Control Literary Magazine: Issue 3

Control Literary Magazine

Issue 3 October 2014

Edited by: Annabelle Edwards, Allison Friske, Raven Eckman, Annie Robertson, Chaz Josephs, Tracey Parker, and Chelsey Clammer controllitmag

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Collection Copyright 2014

By Control Literary Magazine

All rights reserved by the original authors

Permission must be gained through contributors

Fonts: Monotype Corsiva, Vijaya, Georgia, French Script MT, Century Gothic

Front (“loose ropes, still tied knots”) and Back Cover (“when your heart grows cold”) Artwork by Gaia Alari

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To The Reader: As I write to you, I prepare for the sugar rush and black cat love that is Halloween.

In the past few months, a lot has been going on with Control.

We have been putting out a steady flow of music and book reviews and recently published an interview about the popular drama Criminal Minds.

We also welcome Chelsey Clammer and Tracey Parker to the editorial team.

In our 3rd issue, we have included art in addition to poetry, literature, and photography.

The continued support for the magazine has been amazing. We are consistently floored by the quality of the work we receive.

Thank you all for reading and submitting. We could not do this with you.

We will open for submissions for issue 5 very soon.

Have a great winter.

Sincerely, Annabelle Edwards & Allison Friske, Co-Editors

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Table of Contents Nayantara Dutta

Dust Clouds….………………………………………………………..5

Marie Gethins

Nothing Helps…………………………………………………………6

Katherine Monica

You Don’t Even Know What You’re Upset About……………………8

Tasha Cotter

The Beginning………………………………………………….……..9

Katherine Monica

Boys Will Be Boys or Whatever……………………………………...10

Ellen Wade Beals

Shoo…………………………………………………………………..11

Alexis Wolfe

Invisible Visitors……………………………………………………...11

M. Drew Williams

Moments……………………….……………………………………...12

Chris Jordan Winfield

2014 as another year in Virginia…….……………………………….13

Clayton Chandler

The Shadow Outside……..……………………………………………14

JC Bouchard

Burden…………….…….……………………………………………..17

Tara Abrahams

Meatface………..……….……………………………………………...18

W. Jack Savage

The Bull’s Revenge….………..………………………………………..19

Mohammed Syed

Jack London Square..…..…………………………………………….. 20

Foster Trecost

A Quiet Walk………...…………………………………………………21

Tara Abrahams

Egghead………...……………………………………………….……...23

Alexis Wolfe

No Way of Escape…....…………………………………………………24

Ellen Wade Beals

Bounty………...……..…………………………………………………..24

Michael Brautigan

La Bouche Invisible………...…………………………………………...25

Joseph Goosey

Throwback……......…...…………………………………………………26

Michael Brautigan

In the Beginning…...………...…………………………………………..27

Lillian Rosner

Bouquet of Faces….....….……………………………………………….28

Clementine von Radics

………………………………………………………………………..29

Contributors

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Dust Clouds Nayantara Dutta Trace the outline of my ankles with your toes And read me the poems you slipped into the cracks in your bedframe Play me a song you always wanted to bring to life Whose movements stir something in you That is too beautiful to be ignored Show me the paper cuts you got From second guesses and first regrets Release yourself into the dust clouds And draw the thread of our distance closer Sleep with my touch as a whisper on your skin Hold me closer and use your words Our racing minds and pulses may find it hard to move at the same pace But we’ll find ourselves in each other You are so quiet, my dear As I trip over sentences and syntax Too lost in you to be conscious of anything else Love me for all the doubts I hide in parentheses Spin me snowflakes of stories of us From the first stolen glances to our Rorschach symmetry These days it seems like the only constant is your hand in mine Everything means more when it’s laced with you

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Nothing Helps Marie Gethins Gornisht. I blurted the word as soon as I saw the web page, although I hadn’t spoken Yiddish in more than 20 years. One of the words you taught me. Laughing as my goy lips fumbled to take the right shape. Gornisht helfen. It’s hopeless, nothing helps, you used to say. Now I repeated your phrase looking at pictures of the bass guitars and amps you treasured, priced to sell. I reached the bottom. Paused. Scrolled back up, returning to the estate sale details.

Through the past two decades, I’d recognise your bass riffs on the radio. Googling you once or twice a year, I found recording credits and gigs in the same old clubs. Later, I looked for a Facebook page or Twitter handle, but you moved beneath social media white noise. Yesterday I found an old cassette and searched again. This time a new link appeared.

