s the reason that one of my first

literacy, because literacy also means accepting

utterances was “what’s that?” If I don’t know what

that I have an audience. Many audiences, even. I

something is, I ask. If I don’t know why something

can’t write about how I define literacy and fail to

is the way it is, or why something has changed

acknowledge the sets of eyes that have contributed

from my previous conception of it, I ask. Asking

another layer of meaning—or, as the case may be,

exhaustive questions, and then exhaustive follow-

stripped several back.

Whether you want to hear or not, you are

ups, isn’t as endearing when you’re 30 as it is when you’re 3. Even in academia, where inquisitiveness is

AJ Odasso is the author of three collections of

lauded, I often end up biting my tongue.

poetry, the most recent of which, THE STING OF IT,

won Best LGBT Book in the New Mexico/Arizona

There’s also the awareness that, in choosing

to interact with more complex theoretical concepts

Book Awards. They have served as Senior Poetry

and frameworks than in all of my past studies

Editor at Strange Horizons Magazine since 2012.

combined, I’ve resigned myself to needing to ask

AJ teaches in the core writing programs at the

even more questions. Fake it till you make it doesn’t

University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico

apply here. If I fake it, I run the risk of not making it.

Community College. They are also working toward a

I feel like I didn’t even make it when I wasn’t faking.

PhD in Rhetoric & Writing.

I’m aware of just how high the stakes might be even

Gallup Cable Hoover

Gallup aims to examine and expose the systemic inequities that fuel chronic alcoholism and death in the streets of Gallup, New Mexico. This photo essay is an accumulation of themes: community issues, exploitation of substances, and the aftermath of colonization. Photography, elements of journalism, creative non-fiction, and other text elements help to build a personal narrative around the conditions in Gallup.

View Photo Essay

Cable Hoover studied photography and journalism at the University of New Mexico and graduated in 2004. After graduation, Cable did freelance work around the Southwest before taking a staff position on the photo desk of the Albuquerque Journal, then a staff photographer job at the Gallup Independent. Cable recently returned to school as an MFA candidate in the Image Text program at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. 62

Bluewater Blues Noah Hickerson

Noah Hickerson is an avid photographer and explorer, bent on capturing the lesser seen angles of New Mexico. He firmly believes there is always beauty in the remnants of an abandoned and bygone era.

15 73

damn Europe Amanda Kooser

damn Europe you got TRAINS I hopped the Eurostar from London to Paris hell yeah first class you poured me champagne and fed me goddamn brie and I thought, this must be what it felt like to be Madonna in 1990 I could have Vogued for joy the last time I was on Amtrak happy hour was Buzzballz margaritas plastic sphere, neon green as cat’s eyes an 18-year-old hippie trying to sell me on tie-dye in the observation car as elk shied away from the tracks in the high golden desert of New Mexico Europe your trains are so smoooooth so clean, so classy, bathrooms so functional (not a guarantee on Amtrak) whew I love ya even when you threaten to strike and I have to buy a spare bus ticket just in case all is forgiven when you are so fine on time I once sat in my Amtrak seat for hours in Winslow, Arizona a coal car overturned ahead from the weight of snow melted

by the burn of the winter sun I thought of the Eurostar of the blank night of the chunnel of the bubbles battling in my glass I don’t mean to rag on Amtrak Amtrak I love you, too you are the wild untamed cousin the horse bucking against the rider eager to throw its saddle into the dust one day I expect the Amtrak trains to rise up release themselves from the rails carve trenches into the West shaking their ‘70s passenger car upholstery like mustangs grown shaggy in the shade of winter there is power in your argent beauty it may not be champagne and brie but your horizons are more distant your people more indifferent yet you forge forward we are a nation of bronc busters and you our silver steed

Amanda Kooser is a creative writing MFA student at the University of New Mexico and a freelance journalist specializing in space, tech, and geek culture. She plays guitar in an Americana band called The Dawn Hotel, wears out her boots on the rocky hiking trails of New Mexico, and pilots a pink beast of a 50’s car over the neon shadows of Route 66.

