CORRIDORS v. 2
2016
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staff Fiction & Poetry Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editors
Nonfiction Co-Editors-in-Chief Assistant Editors
Jean Gillingham Meaghan Betz Valerie Casola McKayla Coyle Rachel Kingsley Carolyn Perricelli Allison Sledge Nicole DeVincentis Blake Lubinski Luisa Beguiristain Christopher Czapla James McNamee Maria Markulis Alyssa Villani
Art Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editors
Design Publicity Faculty Advisors
McKayla Coyle Emily Covais Lillian Randall Stephanie Sherman Megan Suder Alyssa Villani Alexander Akers Lyra Dautaj Cara Hullings Lucas Southworth Jenne Knight Tiffany Curtis
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Corridors Literary Journal Loyola University Maryland. Volume 2/2016 Corridors does not claim publishing rights of any kind for the materials within its pages: all rights remain those of the author or artist. We invite the Loyola student body to submit original poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and photography to next year’s issue. All submissions remain confidential. Please direct all electronic submissions to corridors@loyola.edu and feel free to visit us on our website (corridorsmag. wordpress.com) for more information. Published by: Mount Royal Printing Co. 6310 Blair Hill Lane Baltimore, MD 21209 Cover: Margaret Wroblewski Back cover: Jean Gillingham Corridors 2016
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Editors' Note Imagine this journal as a long hallway with a thousand doors. When turning each page, listen to the hinges creak and let the light pour into the hall. Then, step inside. In this issue of Corridors, you will be taken to places abroad or centuries back, to places unexplored or close to home, to places bustling with people or long forgotten. Our staffs selected these pieces for their craft, their insight, and their beauty, and the works collected here all encompass a journey. We hope you learn on your journey, we hope you explore and taste and love, and, most of all, we hope you have an adventure. Thank you to our staffs and our faculty advisors, who constructed these corridors with us, drew the maps, and hung the guiding lanterns. Thank you to our contributors, who created the worlds on the other sides of the doors, and thank you, reader, for opening them. Jean Gillingham Nicole DeVincentis Blake Lubinski McKayla Coyle
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
poetry September Emma Ditzel 16 Cartagena Slums Madison Nicolao 17
Darth Vader Plays Baseball for the First Time Eli Polnerow 167
Here on the Table Alexandra Chouinard 18
Girl With a Pearl Earring Megan Suder 168
The Path to Comfort Megan Suder 19
Early Riser Siobhan McKenna 169
Home Caroline Barada 20
Loch Sydney McClure 170
Alcalá de Henares Anna Quinn 21
Where You’ll Find Us Rodlyn-mae Banting 171
Two’s Day Blake Lubinski 22
Funeral Anna Quinn 172
Milkshake Blake Lubinski 166
Benevolence, Georgia Emma Ditzel 174
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fiction Chocolate Jennelle Barosin 36 Thorns McKayla Coyle 39
Remedy for Struggling Marriages Siobhan McKenna 58
Magdalene Matthew Rossi 41
Birthday Balloon Emily Cashour 60
Indigo Conor MacNeill 43
New Baby Isabel Bernate 62
“Inner Peace Made Easy: One Can’s Story of Complete Personal Fulfillment” by Can Man Michael Ebmeier 49
Alone Allison Sledge 64
The Lady Zola Connor Lindeboom 52 Around and Around Anna Quinn 54
The Strands that Bind Us Marian Ada Ifeoma Okpali 66
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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T A B L E
effective writing essay contest winners
O F C O N T E N T S Corridors 2016
First Place The Lagoon McKayla Coyle 85 Second Place Eliminate the Choices Grace Hymel 88 Third Place Cheering for the Other Team Giselle Garnett 95 Fourth Place Correlation Versus Causation in the Entertainment Industry and Society Tyler Van Houten 99
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nonfiction Feminist Fatale: Double Indemnity and Female Empowerment Keanna Morgan 117 Mirror, Mirror Christian Lopez-Ashby 121 Frida Kahlo, Jr. Emma Ditzel 125 Fix the Ladder, Fix the World Zachary Fechter 127 A Researched Open Letter to Dr. Ben Carson: On Mental Health and Mass Shootings Amanda Waggoner 131
Memory Anna Quinn 137 A Scary Essay Madeline Galler 139 The Legendary Pizza Michael Ebmeier 143 Land of the Midnight Sun McKayla Coyle 146 Pink Elisabeth Freer 150
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
art & photography The Wanaka Tree, New Zealand Julia D’Agostino 25 Assembly Anna Rose Waniak 26 Ritual Union Maggie Powell 27 To Give Mark Welch 28 Soft Pandemonium Sawyer Scott 29 Water Gates Victoria Sluko 30 Athens, Greece Margaret Wroblewski 31
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One Margaret Wroblewski 32 Stari Most Eli Polnerow 69 Storm Margaret Wroblewski 70 Thorsmork Victoria Sluko 71 Puerto Rican Soul Camelia Rojas 72 Bandera en Puerta Camelia Rojas 73
art & photography Anomaly Giselle Garnett 74 Upstairs Victoria Sluko 75 Up Above Margaret Wroblewski 76 Odds and Ends Mark Welch 105 New Life Itzayana Osorio 106 Self Portrait with the Sun Itzayana Osorio 107 Reverie Margaret Wroblewski 108
Pont du Gard, Nimes Camelia Rojas 109 That Troddlin’ Town Stephanie Hakeem 110 Terror in Copenhagen Eli Polnerow 111 Jade Kamilia Arroyo 112 Bean Town Stephanie Hakeem 155 Suffocating Nature Camelia Rojas 156
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
art & photography The Divide Clara Moore 157 Black Creek Juliana Neves 158 The Gift of Home Ashley Dellefave 159 Lake Matheson, New Zealand Julia D’Agostino 160 Untitled Mark Welch 161 Wasted Waterways Lexie Tunnell 162
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POETRY
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September Dampness hangs in the mid-morning air. Lingering sunlight heats the brick sidewalk, leaves scattered like expired wishes. The fragile click of a gas stove— eggs over easy and tea for breakfast. Sitting by the window, I watch the day fade once more. Night envelops the remainder of the unapologetic sunset, welcoming the dark.
Emma Ditzel
poetry
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Cartagena Slums The all-around American girl had freckled cheeks that burned in the sun. The dirt road she walked was rocky and uneven. The blue tarps clung to tin roofs and stray dogs limped by, raw skin and bones. The daycare’s purple door said “Bienvenido.” The room was small, orange, and filled with children in Hello Kitty t-shirts and paint-stained jean shorts. They played on the floor with missing-limb dolls. Blue plastic chairs faced the TV, but most of the children watched the fan as it blew hot air onto their faces. The all-around American girl sat on the cement floor. The children played with her hair. “Nunca te olvidaré,” she said. I’ll never forget you. She kissed each child goodbye, and they waved as she turned back on the trash-piled, fly-swarmed dirt road.
Madison Nicolao
poetry
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Here on the Table Here on the table, look at my heart; it’s not much, just something I have. I think you’d like it. It’s been put back together a few times; it broke when my father drove away in his blue Ford pick-up truck, and again when Jack, the shy, disheveled, first love of mine, said his goodbye sometime in January when I was a freshman in high school. But I know you’ll take care of it. You always take care of your things: you make your bed every day, and you make sure your suit is always ironed and hung in the closet before you go to work.You even fold your neckties. Someone like that could do a real nice job holding onto this for me.
Alexandra Chouinard
poetry
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The Path to Comfort The silent night is a lie they tell through their teeth. I have been in the night, held it in my palms while it holds me in its humid breath. In its throat, the cars whir by, and the wind shushes me. I clamber down the night’s paths. Crickets scream a chorus, but I refuse to dance to their dark noise. As I pass the alleys where shadows wake, ghosts of car motors rush at me. But spirits cannot send me to the pavement, cannot wrap me in a cold body bag come morning. My feet sound like drumbeats when I walk without company in the wakeful eye of the never silent night.