Dated a year ago, I found your name on a used instrument site. The paragraph had minimal bio facts, but described each instrument in detail. I pictured you on stage, plucking strings, fingers a blur. Now the fine-grained bass torsos rested on stands, immobile.

Our final encounter had been full of pauses. Eighteen months after I ended it, you appeared on my doorstep with an offer of getting gelato at the Italian café around the corner. I said sure and wished I could stifle my nervous laugh. We balanced on iron chairs in the evening sun, scooped tiny spoonfuls from doll-sized cups. I let the bitter lemon ice linger on my tongue, watching you, side-eye.

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You said you didn’t like to leave it in anger. Hadn’t our three years meant something? I smiled and nodded, let you ramble, hoped you didn’t see my spoon shake.

Of course, I said. You told me all about the new girlfriend. I wondered if she was a shikse like me or a Jewish girl. Her first name gave nothing away. In a torrent, you described her beauty, intelligence - all the things I didn’t want to hear. She inspired you to write songs. Songs you once wrote for me. A change in key, but the same melody.

Pushing my chair back, iron scraped concrete. You kissed a cheek, pushed a stray lock behind my ear. We promised to keep in touch. You didn’t give your new address. I talked up my move to Europe. Not sure where I’ll end up, I said. My eyes followed your exit until you turned the corner. You didn’t look back.

Now I search deeper. YouTube clips from a memorial party, each performance cast in a pink-red hue of smoke. We used to joke it was your stage aura, helped by light gels and crowd exhales. On that memorial night I should have been there to sing for you, for what we shared.

I stare at the screen, my eyes watching clips, but our three years are on replay in my mind. Mostly, what I should have said on our last sunny evening together, the one that tasted bitter sweet. How you made me strong, pushed me to pursue a path into the unknown – a path away from you. But with your death our unsure ending became final.

I’m forever left with memories, an old cassette of love songs, the crush of unspoken words and the thanks I can never give you. Gornisht helfen. Nothing helps.

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You Don't Even Know What You're Upset About Katherine Monica so you write a eulogy for the last time you felt comfortable and you contemplate getting a dog until you remember you don’t have a nurturing bone in your body or any other nurturing organs and you visit the playground behind your elementary school and you throw rocks at birds until you hate yourself then stop, don't waste time being redundant and you get drunk and try to have a conversation with your brother and whenever you’re drunk your brother’s sarcasm sounds like he’s sad and you stare at the moon and wonder what the big fuckin deal is it’s an oval in the sky, it’s a hole, really, if we’re optimistic and your parents ‘don’t even want to know’ and you read an essay about transgenerational trauma in the movie 'Silences Of the Palace' and you turn off the subtitles and the dialogue sounds like music the music sounds condescending and you burn the notebooks you filled when you were 14 and in love with a girl who at the time liked to call you and hang up liked to call you to tell you Brittany came over so she can’t really talk liked to call you and tell you Cam sat next to her on the bus today liked to fall asleep on your shoulder at sleepovers liked to pretend every hand-brush was an accident now she sends you snapchats of her getting shitfaced with fuckasses and you, disgusted, send her snapchats back of you getting shitfaced with people you love and respect and she will never understand and your parents will never understand and your brother will never understand and the birds will never understand and you will never understand

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The Beginning Tasha Cotter By late fall, the fruit was burdening the tree.

The branches, clustered with knobby green pears Had been forgotten and gone uneaten But when we raised our hands (after so long) I didn’t know where to begin. How to collect A season? These trees have watched Entire lives and endured our mistakes. That snap of separation resurrected the branch And soon our wicker basket grew full: Pear nested upon pear, sprig and leaf Blackened spots and all. As for the pears We don’t know what we will do with them.

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Boys Will Be Boys Or Whatever Katherine Monica freshman year you and the boy i thought i loved drew a crude cartoon of me sucking a dick on the back of my notebook on the bus ride home i told my best friend when she asked why i looked so pale i got home and stared at the ceiling and thought of how he was in my dream last night and all we did was hold hands i am not ready for adulthood i am not ready for the honesty of the world i am not ready for the animals i’m in love with or the reasons they talk back.

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Shoo Ellen Wade Beals

Invisible Visitors Alexis Wolfe

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Moments M. Drew Williams A timid hint of trauma is imprinted intimately into the being of all of earth’s mad tenants and there are moments that rise up like steam when I admittedly can no longer stomach it.