If Wine Worked Candra Lowery

“CONSUMERISM, EH?”

I glanced over at the man adjacent to me in line, unsure if he was talking to me or to

someone else. He was a crumpled blur of gray; gray hair, gray coat, gray boots, gray scarf. Even his face had a colorless pallor to it, aside from a red, dimpled nose. His long arms impossibly cradled three, maybe four bottles of cheap wine and a bag of potatoes as he swiveled his body around, gesturing with wide eyes at the magnitude of shoppers.

“Everyone’s got to fill the void with something!”

Politely, I smiled and shook my head in agreement. But there was also an anticipated foot

and a half of snow on the way; sometimes people just need things. Assuming he was finished, I turned to stare vacantly ahead at the shopper ahead of me in line.

“Ah, sunflower oil!”

In my peripheral, I could see his chin lifting as he leaned over, peering into my basket.

“Canola is the devil’s oil. I’ve never cooked with sunflower oil though.”

“Neither have I.”

I wondered what he meant about canola, but wasn’t sure I had the energy to find out.

“There was a good deal on it.”

“Yeah, they have a lot of good deals here.”

He raised his eyebrows and leaned back to accentuate his arms full of wine. I saw then

that there were five bottles total and was reminded how, at this particular grocery store, you could purchase an entire bottle of strong wine for less than the cost of a single craft beer at the brewery down the road. I wondered if he’d done similar calculations.

“Therapy’s too expensive for the uninsured. I can afford two bottles of wine every night

though — works just as well! What’s your poison?”

I tilted my basket towards him: honeycrisp apples, pecan halves, sunflower oil, greens and

blueberries. No poison here. I let out a small laugh, choked on an unexpected emotion, and said I didn’t know.

I envied the man’s lived-in fantasy that wine alone sufficed. I could smell the therapeutic

work he’d been doing on himself, the too familiar, metallic sweetness that once emanated from me as well, saturation on a cellular level. This made him my brother, and I imagined myself 76

Creative Nonfiction hugging him suddenly, but it was too late. We

a low-fi photo of a chubby teenager in gym

set our goods along separate conveyor belts to

shorts on all fours, covered in spaghetti noodles

be scanned and that was it. He was off talking

and colorful breakfast cereal. Ice cream cones

to the next person who would listen.

stuck to his head like horns with something like

mashed potatoes, which fell down the sides of

The holidays left me feeling like one

giant blister and my therapist was in Mexico for

his face. Bold text surrounded him: “YOU ARE

the next month or longer. She couldn’t stand

THE UNIVERSE EXPERIENCING ITSELF.” A

another winter here either. If wine worked,

meme.

none of this would be of concern to me. If wine

Then, there were the usual clips of cats (oh, the cats) and glowing vegan goddesses on perpetual vacation, sustaining themselves on nothing but edamame and superfood smoothies, sunning their assholes in downward dog on an unknown beach somewhere,

worked, I never would have stopped. What is my poison then? What am I left with? Caffeine? Attention seeking? Snack cakes and spending sprees? Seduction?

While putting away groceries I found

an old box of Little Debbies stowed away for who knows what. I took one out, lay across my bed, still in my coat, and began unwrapping it. I scooted my way up to the top of the bed and over to the side where several pillows were pressed semi-permanently against the wall and heeled my boots off one at a time, kicking them

a stark contrast to the hazy, orange-toned

onto the floor while taking hedonistic bites

images of old friends from the bar scene back

of the snack cake, an oatmeal cream pie, and

home, their arms encircling one another and

picked up my phone.

wide mouths laughing, tits out, tits in faces,

tossing back salt-rimmed shots of tequila while

Three Tinder alerts, two from Bumble,

and a missed call from my sponsor. I ignored

the Misfits, or at least I imagined the Misfits,

them all, clicking on the colorful camera icon

blared overhead. I could smell my hair the

that is Instagram. I disappeared into a sea of

morning after, stale beer and the cigarettes from

memes, familiar faces, and curated lives while

twenty other chain-smoking patrons. Over it.

my surroundings faded into a sea of static.

experiencing itself, that was worth sharing.