Megan Suder
poetry
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Home They say home is where the heart is, so I wonder when I roam. Is it stitched on my sleeve, woven in cables and purls and knits? Is it carried in my purse, hidden among a gaggle of lipstick, a lost piece of gum, a receipt wrinkled beyond reading? Is it pressed between the pages of my passport, stamped with each memory like a postcard? Is it trapped in the stories that line my walls, pressed like dried flowers? Maybe it’s frozen in the smile of a picture, eternally young but growing old with each passing day. Maybe it’s in a phantom whiff of perfume, caught on the edge of a breeze. Maybe it’s trapped in the billowing smoke of birthday candles, mingling with whispered wishes. Maybe it follows me wherever I roam, waiting for me to find the place to rest my cornerstone.
Caroline Barada poetry
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Alcalá de Henares The pigeons here don’t know how to fly. They soar slowly through thin calles, nearly clipping the bodies through which they weave. They are Spanish birds—Europeans in flight—mirroring the slow walks of the pueblo’s people. They too stroll, arm in arm, up and down the cobbled sidewalk: the evening paseo they’ve been routing since they were teenage fiancés. It’s the same absence of thought to the passing of time that brings dinner to the table at 10 pm, that lets a vino tinto drain with the same speed of a dwindling nighttime sun. The pigeons here don’t know how to fly, but they nest near one another, una comunidad of homemade houses.
Anna Quinn poetry
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Two’s Day It’s Tuesday, my favorite day. I like the way it sounds: Tues-day. It’s like To-day but with more oo. And us. It’s Two’s day, a day for two, and we are two. But not one and one makes two. No, you’re more one-and-one-half. And I’m more one-half. One-and-one-half and one-half makes two—us. We’re on the sidewalk in front of my house.You look ahead but don’t see a head. I look ahead but don’t see one either. I see buttons. They climb one, two, chest hair. I remember you shaved once. But “Real men don’t shave,” you said. “Don’t go there,” I said. Come here with me instead. We are walking now. Well, you are walking; I’m barely touching the cement. I measured my legs in the kids’ section of a department store once. My inseam was twenty-four inches. I was nineteen. Nineteen. But the tag on the jeans said twelve, not twelveteen. I’m wearing them now. The fabric bunches at my ankles. You laugh at that—the jeans, the numbers, the things we don’t understand. I took calculus a few years ago. I didn’t understand the graphs and the equations and the processes. But I got a 93.1%, so maybe I didn’t understand only 6.9% of the graphs and the equations and the processes. I learned how to find the limits of functions as x approaches infinity. Sometimes, the answers were numbers: seven-over-three, eleven-under-six, twelve. (Never twelveteen, though.) Other times, they weren’t: a number over zero is undefined. I don’t know where we’re going. Our path is undefined. At the end of the block, we turn east. It’s a choice made at random—but not the eenie-meenie-miney-mo kind of random.You say we’re “too old” for that.We are two old. We’re twenty. 2-0. But calculus and Isaac Newton say zero doesn’t count, so we’re just two. Defined.You said your jawline is the most defined thing I’ve ever seen: “My jawline is the most defined thing you’ve ever seen.” But I’ve only seen it once. That time when you shaved. You weren’t a Real man then. Did you want to be a boy again? You can be a boy again. I’m still a girl. I wear jeans with glued-on plastic rhinestones. But I pick them off: one, two, a broken nail. poetry
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You say it’s not safe to walk on the outside side of the sidewalk.You cross behind me. I walk on the inside side now. The nail will grow back. We turn south. Sunlight slides thick on our skin like pancake batter on a griddle. It spreads smooth, even, until we realize the pancakes are still wet. In the mirror tonight, my nose, cheeks, and shoulders will glow red, though neither sunlight nor skin nor pancake batter is red. I tell you the laws of conservation lie. You tell me I’m not good at science. I tell you no. But you’re right: I know calculus. We turn west. Tomorrow, my body will chip away: burnt flesh that clings to my hair and collects in my sheets. Is this the Real reason you don’t shave? Sunburn lasts longer than a clean face. Infinity lasts longer than that. But don’t ask me how long—or where. I don’t know where it goes, where we go. We turn north. I know where we’re going now. Up ahead, I see a head: the head of your car. The paint still lays white, not burnt. Maybe the laws of conservation don’t lie: my house is still there, too, sitting behind the inside side of the sidewalk.You’d say it’s safest there, so what’s your car doing on the outside side in the street? And what are you doing with your hand in your pocket, searching for your keys, unlocking the door, and climbing inside? “Don’t go,” I say. Stay here with me instead. But you’re saying goodbye.You say Real men have to work. But you’re not a Real man. You can be a boy again. I’m still a girl. You’re one-and-one-half. And I’m one-half. One-and-one-half and one-half makes two—us. But you’re buckling your seatbelt. To-day, Tues-day, oo. And us.You’re starting the engine. Two’s day, a day for two, and we are two. You’re pulling away from the curb. Our pancakes are still on the table. “I can put them back on the griddle,” I say, “I can, I can.” But you don’t hear me.You’re driving, leaving. Gone before I could ask, “Will I see you Two-morrow?”
Blake Lubinski poetry
Julia D’Agostino
TheWanaka Tree, New Zealand
Assembly Anna Rose Waniak
Ritual Union Maggie Powell
To Give Mark Welch
Soft Pandemonium Sawyer Scott
Water Gates Victoria Sluko
Athens, Greece Margaret Wroblewski
One Margaret Wroblewski
FICTION
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Chocolate I’m a firm believer that it shouldn’t be cold without snow. There is no reason for the air outside to freeze in my lungs as I open the window and clamber out onto the fire escape in the blue-gray of the predawn morning. The metal railings burn my palms as I make my way to the roof, four floors up.When I reach the top, pulling myself over the last rungs of the ladder, gasping, I see her. She’s wrapped in a down comforter, holding a mug of hot chocolate. The steam curls up, ephemeral. I can’t feel the cold at all anymore, not when her face unfolds like a flower blooming in high speed when she sees me, red-faced and out of breath. “Hi,” she says with a breath that freezes as it leaves her mouth, suspended in the air between us. I walk over and sit next to her, stealing half of her blue and white polkadot comforter. The city is silent and dark, the cold dampening the usual hustle. It’s as if the frost went through the boroughs and avenues and whispered to every moving thing to hush, go back to sleep. “I’m surprised you were awake,” she says after a minute, so quiet I barely hear her. I move closer to her warmth. The last time we did this, it was not quite this cold. That was weeks ago, before she got too busy with law school to meet me on the roof. I barely saw her since then, only in passing in the hall. In texts that were few and far between, she told me how hard the semester was hitting her. I stopped knocking on her door to see if she was home—she rarely was. But she still left me Tupperware containers of chocolate pudding pie by my door almost every day that I ate when I got home from class. She knows chocolate is my favorite. “Of course I am,” I say, nonchalantly, through chattering teeth. I’ll never tell her, but I never stopped going up to the roof since that last time. She was just never there. I started thinking that it was a fluke when she kissed my cheek the last time I saw her here, so fleeting I almost didn’t feel it before she disappeared into her room. This morning, I didn’t want to go. I could say it was the cold, but my heart had felt heavy, like this might be the day to stop hoping … but I pictured her up here alone, watching the day start without anyone to hold her hand or kiss her as the sun came up. So I got out of bed. “Well,” she says, “I’m glad you were.” I smile at her, and then we both fiction
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turn out to look at the city, at the tinges of pink that are just starting to stain the sky. I can see her biting her lip and smiling out of the corner of my eye. Her arm is braced on the ground next to mine, and I slowly link our pinkies. I can hear her quick exhale, and every hope in my heart that I tried for weeks to squash hits me like the chill of the air when I opened my window this morning. I want to hold her hand—I want so much more than that—but this thing between us is as fragile as the frozen air. Too much movement and the moment will shatter. She holds my hand, her thumb stroking mine now, and my heart stutters. We flirted for months; it was noncommittal, friendly. It started with helping with her groceries; we live on the fourth floor of an old building with no elevators. I figured it was neighborly. I discovered that the record-breaking amount of flour she would buy was used to bake pies when I walked into her open apartment to find her covered in it. It was the messiest and the happiest I’d ever seen her. Over the weeks, I started to hang out as she baked, memorizing medical terms, and she told me that if it weren’t for her grandfather insisting she join the family practice, she’d have her own bakery. I told her I’d be her number one customer. We began spending the weekends together, going on dates that we didn’t call dates—to the movies, to different cafés so she could scope out her future competition—and then I would walk her to her door. After spending the day with her, I would want to say to her that she could do whatever she wanted because she was brilliant, to kiss her. With my heart, I have always been too cautious. I couldn’t tell her that. Then, she disappeared. But now she’s here next to me, and she’s so warm. “I have something I’ve been wanting to let you know.” She breaks the silence we’d been sitting in. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until she spoke. I turn to look at her, and she smiles. “I quit law school. It took a lot to convince my grandfather, but—” I cut her off when I tackle her with a hug, but then the cold air seeps in as the comforter moves.We both laugh and huddle closer together, trying to get the warmth back. She’s smiling at me, and the sun is on the horizon, just starting to send golden rays across the glass of the skyscrapers, setting the city on fire. My hand reaches forward to cup her cheek. My hand reaches out and she leans into it, letting out a warm breath that wafts across my face, and I wonder—if I kiss her quickly enough, could I catch the last taste of the cocoa she’s drinking? Because in this moment we’re here and we’re together and we’re so fiction
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happy. And I’m kissing her, finally, her lips warm against my cold ones as the new day begins. She tastes like chocolate.