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2014 as another year in Virginia Chris Jordan Winfield spinning invisible rings around, fidgeting in my head. civilization is wild, but all i want is what's in my hands. maryland seems nice, but what is it, really? you are included in my unwritten plans, but you don't know that. i've been wrong so many times before, but i'm not letting this small sense of difference turn me around to you. now my belly is tender and distended. you could slice me open raw when i'm this kind of shy, singing to you, acting freely, feeling honest. seems like good practice for the world i want to face. but safety is the fundamental need, really the root of it all. i know it’s not radical but marriage is okay. isn’t it nice to have hope life will stay clear? but all the windows are closing while baltimore still beckons. the world just doesn't work the way i want it to. i'm sick, and i might be sick of here and the people here too. i'm still not engaged to reality. i think i'm dying, but i also know it's just january again.

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The Shadow Outside Clayton Chandler The shadow is alive, a liquid and black and creeping creature that lurks down midnight hallways of leaves. It peeps into windows — pretty little squares of light where faces move, dressing the glass. The shadow is jealous of their bright and voracious vale.

Poor little shadow. It’s standing like a dab of night. Transfixed as hot pantomimes whirl through their frames, hurling invisible words with flapping hands and twisting knees.

These people without voices. The shadow watches them in living rooms, where they slurp dinner off trays. Downing beers. Talking, burping. Fighting, killing … sometimes fucking. Oh, the fucking. That is fun to watch.

The shadow watches through bedroom windows, where girls undress or boy jack off.

Looking in mirrors. Flexing biceps. Smiling at their reflections. Sneaky little people popping their pimples and pinching their nipples where they think no one will see them.

The shadow can see them. He is alive. Has become a proper noun.

He doesn’t have a body yet, though. He has no real identity. Might as well call him Ego. Might as well call him Nemesis. Legion. Id. Lego. Superego.

Might as well call him Tom. Peeping Tom. Peeping little Tom. Peeping little Tom is hungry. Peeping little Tom has nothing to eat. Has eaten nothing.

Never has. Peeping little Tom has no belly. Has no throat. Has no voice box. No teeth.

No ass. No intestines.

Peeping little Tom has only the desire to eat. The desire to consume. To taste. To see. To watch. To slurp all these pantomimes — flashing visual giblets — down like food nuked in a microwave tray.

To hear.

Oh, if only Peeping Little Tom could hear the people! The TV-pane faces flap their words at each other and he hears only burbles. Muffled hums that he senses as vibrations across the glass where he presses his dark mass against it. Shivers that tickle the ends of his raw and growing nerves. The vibrations make him want to giggle. If only he could giggle.

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If only he had a mouth! This little fiend! He has not grown skin yet. He’s still too damned cold for skin. Like a north wind that decided to sit down and assign itself shape.

A restless little pocket of air that thinks itself a brain and — AHA! — draws knowledge into a cloud. An impossible presence. He’s a new-age Big Bang. Banging along, past trashcans and tomcats, wondering how it feels to have feet and realizing that, once he had them, people would be able to mark his passage by the way they crunch the leaves.

Must my feet crunch leaves? he thinks. Makes it hard to watch through the windows, he imagines, crunching on leaves.

But for now, Peeping little Tom doesn’t need to worry about the leaves. He moves. Yeah, he moves. Tricky little sneak. Shouldn’t be peeping, no. He should be hiding at the base of a tree. Tagging along behind some prostitute’s high-heeled feet. Dragged through the gum and the glass and the weeds. Unnoticed as a bottle cap.

But that wasn’t the existence for him. Not Peeping little Tom. One day Peeping little Tom awoke. And he wanted more. And that was enough.

Enough.

Enough.

This self-conceived child, he wanted to do more than watch the pantomimes and giggle over vibrations. He assigned them meanings. Ordering the world to his understanding.

Naming gods on his ten emerging fingers. Divining their purpose by their number.

One for Unity.

Two for Chaos.

Three to merge them and give Form.

Four to add Depth.

Added together, these numbers form 10. They make the cosmos.

From the cosmos, he continues to emerge.

The girls parade their underwear. The boys drop to do twenty. Bodies flop under sheets.

Knives stab into bellies. Guns discharge. Fires climb up the curtains. Old folks sleep with their backs touching. Peeping little Tom sees it all. He invites it into himself. Wants more, more, more. Demands it with the roots of what someday will be his tongue. “More more.” Won’t get what he asks for … won’t get invited to come inside, and he knows it.