The first thing to slow my scroll was

But the spaghetti boy, the universe

Lowery That’s the kind of shit that kept me there in

me. I thought about my six-years-dying mother

the palm of my own hand. So, I shared it. And

and how harshly she treated the waitress at the

I laughed. Or did I? No sound escaped me, or I

diner. I thought about the bottle of wine she

don’t think it did, and it’s too late now to know

polished off before two in the afternoon, before

if the corners of my mouth turned up at all. It

guests arrived for dinner, how her mood lifted

was only the thought of a laugh then, which

as she continued to drink through the evening,

hardly counts. I would say I felt the weight of

and how Christmases before I would have

my loneliness, but I didn’t. I scrolled on.

joined her jubilee. I thought about my cousin

who showed up over an hour late to dinner

Ten minutes passed, or three hours. My

eyes and neck and wrist hurt, but I told myself,

with a battered face, reeking of cigarettes, and

like always, that it was from the one time I went

cheap cologne. And I thought about the dream

rock climbing and injured my shoulder five years

I had of being raped by my uncle. I thought

ago and an expired contact lens prescription.

about my therapist spending winter in Mexico.

That bitch. And I thought about wine.

I stretched and ran my tongue across my

teeth, oily from the oatmeal cream pie, and sat my phone on the nightstand before getting up

Candra Lowery is a late-blooming secondary

to make some tea. Through the kitchen window,

education major at the University of New Mexico

I saw that snow had been falling for quite some

originally from Oklahoma City, OK. She has never

time and the sun had disappeared behind the

been published because she has never taken

neighbor’s casita across the way. I stood there,

her writing seriously until now. Candra’s work is

feet cold in my socks on the dirty linoleum, and

informed from her own life experiences including

realized I was still wearing my coat. How long

haphazard, sloppy living, all forms of grief and deep

was I on my phone? I hung it on a hook on the

self-reflection.

door and filled my orange kettle with water from the tap, setting it on the stove. I decided not to grab my phone while waiting for the water to boil. Instead, I opted to stand there in an attempt at being present.

Instead, I thought about the stranger

and the wine, wondering if two bottles landed him crying on the bathroom floor the way it did

Notes on the Rain (We Must Praise Higher) Zoe Perls It just rained and hailed Big pellets, so off the cuff, how off-kilter But the girls get home safety I check this with them before they go inside- them all baggy shorts and white tank tops on wet skin. I am outside and I am reading (I am not reading) I am waiting for him to text me back- a sad flippant use for the rain (I tell myself I must praise higher next time) I must praise higher. I plan my descent inside to eat, to eat something other than a lemon poppyseed muffin. No one is eating them like the last time, because they are strangers, because they are dry. And so I crinkle and crumble my brow, paper wrapper, try not to think of this as a good thing- The supposed gap between my hunger and the upward swell of my stomach. Yesterday, a boy from my English class told me I was beautiful (allowing something so close to my throat makes me spin). Walker, while we were sitting on the balcony, says his throat chakra is blocked. I’ve never thought much about my throat- only the stomach. Solar Plexus and all that, feeling some type of way in this rain. The water is draining off the roof and I pray that we all are getting better. I check Isabel’s location to see if she is going on that date- they both dyed their hair pink- and all I want is a ricochet love and honestly, I’m just so bored. Yesterday (the same one), I went through my old tumblr posts and found this quote that talked about how in life, every season is not one of harvest, there are some of planting, water, fertilization. I told myself that that is what now is- to not be worried. But honestly I’m just so bored. I guess this is all about boredom, some generational idiom that I lost my rights to long ago. The only thing that changed today was the rain. (We must praise higher) Again and again. Zoe Perls is a junior at the University of New Mexico studying English and political science. She is currently the Managing Editor at Scribendi Magazine. She enjoys writing, talking and thinking about local agriculture, the political nature of flower fairies, and the power of girls sitting in circles together.