Jennelle Barosin
fiction
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Thorns Since birth, her hands had been covered in thorns. They were green and twisted, curling to sharp points that rose from her skin like roots. She lived alone near the edge of the woods, and at night, she would sit in bed examining her thorns. The window next to her filled the room with moonlight. One by one, she would touch them, feeling them lightly nudge her skin. She ran one hand over the other and listened to the soft tapping of the thorns as they brushed. They were a forest pricking through her flesh. Outside, the wind howled through the trees. The sun was too bright as the girl walked through town. She kept her hands at her sides, feeling the people stare. “Cursed,” they whispered; she whipped around, but she saw only backs, downturned heads. She pressed on, and her hand brushed a woman’s arm. A shriek pierced the air, and suddenly everyone was staring at the girl. She shrank beneath their gaze. “Repulsive!” They surrounded her. “Wretched!” The words blurred together. She thrust out her hands, the sunlight glinting off her thorns. The crowd fell back and she ran. Throwing open her front door, she raced into the kitchen. She ripped open a drawer, and from the dark wood, a glimpse of silver gleamed. The knife’s handle was soft and intricately carved; it felt warm against her skin. She darted to the edge of the forest, where a bed of pine needles covered the grass. She collapsed to her knees, clutching the knife. One by one, she carved her thorns from her hands, hacking at them, watching them fall to the ground. Her breathing grew heavy. The wind picked up. Blood pooled in her palms, filling the spaces where the thorns had been. She dropped the knife. Her hands were mangled and torn, covered in ragged holes. They shone in the evening light, a mess of crimson. Her thorns were scattered beneath her, glowing red against the grass. For months, the girl’s hands were scarred pink and littered with craters. The spaces where her thorns had been were now cavernous and dark; the rugged peaks had crumbled. The whispers from the town twisted into her head, reaching for her like tendrils of fog. She could hear them spitting her name, cursing her. They had done this to her. The girl stared at her hands, searching for stars in the gashes of night. She missed the twisting roots that once wove their fiction
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way out of her palms. Outside, the trees were still, as if waiting for something. The girl did not return to the village; instead, she kept to her house and the woods. Flowers had sprouted near the edge of the forest, and the girl watered them daily, watching them bloom pink and purple, orange and red. She watered her hands as well, and one day, she noticed tiny pinpricks piercing through her scars. She drew her hands to her face to examine them closer and saw the hints of treetops poking up. Elated, she held her hands out into the sun. She was so excited to see her thorns that she didn’t notice something about them had changed: color now danced in their creases, pink and purple, orange and red.
McKayla Coyle
fiction
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Magdalene The potholes got filled in by the rain, and the street almost looks clean today. The row homes, with their whitewashed brick and flaking black shutters, are dominoes, perched to fall. Truth is though: the houses don’t fall like dominoes. The people do. Sis ran away last year, day after my fourteenth birthday. Took off with her boyfriend to train-hop across the country. My older brother joined a gang on 29th street. He rarely comes home anymore. My father works extra shifts at the sugar factory to provide for my mother and me, since she ain’t able to work on account that she got bad arthritis. Every chance I get, I escape to the rich part of town. I stroll through the neighborhood, staging my own tightrope act on the unbroken curbs. All they see from their parlor rooms is a raggedy kid wasting away his time, or worse, they think I’m setting fire to trash cans in the back alleys. Can’t see what I’m thinking. Can’t see where I’m going. They just judge and judge and judge. Where I’m going is the art museum. I always wear my best pair of ripped jeans, converse sneakers, a V-neck shirt streaked with white from the time I helped paint our porch, and my olive green army surplus jacket. With my sharpie, I drawn sketches all over the inside sleeves.There’s one of my neighbor’s tabby cat and one of my sister. There’s also one of my mom playing cards, back when her fingers didn’t lock shut. I roll my sleeves up so that the artists in the museum can see them. I’ve taken every tour of that marble palace at least ten times. I heard them bow-tied, elbow-patched, leather-loafered scholars saying that “tenebrism” and the “period eye” make a painting mean something as they debate over which fat-cat art critic got it just right when he described it in his “1965 volume of the entire collection of blah, blah, blah.” They’re wrong. Sometimes a painting just wants to be exactly what it is. My favorite is one of a woman called Magdalene. Ma says she was a harlot in the good book who repented and Jesus gave her his grace. She came to his tomb on the third day and found he was living again. I would’ve been real spooked. Magdalene weren’t though. She’s leaning her head on a skull, on top of some books. The background is pitch-black and all you can see is her meditating on that skull, thinking about dreary things. Prob’ly the death of her fiction
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friend, Jesus. But she’s got beautiful red hair and glowing skin and a shiny gold skirt on. She don’t know that anyone is watching. But you can feel she wants to be admired. Yesterday, I did something to make sure that everyone I meet will admire her. I sat down in that gallery, pulled out my sharpie, and got to work. I stayed all day copying that painting onto the back of my jacket. After I finished drawing every single pattern that was in that shiny gold skirt, I stood up and slipped my jacket on. When those scholars came into the room, one of them said, “Young man! Where did you learn your technique? Such a subtle hand!” He kept droning on, but I just dropped the marker at his feet as I left.