Poor Peeping little Tom, too damned strange for that. controllitmag

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Sometimes he finds an open window and he is tempted to slip inside. Slither across the floor, quick as a wisp of smoke. Snuggle up to someone and absorb their warmth.

Become a being of blood and flesh.

But he won’t. He’s not strong enough for that. The warmth would draw him down. Pin his will to the earth, where light would come to shatter him. He would sparkle quickly to death. Fill the air like stars. And he is not ready to become 10 already. He cannot conceive of becoming the cosmos. Not yet, at least.

Winter breathed its first breath and leaves scrambled away, through yellow pools of streetlight where the girl stood and shivered into her coat.

The girl stepped out from under the lights and the shadow crept across her. Draping its cold mantle over her flesh, it disassembled her pieces. Made them its own. Her tits, her eyes, the smell of her hair. Her lips and her lungs. It peeled the tattoo of the flaming heart off her leg and wore it as its own, making mockery of heat and love, of which the shadow knew neither. It recognized only its own face and the shape of the cloud its breath made upon the glass.

END

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Burden JC Bouchard no / a little / touch of / the stigma / slice / bee’s blood / / cornea relapse / saccade / severed / cuticle feed / blemish finger / oh / yes / no / yes / oh oh / tighten / capture muse/ release / unbearable song/ / crushed filament /

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MEATFACE Tara Abrahams The black and blue taste of my own blood was a rainbow splatter on my windshield. I had glass in my heart, too, and it was almost as painful as the glass digging deep in my skin. Butchery. The car was a discard pile of guts and broken teeth. Crashed against a china table plate (shuck shuck shuck went the skin, and the sizzling was all but a breath on the wind), I was a wreck amongst porcelain and baked goods. Blood on the strawberry shortcake. Bone like powdered sugar over the chocolate curls of upholstery leather. I was not the dessert, however; a main course meatface, cured and pressed and stretched, meshed and baked and oozing, a delight to those with metal instruments. Pry me out. Lay me flat on your plate. Dig in, morticians. Dig in.

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Jack London Square Mohammed Syed She plays hopscotch with the undeliberate lines in the cracks of the sidewalk of the square as if the galaxy runs it's course of rotation around her. The swings sway with the wind, seemingly carrying themselves with the dignity of an aristocratic butler, and she hops into the next square with the hindsight of an aged seer. The skin peels from her palms, asking to be moisturized in the dense and dry square. And she dusts off the loose skin, with the intention of clapping away her impulses to contribute to the background noise of others.

People talk.

The way seagulls yelp yelp yelp in eek eek eek without purpose or worry or wonder.

Her mama is talking to the lady with the honey stand, trying to buy those one dollar honey sticks for 10 at 6 dollars.

The lady has kind eyes, but she needs the money.

Pops is working his morning shift at Wells Fargo. I think he will buy some "it's it" sandwiches to share on the apartment balcony after work, like he promised. But he makes lots of promises. She has yet to live in a big house, and have a little sister to share it with. She stills needs to be approached by federal authorities and realize that she's a warrior secret agent princess, from the royal house of Lincoln.

She's bored with unofficial hopscotch. oh well. the official game kinda sucked anyway.

So I sit on a chair in the embarcadero square, and assume the little lady's life with her mother and her father.

I think she'll do fine.

Life is a game of hopscotch, right?

I write.

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A Quiet Walk Foster Trecost We moved on Tuesday. Boxes furnished our apartment, and I was hesitant to unpack, so I left. “I’m going out,” I said. I don’t know what she said.

I walked down a crowded sidewalk, but not with people. We were trees dressed in Tuesday clothes, Tuesday coats and Tuesday hats. I felt alone, like the only boy in the city, except I wasn’t a boy; I was a tree. I ducked in a store to buy a pack of gum. The clerk said what I owed, and I checked the register to make sure. I paid and put the change in my pocket.

Dusk became dark and traffic jammed the streets. Headlights shot the cars in front and I imagined the beams were a single beam, like long light-skewers piercing through a car-kebob. I chewed gum and popped it rapid-fire, and wondered how it felt to be annoyed by a sound.

At an intersection I crossed with the others when the light changed. I felt like a grape and felt happy to be with a bunch of grapes. Grapes were much better than trees.

Trees stood alone and made me feel lonely. I didn’t feel lonely when I was a grape.

I stopped to watch a Santa. He swung a bell and I wondered if the sound helped him collect more money. I thought it would be annoying, like my gum. Still, I gave him the change from my pocket. Steps later, I passed a homeless man holding a cup, and wished I’d waited.