Dinner Where I Live Michael Johnson

THERE IS A TRUTH THAT ALL PARENTS KNOW—supper with a toddler cannot rightly be called dining.

Perhaps “adventure” or “sport”? If the latter, it is full-contact and has no protective equipment. When sensory processing disorder (SPD) is involved, it becomes an even more significant challenge.

Supper is always two meals at our house. First, the meal we prepare for the family, which is the

meal Montgomery might try, and certainly won’t eat. Then, there is his actual supper. On the micro-level, it’s monotonous, but on the macro-level, it’s rather extreme. On any given day, his food is likely to be nearly identical to the last meal. Sometimes it’s chicken, sometimes sausage, and on a good day, there will be grapes. It’s always the same —until it isn’t.

On the macro-level, things get interesting. Some weeks, he will only eat orange food. Other

weeks, he won’t want the foods on his plate to touch each other until he does, and for those meals, he’ll squish it into a mass, creating some remarkably revolting flavor combinations. Chicken nuggets three meals a day? Sure. Sour cream by the cup? Sometimes.

Truthfully, the sour cream phase was one of the worst episodes and only slightly offset by the

hilarity that ensued. There is always the fear that he won’t get what he needs to be healthy when his diet takes a bizarre turn. In this case, it is no exaggeration to say that he would eat small bits of food but only when dipped in sour cream. Soon after, it was sour cream by the handful. This followed by a bath, first in sour cream, then in a bathtub. Or, that’s the plan.

Just before this phase, his occupational therapy had a breakthrough and helped him get over his

aversion to slippery things, and did it with a vengeance. He would coat himself with sour cream; arms, face, and hair, as if to make up for a year without this novel sensation. I can’t lie, he had really soft skin after, and it was hilarious to watch. He would be sitting in his high chair, rubbing himself with sour cream, perfectly content, becoming more and more relaxed until he put himself to sleep. We were amused and grate ful. With his SPD comes serious sleep problems, and all three of us were exhausted.

Now, if you ever want a challenge, finish a meal in dead silence so the baby can sleep. Then try to

pick up said child while he is coated in a substance perfectly compounded for slipperiness. Now, walk up a spiral staircase.

I know people have romantic stories of falling in love at dinner and stories of long talks with

their grandma while sitting around the kitchen table. We have sour cream bath time, stealth eating, and memories of carrying a greased toddler up the stairs, one leading, one following, just in case.

Michael Johnson is in his final semester at the University of New Mexico, where he majors in English. He is a husband and father, and has a passion for 19th Century Literature.

Frantic Father Fern Nita Kelly BETTY IS WORKING HER REGULAR SULTRY, SUMMER SATURDAY AFTERNOON SHIFT at the grocery

store. It is one of the few in the neighborhood, so it’s always packed. As the front-counter person, she does a bit of everything—fields calls to departments, helps with returns, and deals with the inevitable nut-ball questions about whether food is offered in king-sized or chocolatecovered. The answer is generally, “yes, but we’re out,” without verification. Betty has put on about a pound for each of the twelve years that she’s worked here; too much access to food. Anytime she is craving something, she can just go get it. She always thought she would work someplace cooler, but the constant food, the discounts, and the inevitable weird stories she comes home with make it decent enough.

“I’m taking my break, Ray,” Betty shouts across the front of the store to a clerk at a

checkout counter.

“Sure, Bett,” Ray shouts back. His line is several customers long.

Betty turns her back to the store and takes a swig from her huge soda cup. She sees a man run up to the counter. He looks about thirty and has wide, panicked eyes and a few extra pounds around his middle. He seems to be having trouble speaking.