Matthew Rossi
fiction
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Indigo 1 To the parents of Bartholomew, Mr. Josiah and Mrs. Quinn Hart: On August 24, under the full moon, your son passed away. Bartholomew, a friend to many, succumbed to typhus fever shortly before midnight.The crew of the St. Lawrence shares your grief in full and wishes it be known that the burial was accomplished with all customs pertaining to the matter at sea. Bartholomew was committed to the deep at approximately 46 degrees north by 23 degrees west. Enclosed, you will find a pension and his burial flag. If you wish to reach out at any time, we aboard implore you to seize the opportunity to write back a correspondence. With heavy heart, Herman Mel— The ship’s bow violently pitched up and then rolled hard to starboard as it came down. The lamp was thrown a good several feet; the inkwell spilled and black sludge made a lethargic advance from the corner to the center of the paper. As for myself, my head slammed into an overhanging timber. Damn it, I thought, looking down at the blackened letter—though secretly relieved that something less God-awful would replace it. In truth, Bart was a man too odd for words, yet hidden in his subtlety were characteristics that pegged him for greatness. His refusal to consume cheese was baffling, and he persisted it even to the point of self-imposed starvation— subscribing great faith in his toddler-self’s dietary habits. Equally strange, Bart abstained from all revelry. At times timid, he possessed an underlying kindness and articulated well when he spoke. His vocabulary lacked euphemisms, instead striking the heart of all matters. Charisma flowed through him and helped to elevate every word. I don’t think he ever missed a chance to run off on a tangent about some obscure part of his childhood. He was weird. He was my friend. Everything in the room looked disheveled. The squall had ended hours earlier, but rolling waves continued to buffet the ship. Books were knocked from their shelves and atlases were strewn randomly around the floor. Gale, the chief steward, was sure to have a fit tomorrow. Next to one atlas lay a fresh parchment and an unopened inkwell slightly to the right of it. As I knelt down, a sudden thought came and knocked my wind out. Bart deserved better. Bart deserved face to face. fiction
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2 Gloucester was a whaling town, let there be no thoughts to the contrary. Bart grew up around the industry, and as such was molded by it. He took his first job as a cabin boy at the age of eleven aboard a whaler set for the coast of Novia Scotia. The Harts were only too supportive of their son’s endeavors and allowed him to continue his frequent excursions aboard various vessels. Staring at the Harts’ ancestral home, it became clear to me that Bart took to the seas more for passion than anything else. His family was absolutely loaded. The house was three stories tall and sat atop a large hill, and the property line enclosed a good fifteen acres of prime farmland. My messmate was a modest millionaire. Josiah Hart met me with a firm handshake at the door, and Mrs. Hart had lemon cake waiting for us on hand in the family den. When I spoke of Bart’s fate, they seemed oddly okay. Bart was an adventurous type, though he had hoped to eventually settle down and marry in his later years. His family had accepted that Bart would die at sea long ago and knew he’d never want to bring them grief. Instead of weeping, they just grew quiet, looked at each other, and exhaled. The family dog in the corner of the room got up and came to lay on Mrs. Hart’s lap, and she patted his head.Walking toward the door, Josiah stopped me to say thanks and offered that they might put me up should the occasion ever arise. It was a humble gesture, and I accepted it cordially. Leaving, I noticed that the great oak trees, which dotted the property, were beginning to show the yellow specks of autumn. Winter was obviously coming, and icebergs would soon render a return as hazardous. The grounds were full of various structures Bart had made as a child and now lay derelict. Josiah said that he planned to hold a funeral service within the fortnight and had a plot in mind near a great pine tree that Bart had loved to climb. The St. Lawrence was scheduled to put to sea in the morning. 3 The Captain was most understanding of my decision to winter in Gloucester and only threatened my life twice to come back aboard the ship. Pawning the items he had thrown at me provided an adequate compensation for my time aboard. With all honesty, I am not currently prepared for a voyage of any sort. The image of Bart’s funeral shroud slipping beneath the glimmering waves still comes to me at night, and I am afeared. fiction
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Mr. Hart was happy that I had taken up his offer of accommodation— though surprised as he had made it only several hours earlier. He was even more overjoyed when I offered to help with the funeral preparations. Bart had been the oldest of six but the only male. The first task that Josiah gave to me was to run about the house collecting various portraits they had of Bart—in my mind, a bit more aristocratic than he would have liked. My favorite was one of him and his dog: smiling and happy. The next few days were spent tidying the house and preparing the memorial tombstone. Gradually, family and distant relatives began to arrive. The first four of Bart’s sisters bore a strong resemblance to him, though luckily the fifth was spared. The dark hair, thick accents, and coarse language confirmed that the family had originated in the north of Ireland, most likely Belfast, and had immigrated following the failed rebellion in 1798. All being very well educated, it was only a short matter of time before they amassed considerable wealth in their new homeland. 4 The service itself was short. The local minister conferred a blessing on the memorial stone, and after a few hours, the reception began to wane. I was about to retire for the night when I heard subtle sobs from the downstairs. Investigating, I peeked my head down the banister to see Mr. Hart crying into the shoulder of the fifth daughter—sadly, I still cannot recall her name, though she was very beautiful. Slightly bored, and still grieving in my own right, I decided to eavesdrop rather than inserting myself into the moment. Up until this, I had thought Stoicism the dominant philosophy among the Harts, but Josiah’s intermittent sobs of “I miss him” now made it clear that they merely masked their emotions rather than burden other people with them. Eventually, the other siblings came to assist in comforting their father, as did his wife and dog. They all slept with their backs supporting one another before the hearth. 5 Sleep paid a late visit that night. The revelations of the day, unceasing thoughts, and overall melancholy atmosphere burrowed into my mind. Gradually, the overpowering nature of slumber shut my eyes, but not even in my sleep was I safe from my feelings. In my resting mind, a sail-less St. Lawrence split through the waves under a crescent moon, and the stars slowly fell to earth. When each star gingerly landed on the ship, it would begin a fire. A hell worthy of Dante’s sixth circle silhouetted itself against the now starless, black sky. Flames ate at the fiction
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faces and limbs of the panicking crew. The pitiful souls who could, they jumped overboard—content to live the remainder of their lives charred shells of men. Many were cremated still on the deck. One man, however, did not burn; at the helm of the ship stood a stoic Bartholomew Hart—piercing gray eyes level to the horizon. Flames tore at the structure of the ship; loud, intermittent cracks of snapping timber replaced the shrieks of dying men. I plunged into the frigid water. 6 A cold sensation spread over my forehead. Icy water creeped its way from the summit of my face to the valley of my pillow. A heavy migraine boomed in the back of my lower skull. I darted my eyes to the window. It was still night, the stars still inlaid in the sky. Each frantic breath hung a frosty cloud in the air. A cold, distant sensation worked its way up my spine, and my head erupted in a debilitating pain. I wiggled each body part and felt the dry straw of the mattress. Another arctic drop of water landed on my forehead. The ceiling appeared as dry as the mattress, but the possibility arose that one of Bart’s siblings was behind the trick. I made my way, treading lightly to the stairs, and dipped my head down to view the hearth. There, the entire clan remained, huddling around the dying embers. Enough glow was still left in the wood to distinguish each outline. Perhaps a stored jug of water, ill-placed in an unstable position, had fallen? Various other explanations skidded through my head as I curiously re-entered the bedroom. I felt it; the pillow was dry. 7 Golden dawn soon came, and its bight figures slowly advanced across the length of the room. The night had provided no more excitement but had robbed me sufficiently of a natural sleep-cycle. It was easily noon by the time my eyelids drifted apart again, and the smell of bacon tickled my nostrils. Quinn Hart met me at the base of the stairs with a hearty platter of food, and Josiah— eyes streaked with red—sat at the head of the table. “The girls left,” muttered Josiah. “I’m sorry I missed them,” I replied. “They were happy to go.” “Bad memories?” “No, they just don’t like me,” Josiah mused, chuckling to himself. Mrs. Hart, having remained silent up to that point, sternly burst into fiction
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the conversation: “Oh, don’t even joke about that, Josy.” The oddities behind Bart became clearer with every passing moment: a product of his environment, if nothing else. Josiah stifled his smirk. 8 By graciously allowing me into his house, Josiah seemed content that I was to become family, the son he now lacked. As in any family, the offspring owe their creators but one thing: work. Mr. Hart had a litany of chores to attend to, and he saw it fit that I should aid him in all. Farming was never much my strong suit—I am more apt to accidentally kill a plant than see it through to the harvest—but Josiah found other ways to utilize my talents: animal pens needed cleaning, fences needed repair, heavy things needed lifting. Each week became a predictable format of muscle-aches, exhaustion, and strategically planned naps. The leaves faded and brown specks crumbled to the ground in droves, bushes withered, and an invigorating cold breeze swept through. The fading of the flora was exacerbated by a peculiar drought; the uncultivated fields of grass turned a drained beige color. Winter continued its steady, cold advance. Time came to kill the livestock and preserve their meat. The process left me a bit squeamish, but Josiah seemed to enjoy himself—a little too much, actually. The Harts do not believe in eating animal fat, so we carved the meat and threw the flab in the field as fertilizer. The knife was a little dull, and the slaughter left an ache in my right shoulder. Clouds gathered overhead, and the wind, twisting its way through the trees, built in strength. Perhaps the drought was nearly at an end. 9 Night bore witness to no rain, but it did cower before the most brutal lightning storm in recent memory: the violent bellows of thunder came regularly; sharp, sporadic bolts pummeled the earth and illuminated the heavens. I directed my eyes out the window, slightly amused at God’s wrath.The moon, just starting to wax on, projected a white light through the epicenter of the onslaught and landed on the wooden meat-shed, its door open. I now noticed that the Harts had named their shed after the ship their son sailed on—St. Lawrence. I remembered my augury, and I tried to roar a warning to the Harts, but my jaw would not move. Josiah sprinted to the shed, but for some peculiar reason he couldn’t shut the door. Quinn, upon seeing her husband struggle, left safety and dashed to her beloved. They had just succeeded in closing the door when the lightning fiction
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hit. The dry grass, doused in animal fat, erupted with a violent flame. Color fled my face as cold ran up my spine, and my cheeks twitched. Of all the things I have heard, the Harts’ screams were the worst. 10 Funerals have become a familiar occurrence in the Hart household. Seven orphans were made, and Josiah and Quinn met their son in death. Bart’s body has likely long since decayed and become part of the bottomless sea. Something lingers. Some call me mad, and maybe I am, a little. I’ve seen too much to be sane.