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A sign advertised the best Chinese in the city, and I decided to taste for myself. I pointed to my choice, and decided the sign lied. I paid, went back to the homeless man and dropped my change in his cup. He said something, but his beard wouldn’t let me see what. I’m sure he felt like a tree.

Back at my building, she greeted me at the door and asked how I found the city.

“Loud,” I replied. She laughed at my sarcasm. The boxes were gone and our apartment looked empty.

“Does the bell matter?” I watched her mouth. Reading lips was easy; minds, a bit harder.

“Bell?”

“Santa, he rings a bell. Does the sound make a difference?”

“You give him any money?”

I said I did, and she said there’s my answer.

I asked if she wanted some tea. “Sounds good,” she said, and I asked if she was trying to be funny; we both laughed. When I handed over her mug, we blew ripples in the surface.

“I felt like a grape,” I said.

“When?”

“When I crossed the street.”

She smiled because she knew that was good. The tea was hot and we blew more ripples.

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EGGHEAD Tara Abrahams Crack me open and pour me out Over white sheets a porous peeling Heat of skin, burns, viscous and Delicious.

I want to see your Cerebral soup for what It is. A grey mass, burnt To the yolk.

Dip your fingers in.

Tease out the taste of A lifetime. Find in me Protein-based strands of a former life.

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No Way Of Escape Alexis Wolfe

Bounty Ellen Wade Beals

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La Bouche Invisible Michael Brautigan suspended in the vortex of a tornado she pounded on the glass keys of a supernal piano giant fingerprints appeared on the surface of the moon hearts drawn in foggy windows slowly faded from view sailing on a sea of Kool-Aid she carved binary gibberish into the railing of a replicated Golden Hind she used a spider web as trampoline for random vowels she heard a voice…rather annoying “lock me in your prism and throw away the flea” she pretended to turn rigid with concentration onion skin superimpositions peeled away revealing a black opal sky she got in an 80’s red Porsche and drove the seacoast like it was an autobahn hallucination ghosts of children appeared on the side of the road holding out bouquets of wild flowers she went to the city dump and had a picnic whistling at day laborers dropping off microwaves and finely carved pieces of wood with broken freeway sections which she later portrayed using watercolors and then set the pictures ablaze “who is this strange women?” the shopkeepers whispered among themselves “we can only see her reflection passing in the windows shifting through the various hues of the rainbow but never buying a single thing”

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THROWBACK Joseph Goosey If anyone could do me a favor and drop the hint that I am not an utterly contemptible wretch, I’d owe you sandwiches forever.

Despite whether or not you believe me to be said utterly contemptible wretch, don’t you simply want sandwiches forever?

I’ve got wake service sermons for days and don’t own a pair of shorts, haven’t in years. Haven’t since twenty ten, when my significant other turned twin sister talked me into cutting some pants below the knee.

Has anyone considered pants are not a pair therefore the aforementioned cannot be owned?

No one says stockings anymore, except for right now.

Apparently shorts were in the fashion and I was in the heat rash delirium. I grew so fat I could barely breathe without getting sweat in my most featured of orifices.

I grew romantic comedy friend fat but in our movie I put a puppy in a burlap peanut sack while the older members of the audience waltz out.

Pillory and Post me to your new hair color.

I will ingest all the feces plus bananas your town square can throw.

I will not complain.

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In the Beginning Michael Brautigan Her eyes were like two electromagnetically charged coins –spinning.

Her smile was canine.

The petals on the beach blew into spiral patterns.

Disembodied hands pulled a curtain back from the sky.

Micro life forms shot blue glowing tentacles into each other and became one life organism.

The film spun off the reel.

Shadow stems grew into ruby pomegranates.

FenĂŞtre dans le mur.

This violence was innocence wearing a costume.

This violence was the waking dream.

This violence was solitude.

Jiminy Cricket crossing a dry field with the roar of a 747 overhead.

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Bouquet of Faces Lillian Rosner

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Clementine Von Radics The day I surrendered to the sickness went out, and bought my cane, I realized I was through with the burden of feet. Instead, I am going to become a mermaid.

If everyone is going to stare at me at least let it be because I’m beautiful. Besides, I have always liked the ocean, the promise of depth. I am tired of this dry world, all of this dust and sickness. I want to dive without drowning. I will swim with sharks. braid my hair with seaweed and mythology, let men carve me into the bows of their ships like a prayer, before I lure them into the depths with my fishnet mouth. I want the beauty, the gorgeous mutation, the legend of half body.