Betty assesses him like she does everyone else. She mentally asks her usual questions

about each customer: What does he say he wants? What does he actually want? And what level of crazy is he? She has found these questions to be essential in dealing with the public. Looking at him, she’s not sure what to think. He looks pretty normal, but then looks can be deceiving. He is wearing a green baseball cap with a defunct company logo on it; a black T-shirt with for ‘the Windy Guitar Trio’, and a pair of clean knee-length jean shorts.

“How can I help you, sir?” Betty says.

“I-I-I locked my son in the car,” he chokes out.

Waiting for more information, Betty looks at him.

“I locked my phone in the car with him.” He leans on the desk, color steadily draining from his face.

“I’ll call 9-1-1 right away.” She picks up the store’s landline and starts dialing as the man

continues talking.

Fiction

“I did leave the car running with the A/C

remember the license number. Then he

on. So, it’s not as bad as it could be.” He then

describes what he’s wearing.

mumbles to himself, “as hot as it is today, it

could be much worse.”

desk to Betty, but as he runs out the door, the

receiver drops, dangling loosely over the top of

Betty toys with the long, tangled, spiral

The man hands the phone across the

cord of the store phone, untangling it as she

the counter. Betty shakes her head and reaches

talks.

over the top of the desk to grab the phone.

“I’ve got a customer here who’s locked

Betty picks up the phone again. “Hullo?

his child in the car.”

“Could you please tell the

The dispatcher on the other end says the

man to wait by the vehicle

required, “please remain calm.”

and try to remain calm? This

Betty hears typing on the other end.

Betty is calm. It takes a lot to rattle her. She

is very scary for the child

has already had to call the cops this week for a

too. Please do your best to

man urinating on her car. He was unhappy that

keep the child calm as well.”

he could not get a refund on his opened and completely empty 24-pack of beer.

“I’ve pulled up your address from your

“Will do,” she says, hanging up.

phone’s location as the ‘Groc-o-Store’ on

“Ray, I’m going out to see this one

Broadway and Main. Is that correct?”

through.” Betty walks around the counter and

“Yes.”

waddles after the man, grabbing a pack of

“We’re dispatching the nearest deputy.

cigarettes from her purse while she is en route.

We need a make, model, and location of the

vehicle.”

is talking through a set of slightly open tinted

car windows. The man doesn’t seem to notice

The man stands in front of Betty’s

When Betty arrives at the SUV, the man

counter, his eyes darting around. He taps the

Betty.

fingers of his left hand on the countertop.

Betty assesses her. Deputy Hernandez is young,

Betty hands the phone across the

A few minutes later, the deputy arrives.

counter to the man. She listens as he describes

probably just out of college. She’s bright-

his car, an older green SUV, parked to the

eyed and makes quick eye contact with Betty,

right of the store’s entrance. No, he doesn’t

nodding at her on the way to the car.

Nita Kelly

“Are you the person with a child in the

“Will he understand and follow my

car?” Deputy Hernandez says.

instructions?”

The man responds quickly, “yes, ma’am.”

ma’am, mostly he will.”

The deputy looks questioningly back

The man nods, then says quietly, “yes,

over at Betty.

Hernandez talks to the child. “Oliver, I’m here

Betty pulls a drag from her cigarette. “I

Through the dark tinted window,

called it in. Here for moral support.”

with your dad. Please stay where you are. I’m

going to be opening the front door. It probably

“This car right here.” He pats the side of

the car.

won’t break the window. But please close your

eyes and keep them closed. Your dad will get

“I’m going to get the lock-puller from my

vehicle. I’ll be right back.” Turning to Betty, she

you in a minute.”

nods again.

coming from the back seat, but not specific

Betty sucks air through the cigarette so

Betty can hear murmurs of agreement

hard it makes her cough. The man seems

words.

reasonably calm, all things considered. He is not

shouting, but cooing through the slightly open

efficiently. It does not break the window. Betty

window.

suspects that this is not her first time using this

device.