Conor MacNeill
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“Inner Peace Made Easy:
One Can’s Story of Complete Personal Fulfillment” by Can Man Gather round children. I am the Can Man, and this is my fable-tale. Pay attention, there’s a lesson here for you! I cannot confirm having a childhood, children. All I remember is wandering out of a factory one day with a boy’s torso, covered with fresh, wet skin, and the head of a can. I checked the inside of the factory, and there was nobody in there. I was totally lost. Using my innate sense of magnetism, I drifted to an old wrought-iron park bench with a homeless man sleeping on it. I asked the man, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?” The vagrant told me that his name was Squatting Howard, that this bench was his place in the world, and that everyone he ever knew died in Vietnam. Children, I pushed him and said my piece: “Squatting Howard, I simply do not understand what you’re talking about here!” Squatting Howard told me that 9/11 never happened and I should just go to school. I tuned my can to a local Wi-Fi signal and used Google Maps to find out where school was. I approached the counter at the school and asked the skeletal woman in the poofy chair behind the counter, “Hello? Is this school? I heard I’m supposed to be at school.” The old secretary crone’s nameplate read Donna Blankovich; she whispered to herself about television soaps. “Excuse me, Miss? I need to be in school!” She angrily clarified that she meant soaps advertised on television, not soap operas. Herbal soaps for her cats. She explained that she was a miserable waste of skin and that this was her place in the world. She would die behind this desk, listening to school brats whine at her all day. She told me to go to hell. “That is just fine lady, but where is the school?” She barked at me like a fat beagle and told me that I was already late for fourth grade homeroom in room 122. “Thank you, Miss!” I got lost on the way to class. I didn’t say anything during math or language arts, so it was time for recess. On the playground, I met a big, mean bully named Brice Schnittstein. He had red hair and he called me a loser. “Listen Brice, I don’t want to fight you. fiction
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I just want a place where I belong.” Brice told me not here, that the playground was his turf. He told me that his dad beat him with whips every night. At least his dad did before he shot himself. Brice told me that he’d learned everything he’s ever known that way. Children, never mess with a bully. They can be really messed up and scary! Needless to say, Brice bullied the shit out of me that day. He dumped toilet water into my can and spun me around so I’d get off balance. He pushed me down and called to the whole class to play kick the can with my head. It was a sorry scene: me skidding across the playground mulch, ricocheting like a pinball off the little feet of the fourth grade class. One of them kicked a high pop-can that made my head clong like a bell and shot me into the sky. I landed in a dumpster at least a couple blocks away. I was just another old can tossed in the garbage. I felt like garbage because no one would accept me. Keep up children, it’s called “subtle symbolism.” I thought I would never find my place in this world, so I decided to end my life responsibly and toss myself into the recycling bin at the end of the block. But fate would have its day. As I passed the Acme Supermarket I saw a little sign in the window: Looking for full-time: CANNED GOODS MASCOT Human-headed applicants need not apply. I asked for the job and was hired on the spot. I’ve learned a lot since then in my sixty years working for the grocery store. I can write anything you want on my head without looking in a mirror. “BEANS,” “VEGETABLES,” “PEARS,” you name it. I can symbolically represent it using my can—provided it is a canned good, that is. I dance out front like one of those cash-for-gold sign twirlers, but better. You should come see me. The Acme Supermarket is on 45th street; it’s got a blue dumpster out back. I work twenty-four hours a day, every day except Christmas, dancing and singing about canned products. Children, that was my fable. The moral of the story? In this world, people might yell about 9/11 or soap, or even throw toilet water into your head and kick you into the garbage. Life is hard. But life is also really easy! I found my true calling on the first day of my life.You see, even a Can Man like me can find absolute personal fulfillment in less than twenty-four hours. Being happy is so easy children. I found my place in the world. It’s the sidewalk outside the Acme! I am happy! I am living a perfect life that I am fiction
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completely satisfied with. I am a Can Man. I was dealt a bad hand, but you are human beings! It will be easy for you! The way I see it is: if I can do it, you can do it too. Can’t you?
Michael Ebmeier
fiction
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The Lady Zola It’s a lotta things that draw folks into that swamp: the sounds, the energy, the camaraderie. That feeling of absolute animalistic vibrancy that makes a body squirm and roll and tumble with unstoppable sway. Bodies toss and shuffle with that rollicking music them band boys sling out nightly. It’s an otherworldly place to hang, believe it. Still, nobody knows why we done what we do on them dreamlike nights. Folks might get to pondering just what we were thinking: traipsing out in our good shoes and pants into that muddy bog, only to lose one and soil the other. And the smell? Shoo-wee! But folks don’t stop coming. Wise folks have an inkling it was her that lured us. She being the woman that fixes herself as the madame of that Club au Naturale, her beloved Soirée of Sounds. She’s the big momma herself: the Lady Zola. It’s always her thrumming voice that signals the fun is about to start.When folks say she writhes and slithers when she dances, they ain’t kidding: anybody with eyes and a brain swears the woman is a snake. Not like she’s dishonest, mind, but in place of proper legs, the girl’s got a big ol’ scaly tail! And there’s something with her braid too, the way them thick strands coil and snap at anybody who gets too friendly. Nobody can say for sure just what she is, aside from a damn good host. She’s the center of it all, but everybody’s always so busy having fun, nobody takes notice of the little things. Maybe a few cats could tell you—if any of those boys were still around town. But those lucky sons of bitches Zola picks to dance never turn up the morning after. Maybe they figure after a score like that they’re too big for our podunk little town. When the Lady calls a boy, she’s the only thing he sees, so say the folks who’ve seen what she does. His dancing quits, and his knees wanna buckle. But at the same time, he wants to come bounding into them arms. One way or another, he bends and cricks them heavy legs through that mindlessly rolling crowd and right on up to the Lady. She takes his arms and starts to pull him into her pirouettes and gyrations, holding him up like a string puppet. No matter how good his dancing used to be, the fella’s legs turn to twigs, and he’s got bricks for feet. She locks eyes with him the whole time, and it’s like there’s something petrifying about fiction
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that gaze. A man can’t look away. Eventually, she’s danced him all the way back to the edge of the party and practically lugs the sleepy sucker into them dark waters she comes from. For sure, if Zola sets her eyes on a man, his friends and family better kiss him goodbye cause they ain’t never seeing him again. But Lady Zola always sticks around, bless her soul. Every once in a while, she picks another lucky cat to get at her magic. But it always goes over their heads, and they split town. Folks figure they go off and sink into sin. Maybe one day them boys’ll pull themselves out of whatever muck they gone and buried themselves in and remember home, then drag their sorry carcasses back. It’s like the Lady always sings: “Hold my hand, it’s a long way down to the bottom of the river.”