All the wisdom of a woman, without the failures of sex.

I am plunging. I am sinking. I am not coming up for air.

I do not want all this human.

My legs move like they resent being legs, my body is wrecked by all of this gravity. I cannot face another morning waking up with no hope of a fairytale. Here on land, I cannot move.

Here on land, I cannot breath. Here on land, I am always drowning. Always Drowning.

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Contributors Kate Monica is a 20 year-old college student in Connecticut. Her poems have been featured in Holey Scripture, Orchid Children, The Long River Review, and theNewerYork. She likes Adventure Time and riding her bike really far.

T.R. Abrahams studies English literature in Toronto, avoids the suburbs, and edits HOLEY SCRIPTURE. Other work includes publications in Electric Cereal, The Mall, and Literary Orphans.

Clementine von Radics is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She is a spoken word poet and the author of the book “As Often As Miracles.� You can find more of her writing and art at clementinevonradics.com Chris Jordan Winfield was born and raised in Virginia. He has been previously published at Electric Cereal. His online presence can be found at alltextwebsite.tumblr.com Mohammed Syed lives.

JC Bouchard is a Canadian poet. His chapbook, Portraits, is published by In/Words Magazine and Press. One of his poems was long-listed for the CBC Canada Writes Poetry Prize, and another received Honourable Mention for the 2013 Bywords John Newlove Poetry Award.

Tasha Cotter's first full-length collection of poetry, Some Churches, was released in 2013 with Gold Wake Press. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in journals such as Contrary Magazine, NANO fiction, and Booth. A graduate of the University of Kentucky and the Bluegrass Writers Studio, she lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where she works in higher education.

Gaia Alari, also known as Marie-Esther, is an entirely self-taught artist from Milan, Italy. Since 2009 she dedicates her free time from medical studies and work to improve her skills in the field of traditional art, mostly using mixed media on paper. She focuses on depicting ethereal and overlapping images, in order to visually represent the intricacy of human nature, psyche and emotions.

Marie Gethins' work has been featured in the 2014 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Litro, Vintage Script, Word Bohemia and The Incubator. She won or placed in Tethered by Letters flash, Dromineer Literary Festival, The New Writer Microfiction, Sentinel Literary Quarterly and 99fiction.net. She lives in Cork, Ireland and is working on her Master of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.

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Michael Brautigan is a freelance writer, poet, and literary scholar who has published in the Milvia Street Journal, Unlikely Stories, and Blink-Ink, Undergroundwriter, DM du Jour, Collective Exile, Carcinogenic Poetry, Red Fez, and Return to Mago, Way of the S/HE. Ellen Wade Beals is a writer who has recently started to try her hand at photography. Her photo "Cold Heart" was the cover of Vine Leaves Literary Journal #10. Her writing has appeared in various print and electronic literary magazines here and in Ireland. She is the editor and publisher of the award-winning anthology Solace in So Many Words. Ellen's website is: www.solaceinabook.com M. Drew Williams is a poet currently residing in Western New York. His chapbooks are forthcoming from Kind of a Hurricane Press and Leaf Garden Press. He and his writing can be found at m-d-williams.tumblr.com W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of seven books (wjacksavage.com) including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.

Lillian Rosner is an artist and illustrator currently residing in New York City. You can find more of her artwork athttp://lilrosner.wordpress.com.

Nayantara Dutta is a rising sophomore at Tufts University who plans to major in Psychology and minor in Music. She has lived in Vietnam, the US, Hong Kong, India, and most recently, Indonesia! She keeps an insane number of journals, will harmonize spontaneously to any song, and loves chocolate-covered pretzels.

Alexis-Grace Wolfe is currently and a freshmen in college. She is earning a Bachelor's Degree in Digital Photography at The Art Institute of Ohio in Cincinnati, Ohio. After graduation, she hopes become an event photographer for musicians.

Foster Trecost moved home because he missed New Orleans; now he misses Italy. He writes stories that follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short.

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Mohammed Syed Katherine Monica Marie Gethins Tasha Cotter Ellen Wade Beals Alexis Wolfe M. Drew Williams Chris Jordan Winfield Clayton Chandler JC Bouchard Tara Abrahams Nayantara Dutta Michael Brautigan Foster Trecost Lillian Rosner Clementine Von Radics W. Jack Savage

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