Returning with the device, Deputy

The deputy pops the lock quickly,

Hernandez says, “The child’s in the back seat?”

“Yes, in the car seat in the middle.”

unlocks the others. The dad is hovering next

She tells the man what to expect,

to Hernandez and scurrying to the child in the

Hernandez opens the front door and

describing what she will do with the device.

middle of the backseat. He quickly unstraps him

and pulls the wiggling form out into the open

Returning with the device, Deputy

Hernandez says, “The child’s in the back seat?”

air, clutching him to his chest.

“Yes, in the car seat in the middle.”

“Thank goodness you’re alright, Oliver!”

She tells the man what to expect,

Betty and the deputy look on. Betty

describing what she will do with the device.

cannot quite make out the kiddo since dad is

“What’s the child’s name?”

clutching him so tightly.

“My boy’s name is Oliver.”

“How old?”

hip. It takes Betty a few moments to process

“Three years old.”

what she is seeing. The boy is a mix of delicate,

The man turns and shifts the child to his

Fiction advanced-looking metal parts intertwined

“Woah,” Hernandez says.

with flesh-toned plastic. Oliver has a well-

The man faces them with a big, shit-

proportioned, blocky head and a cute face

eating grin on his face.

with a square mouth. He has round, red plastic

eyes resembling brake lights and little moving

like other children. But I assure you, he’s very

antenna-like devices sticking out in his ear area.

real.”

Over this flexible metal and plastic body, he is

wearing normal children’s clothes. He wears a

and his little ear antennae continue moving. He

stretchy red T-shirt with a train design and his

takes another bite of the granola bar with

metal elbow joints, plastic-covered forearms,

his small metal mouth, chewing and looking

and five-digit metal hands stick out of the arms

pleased with himself. He hums around the food.

of the shirt. The kid’s denim shorts match his

dad’s and reveal his bendable, artificial knees

into words. “I saw a ventriloquist act in Vegas

and plastic shins. He wears tiny, green Converse

not too long ago. You’re very good.”

sneakers.

man says.

Betty and Deputy Hernandez stand in

“This is my son. I know. He doesn’t look

The little robot nods. His eyes are bright

Betty is finally able to form her thoughts

“He’s not a doll. Oliver is my son,” the

stunned silence for a moment.

expression manages to look sad.

Betty shakes her head, willing her eyes

and her brain to process the sight. It’s not a

Somehow, the boy with his fixed

Maybe it’s because his eye

normal child. It’s a robot, a small, toddler-sized

lights dim, his antennae

robot.

Finally, Hernandez speaks. “Your son?”

Betty continues to stare open-mouthed

droop, or his rectangular mouth gapes.

at the man and his not-so-tiny toy robot child.

The little bit of her cigarette that is left

falls from her lips onto the ground.

Betty isn’t sure, but, like with any other toddler,

she could sense that he was about to be very

In one hand, the child clasps a granola

bar with a bite missing. Then, the robot moves

upset.

its torso and flaps its arms. It’s not a jerky,

cheap, battery-powered toy kind of movement.

“Daddy?”

It’s fluid, like a child’s would be.

He turns his face towards the man. “Yes, sweet boy. It’s all right. This is just

Nita Kelly new to them.” He snuggles the child close. “I

love you, Oliver.”

most likely to be placed on paid administrative

leave.”

The boy looks sad. He cuddles up against

“I may be leaving the robot bit out or I’d

his father, getting little bits of granola all over

his dad’s T-shirt. Oliver glances at Betty, the

cigarettes from her purse, picks one out, and

deputy, and then back to his dad. “Groc’ries.”

lights it. “Maybe not. They’ll be on the cameras

“Very good, let’s go get some groceries.”

all over the store. Plus, people will record it and

“Down,” Oliver demands.

share it with the local news.”

The man laughs, “yes, up, down, up,

Betty chuckles, she takes to the pack of

“Yeah.” The deputy shakes her head and

down, up, down.”

walks back to her squad car.