Connor Lindeboom
fiction
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Around and Around When she told us, we laughed. Even though her and Dad’s faces were fixed and thoughtful, we thought there was no way they were telling the truth. In the mind of a five and seven year old, I guess the idea of our mom being pregnant was out of the realm of possibility. Mom and Dad started to chuckle too. I guess the idea of their children taking such serious news as a joke was also reason to laugh. After we regained our composure, they insisted they weren’t lying. I looked at my sister for answers: perhaps two more years of wisdom could account for my confusion, but she also had skepticism in her eyes. Suddenly, like it was a sure way to get the truth, she asked them to pinky promise that they were telling the truth. They obliged, and now that the mystery was solved, we began to react appropriately. I ran upstairs, took my baby dolls out of my toy chest, and grabbed the baby blanket I was wrapped in the day I was born.The blue and pink stripes were faded, but the blanket was still in one piece. I returned downstairs and spread it out on the floor, folding it into a triangle. I placed my doll on the blanket and began to swaddle her as best as I could, peeking at my mom for validation. “Will the new baby have one of these too?” I asked. I barely heard Mom say yes because I was concentrating. I unwrapped and wrapped the doll over and over, over and over, each time swaddling a bit worse than the last. I had to practice for when the baby comes. Sometimes, Dad would talk to Mom’s belly. He bent down on his knees while my mom stood in the kitchen doing the dishes after dinner. He got real close to her and whispered things my sister and I couldn’t hear, widely grinning the whole time. He rubbed her stomach in circles—around and around, around and around—as long as she would let him. She put her hand through his hair and smiled warmly but soon shooed him away and went back to circling the sponge in the same rhythm, around and around. I wondered if he had done that when I was in her belly. I spent the next few months in a state of confusion and excitement. I didn’t understand much about what was happening; I knew there was a baby on the way, and although I couldn’t fathom how, I accepted it because all the grown-ups seemed to. fiction
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One day, Mom and Dad came home and put a fuzzy black-and-white picture on the fridge. Dad announced that it was a picture of the baby, but all I could see was a shadow that didn’t seem to be a baby at all. Mom stood with her arm around me and outlined the white with her index finger. Her voice sang in the way it did when she praised my piano practice or my sister’s soccer goal: “See this little bump here? That’s the nose. And this round part? That’s the head.” I stared at the square, but all I saw was a blob. It looked like the finger paintings beside it. She would later bring out a photo album that had the same unclear black-and-white pictures of Natalie and me. A few weeks passed since the picture was hung on the fridge. Natalie and I shared a room, so we always woke up at the same time. One morning, as I stretched and got out of bed, she pushed back her Winnie the Pooh comforter too. We ran downstairs together. It was Sunday, cinnamon bun day. I guess we didn’t notice there was no cinnamon bun smell coming from the oven like there usually was. Turning the corner, we saw Grandma and Aunt Michele sitting on the screen porch. Their faces were serious. They were discussing something quietly. When they heard us, they broke into smiles and opened their arms. Usually, they came over when Mom and Dad went out to dinner or to a grownup movie. But that was always at night—when they let us order pizza and watch movies. Today, they were here in the morning. “Good morning, girls!” Grandma cooed. Natalie stepped out of her arms. “Where are Mom and Dad?” Grandma looked at Aunt Michele. Her smile disappeared from her lips, though only slightly. Aunt Michele shrugged almost unnoticeably and looked back to Natalie. “Your dad brought your mom to the doctor’s,” she said. Before either of us could ask why, Grandma sprang up from her chair. “Should I make some cinnamon buns now?” And with that, she was in the kitchen. They let us eat our cinnamon buns in front of the TV, even though Mom always said the frosting was too messy and needed a placemat. When we were done and had gotten dressed, Aunt Michele asked if we wanted to play on the swing set. I ran upstairs to get my coat and grabbed my blanket and doll on the way out. Aunt Michele sat me on the tire swing and pulled it backwards. “Tell me when to let go!” fiction
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“Now!” I shouted, and it swung back and forth, back and forth. I let my head fall back and looked at the clouds. They just covered the sun, so only slivers of light reached my eyes. When I blinked, there were spots in my vision where the sun had been, but I kept staring up into the sky, back and forth, back and forth. At some point, juggling the baby doll, blanket, and holding on to the ropes of the tire swing became too much, and my doll slipped from my hands. I certainly was not about to jump mid-swing, so I watched as the doll fell to the ground, creating a cloud of dirt around it. I tightened my grip on the scratchy yellow ropes, rubbing my hands raw in an effort to remain upright. I let out a muffled squeal and Aunt Michele stopped the swing. I ran to pick up my doll, holding it close to my chest with my head resting on her ruffled hair. I darted inside where Grandma was waiting to hear me retell the story between sobs. Later that night, we watched The Parent Trap for the fortieth time and ordered pizza. Natalie and Aunt Michele fell asleep. I lay with my head on the couch’s armrest, my eyes closed, my feet in Grandma’s lap. The sound of a car door shutting made Grandma jump a bit. She gently put my feet on the couch and got up. I pretended I was sleeping. “Thanks so much for coming, Ann,” Dad said. “How are you feeling, Jo—” I could hear Dad’s low shush. Dad carried me to my bed and tucked me in. It was hard to keep my eyes shut the whole time, but everything seemed so quiet that something told me not to open them or say a word. When I woke up the next day, Natalie was already downstairs, her sheets in a ball at the foot of her bed. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, not quite sure when I had stopped pretending and actually fallen asleep. I walked down the stairs and was met with the smell of eggs. Dad stood at the stove with a dishtowel over his shoulder. He was moving scrambled eggs around in the pan with a spatula. Natalie was sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen, telling stories about school, her hands waving in dramatic gestures. I wondered why she was talking so much when Dad was clearly not listening to her. I also wondered how she didn’t notice Mom wasn’t here, when Mom was always the one who woke up first and opened the shades on the windows before everyone else made it downstairs. I walked back upstairs to my parent’s bedroom door and stood outside it for a while, my heart knotted in the most confusing way. I wasn’t sure why, but my stomach felt like I was still on the tire—swinging back and forth, back fiction
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and forth. I turned the knob as slowly as I could and leaned into the door. Mom was curled in bed and her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t really sleeping. She was pretending, just like I had last night. It was as if she was the only other one who could also sense the sober quietness that now filled the house. When I climbed in the bed next to her, she put her arm around me but kept her eyes closed. I closed mine too. I got out of bed when breakfast was ready, but Mom stayed until right before dinnertime. Dad told Natalie that Mom was sleeping when she asked. I guess he didn’t realize Mom was pretending, just like he hadn’t noticed I was pretending when he tucked me in last night. After we ate, Mom insisted on doing the dishes even though Dad offered to do them for her. She stood at the sink, circling the sponge more slowly than usual, around and around. Dad didn’t rub her stomach this time.
Anna Quinn
fiction
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Remedy for Struggling Marriages For three months now, we’ve struggled with a mice infestation. It began on a Thursday morning; I woke up ready to make eggs and found the frying pan covered in mouse droppings. Then, when I arrived home after work, ready to plop down on the couch, I discovered brown droplets along the tops of the purple cushions. “Check the cups and plates before you use them,” I told my husband. But he didn’t listen. He never listened. Instead, he wound up drinking a cup of coffee with suspicious brown dots floating on the top. After this incident, we both agreed: the mice could not stay. To catch the mice, we set live traps throughout the apartment. As owners of two golden retrievers and benefactors of PETA, we did not wish to see the mice hurt. So, we awoke Saturday morning ready to gather our trapped night visitors and drive them fifteen miles away to a protected nature preserve. Yet, when we checked the traps the bait had disappeared, but there were no mice. They were tricky. So, we worked harder. We suspended our donations to PETA, and we bought snap traps—two dozen—and placed them behind the couch, in the cabinets, and in the closets. All our planning produced zero bodies, but my husband and I were connecting again. Before our son went to college, our afternoons had been filled with his basketball games, soccer matches, and Mathletes competitions. Without these activities, however, we did not know how to spend time together. We tried attending the orchestra but had to leave when my husband jumped up and cursed because he was streaming a basketball game on his phone and his team was losing. We looked for a show to watch, but our interests weren’t the same. Our relationship dwindled into my husband staring at wrestling on the television while I curled up on the sofa wearing headphones, binge-watching Home Improvement episodes on my iPad. But now, because of the mice, we spent hours side-by-side, surfing the Internet in search of innovative ways to destroy the beasts. It reminded me of our first dates together, but instead of discussing families, favorite songs, and bucket lists, we weighed the pros and cons of glue traps, mouse repellant, and poisoning fiction
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bait. Over red wine, we stayed up late into the night, devising increasingly complex plans. We became giddy when we thought we finally discovered a solution. But, despite our labor of love, the mouse droppings still appeared. Then, two months into our work, the droppings vanished. Hibernation? Did mice do that? After two weeks without the creatures, life began to return to normal. Upon coming home from work, I stopped examining the couch for brown spots before sitting down. Our pots and pans remained dropping-free. Now, we were back to petty conversations and silent nights, to living our lives side-by-side but shut out by headphone barriers. I suddenly missed the mice. So tonight, I decided to try out a new plan to bring us back together—the only way I knew how. As my husband brushed his teeth, I went downstairs. Hidden in a box of laundry detergent, I pulled out a bag of dark pellet shaped dots. Earlier that day, I had melted dark chocolate by heating it up between my fingers and then rolling it into tiny cylindrical pieces. Now, all I had to do was sprinkle the faux droppings in the prime locations: over the cushions, pans, and pots. When finished, I stepped back in the living room and observed my work. I smiled, delighted at what I had accomplished—the furniture had never looked better. Then, I headed to bed, ready to dream about the hours of scheming my husband and I would need to do upon the return of our old friends.
Siobhan McKenna
fiction
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Birthday Balloon It is my birthday. In the back seat of the car is a single red balloon. It floats in the rearview mirror, partially deflated because it has been in this car for too long. It has wrinkled a little, as if it is weary of the back seat. Every so often, we hit a bump, and the balloon sighs. I let my eyelashes dust my cheeks. When I reopen them, I glimpse at my hands. I glance over at my father with his aviator sunglasses. When I look in the mirror, I see the same green eyes that I know hide behind those mirrored lenses. His hands rest on the steering wheel; I see my own hands. In a moment of confusion, I attempt to place myself. Looking to my right, I see nothing but dust and highway, dust and highway. Everything is brown and small, and I am reminded of my butterscotch cupcake. Every rock looks like a crumb. I remember the way my mom delivered the cupcake.There was an entire tray, but she picked one just for me. She smiled when I blew out the candle. Yes, it is my birthday. Right now, I have one partially deflated balloon and some crumbs scattered along this highway. Where we’re going, there won’t be a party. No cupcake delivered on a colorful paper plate. With my eyes closed, I promise myself that everything will be all right, as long as I am not alone. It is strange that my tiny sneakers don’t touch the floor. I wonder what my mom is doing with all the extra balloons. Not all of them were red, just the one I chose. If I had my way, I’d have taken them all. If my mom had her way, I’d have all ten tied to my wrist. I guess I should feel happy I have the one in the back seat. “Are you cold?” he asks. I think for a second and then shake my head. “No.” It’s the first word I’ve said since we left the party. He’s been ceaselessly chattering for miles. I’m rubbing my arms and tapping my sneakers on the floor, but being cold is not the reason. It’s August and hot. Before we got in the car, my mom tried to give me a sweater, but why should I be cold in August? It’s my birthday; it’s sunny. He and I left with the air conditioner blaring. My mom held the nine balloons in her left hand. I held the red one in my right. fiction
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It is a shame I had to leave my party. A shame all the things that happened today couldn’t melt into each other the way this car melts onto the road. Maybe if things were different, the two of us, my father and I, could have understood each other. Perhaps I could have had time for a second butterscotch cupcake. Perhaps the balloon wouldn’t be deflated in the back seat. Perhaps it might float to the top of the staircase. Instead of separating one balloon from the rest, I could be at home, chasing them all. My mom could leave the cupcakes on the table, and we could save them for later. The day wouldn’t have to feel so finished. But instead, I am in this car, on this highway, with him. For now, we are silent. The balloon slowly breathes out all its air in the back seat. The butterscotch cupcake is left as only crumbs on the side of the road.We are going somewhere, and coming from somewhere else, but for now, we just float.
Emily Cashour
fiction
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New Baby Mommy closes my favorite book.We read about elephants painting with red and blue and yellow and then mixing those to make more colors. Mommy said tomorrow I’ll make the colors. I can’t wait to wake up, I tell her. She pulls my blanket all the way up from my toes and covers my head. I like to sleep like this. I say, “Goodnight Mommy,” and she says, “Goodnight Julie.” Mommy has a big belly, and I do not want her to be small again because that means I’ll have a brother. I do not say goodnight to her belly. My mommy, I say in my head to the baby who will take my mommy, not yours. Under my blankets, there is Mutton. He is my lamb, and he looks like that lamb that helps the elephants paint. Mommy says Mutton has lots of brothers and that Mutton likes his brothers. I open my eyes, and I know it is morning, but it is still dark. There is something very big in my room, and I know that because I hear big steps. I let Mutton hold my hand because I know he is scared. I poke one of my eyes outside of my blanket when the big stomps stop, and I see it—there is an elephant in my room! I pull the blanket back over my face to hide because elephants aren’t supposed to be in my room. “What is he doing here?” I ask Mutton, but Mutton doesn’t hear me. He’s shaking because he’s scared, and since we’re holding hands, I shake too. I can hear the elephant knocking over my books and crushing my table. Is he looking for elephant books? I put Mutton under my shirt and tell him it’ll be okay. I tell him, “Shhh. I’ll protect you.” Mommy told me her belly protects my brother for now. I smile at my big belly. GRRRR-CHHHHHHH. That’s the noise the elephant is making. Mommy told me not to suck my thumb, that I’ll have buck teeth, but Mommy’s not here, so I suck my thumb. Every crash scares Mutton, I can tell. I whisper that he can suck his thumb. I say, “Shhh. Suck your thumb, Mutton.You’ll feel better.” I pat him over my shirt with my other hand. The elephant is clumsy and loud. I wonder if my brother will be clumsy and loud too. I wonder if he’ll be big and scary, if he’ll break my things and steal my books. My tummy feels the way it felt when I threw up from too much ice cream. If I throw up now the elephant will find me. “We have to get out of here,” I say to Mutton. fiction
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I hold my breath. I always feel bigger when I hold my breath. I jump out from under the blanket and yell, “GO BACK TO THE ZOO!” I open my eyes. The elephant is gone, and my mommy is there with her big belly. I pull the blanket off to show her my big belly, but it’s gone too. She tells me, “You were having a nightmare, Julie. It’s okay.” I wave my arms under my pillow and find Mutton. “I had a big belly too, Mommy,” I tell her as she pulls the covers back over me. “It was Mutton,” I yawn, “and there was an elephant.” My eyelids fall. They are so heavy. The reminder of the elephant escaping the zoo surfaces, and I ask, “Can elephants get out of the zoo?” Mommy kisses my forehead, and she says, “No.” “And my brother,” I whisper, “he won’t break my stuff or take it will he?” Mommy smiles at me, “Maybe. But he’ll be little, and he’ll want to be like his big sister.” “I am the big one?” She nods. I pat her belly and smush my lips on her belly button. I say, “I’m your big sister, I’ll protect you.”