He swings the boy up in the air, eliciting

Betty can hear the radio squawk from

a giggle, and sets the boy down on his feet. The

another dispatch call. She stares after the

little robot boy puts weight onto his little feet

cruiser as it pulls out of the parking lot. Betty

unsteadily.

turns and makes her way back towards the

store.

The dad turns to Hernandez. “Thank you,

deputy,” he says.

herself.

Now that his hands aren’t full, he taps

Always a new story, she laughs to

the brim of his baseball cap to her. The man reaches down to hold the boy’s hand and they walk into the store together. For the most part,

Fern Nita Kelly is a fiction and nonfiction writer.

Oliver walks just fine, stumbling occasionally.

She is frequently seen scribbling everything from

The dad catches him and pulls him up with one

story ideas, character descriptions, books and

arm as needed, clearly a well-practiced motion,

authors to find, and things she wishes to remember

like for most parents of small children.

in a little notebook. In writing, she likes to explore

Betty and Hernandez stare after the duo.

how and why people view the world the way they

“That has got to be the weirdest thing

do.

I’ve seen this month,” Hernandez says.

Betty laughs, then frowns, looking down

at the tail end of her dropped cigarette on the ground. She says, “can’t imagine writing that one up.”

Petra Meaning Rock Kennia Lopez

The third time my mother crossed the border, she traded in her diamonds for a single loaf of bread. All the golden rings on her fingers for a package of baloney. A necklace in exchange for water so my sisters wouldn’t die. Blisters across the Sonoran Desert. I guess some stereotypes are true. My family used to have bracelets, trinkets with our names. All of them have been stolen or forgotten in the hasty move from Houston to Kansas City, or pawned off for fifty dollars when we needed to pay bills. She cried when she asked us what we thought of that—taking our names in order to pay rent. My brother // he is named a safe place // wiping the tears. Trading out kingdoms for a simple horse.

Kennia Lopez is an instructor at the University of New Mexico where she is pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition. She has an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College.

Select Your Conceptions Southwest Character The Editor You light candles at your desk. You turn off the lights once you leave the room. You like to follow recipes by the book, especially if it is old and crumbling with annotations in the margins from loved ones. You pay the bill for your friends at dinner even if they want dessert. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but you notice when the fonts don’t mix. You listen when people talk, you are honest, you make

The Submitter You open the windows to

yourself heard.

The Advertiser You change your lock screen

do your homework. The

every three weeks. When

colors in your laundry basket

you go out, your friends

inspire you. You ask your

ask you, “where to next?”

friends about their dreams,

Your car is

your notes app filled with

there’s always room for one

fragments of ideas. When

more. Your phone storage

you

is constantly full, flush with

collected rocks, or maybe

pictures of your friends and

it was flowers pressed into

pets and those sunsets that

the pages of a dictionary. If

beg for attention. You leave

you have to go to the home

notes for those you love

improvement

you

on to-go napkins and pink

can’t leave without a handful

post-it notes. You listen

were

child,

store,

of paint samples. You listen when people talk, you are

Paintings By: Rosie Samudio

genuine, you are willing to

messy,

when people talk, you are enthusiastic, you energize your environment.

wait.

Contribute here 88

but

Me is We

Sami Stroud Lacey Chrisco Michael Johnson Alex Dickey Megan Kamauoha Armelle Richard AJ Odasso J Landolina

Noah Hickerson Robert MacDonald Fern Nita Kelly Bridey A Caramagno Alicia Raé Ulibarrí Amando Cartigiano Stan Hartt Lily D O’Connor Zoe Perls

Audrey Wilkins Cable Hoover Kelsey Varisco Crystle LaCroix Jiayi Liang Myrriah Gomez Candra Lowery Kennia Lopez Shayna Davidson Zach Hively

Luis Diego Rigales Sage Hughes Blake Moore Jennifer Tubbs Amanda Kooser Erin Benton Kira Gone Andrew Swenson