Isabel Bernate
fiction
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Alone The house is quiet. I embrace the peaceful silence. A glow illuminates the living room, and I curl on the aged sofa. A crossword puzzle sits in my lap, the blue ink of my pen bleeding into the gray newsprint. I flick the curled corner of the page and my mind wanders as I watch dust particles float about the room. I am entranced by their ability to simply be, without needing a reason to go this way and that. Warmth radiates from the simmering fire. My brother Ryan’s hand-me-down coat lays haphazardly beside me where he had thrown it this afternoon. His mood was as bright as the sunlight that filled the room. Conversation was as easy as breathing, and for the first time in months, I was sitting next to my little brother, not the confusing stranger he has become. The doorbell rings, and my perfect moment is swept away by the rush of air that has escaped through the open door. An officer, dressed in full uniform, stands in the doorway. His name tag reads Officer Burke. “Mrs. Daniels?” His voice wavers. His hands shake. “That would be my mother, not me.” My mother left five years ago, disappearing into a night as ordinary as this one, leaving nothing but a trail of broken riddles behind her. The leafless branches rattle. “There’s been an accident.” The officer pauses. “Kids were driving up by the Summit, on Seattle Drive.” Another pause. He’s waiting for me to put the pieces together. I think of my forgotten crossword puzzle: the riddles, the missing letters. “The car swerved off the road, hitting a tree. Ryan Daniels was on the passenger side. He was gone when we got there.” He waits for some sign that I understood his words. The wind is still. The darkness is suffocating. Blood pumps in my ear, and I pretend it’s water, engulfing me in a deafening silence. My mouth hums the rhythm of my words, but my voice has forgotten the notes. I say nothing. My tongue dances to the tune of my thoughts, hoping to revive the song that has been lodged in the back of my throat. Still, I say nothing. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t possible,” I say. Ryan, the little boy who isn’t so little anymore. Ryan, who is out cruising with his friends tonight, the same as every Friday night since Bobby Stewart managed to pass his driving exam. Ryan, fiction
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who won’t be home until 11:01 exactly, just to prove to someone he didn’t have to follow the rules. It’s hard to breathe. The weight is crushing. The officer continues to speak but I can’t hear him over the screeching of Bobby Stewart’s brakes or the thunderous crunch of metal and tree. I step back into the house. The room is cold; the fire has fizzled out. The officer hands me a waxy business card from his pocket. It feels like lead between my fingertips. I shut the door. On the sofa, my crossword sits idly next to Ryan’s coat. I reach for it, hoping to find some clarity within the chaos. The next clue reads: To be companionless, five letters.
Allison Sledge
fiction
66
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The Strands that Bind Us My father carried my things to the moving van as I finished packing. I wasn’t taking much, just photo albums, family videos, and my mother’s sketches of romantic partners holding hands, siblings embracing, a mother cradling her child. We donated what I didn’t keep, like her wigs. I couldn’t bear to keep those. Her favorite was the honey-blonde ombré wig that she wore during the summer. She also had straight Indian Remi wigs strictly for work purposes and wavy-curly Malaysian wigs that she didn’t like to wear because they reminded her of the hair she lost. Two girls at my all-girls school lost their fathers unexpectedly. One died in a car crash. The other died by gunshot. Sometimes, I wish my mother had died unexpectedly too. If she had died in a car crash or at gunpoint, it would have been a quick and clean death. I envied those girls from my school; they did not have to bear witness to their parents’ demise. Unlike them, my mother and I got a warning. “Six months,” the doctors said. Slowly, everything my mother prepared for the rest of her life was lost, and we were fooled into believing that in those six months, a miracle would change the outcome. Five months passed of intensive, draining chemotherapy before we stopped believing, before we started planning the funeral, before I took my leave of absence from school, before we had to call my father and his new wife, my godmother, Lisa, to organize my moving in with them. As we pulled from the driveway, my father said, “So, how you keeping up there?” “How do you expect me to answer that?” I said. “Honestly.” He rubbed his forehead, one hand still on the wheel. “Honestly, I’m not one of your clients, so don’t psychoanalyze me. Honestly, I feel like the time for us to have a heart to heart has expired. I feel fine, honestly.” I slouched in the passenger seat, adjusting my seatbelt to allow more flexibility. I should have stuck my headphones in my ears before he had the chance to start talking. “You’re absolutely right. I just want you to know that—whatever they fiction
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are—your feelings are valid,” my father said, focused on the road, not looking at me at all. This was one of my father’s best mind games. He would let you think you won, when really your words had no effect at all. I stared out of the window at the other cars on the highway and wondered where they were heading. Outside, it had already begun snowing as I stepped through the front door of my father’s house. My godmother stood in the entryway and lit up when she saw me. “Violet, it’s so good to have you home,” she said. Her skin, a neutral sepia brown, glowed under the chandelier. I allowed her to embrace me. “Hi, Lisa.” I gave a no-teeth smile. There was no need to start trouble. My goal was to survive the rest of junior and senior year, and then I would tell them goodbye for good. My father trailed in behind me, carrying my bags. “We should close the doors before we let in all that cold,” Lisa said. She moved past me, and I got a whiff of her hair. Coconut oil. “Have you been deep conditioning?” I asked. “No,” she said, looking pleased. “I did a hot oil treatment and a braid out.” “Oh.” My eyes glazed over her head. I only asked the question because it reminded me of how my mother used to deep condition her hair. She had fine, wavy hair, not as thick as mine and definitely not as thick as Lisa’s. She used to do wash-n-go’s all the time, and the strands never shrunk up nearly as much as mine. Even coming from Lisa, the smell of coconuts was a good smell. But I didn’t compliment Lisa’s hair. We aren’t on that level. Besides, there was nothing really special about it. It was in a bun, so I couldn’t judge the quality of the braid out itself, but I could tell the texture was too coarse, and I guessed the curl pattern wasn’t anything special either. Otherwise, why not just do a wash-n-go? Perhaps, if it were longer—like my mother’s used to be. My father beckoned me to follow him. “Violet,” he said, “come put your things in your new room.” Lisa nodded, smiling. She patted her pink apron that had “Lisa” embroidered on the front in white, fancy cursive. In the bedroom, there was a lampstand by a desk. The bed was a queen, white-framed, and in the center of the room. The walls were purple. I could tell everything was new. It seemed like they were trying to replicate my old fiction
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bedroom, but there were no photos hanging on the walls. My father watched me take it in. I told him the room was nice and that I needed time to unwind before dinner. As soon as he left, I threw myself on the bed. I was so tired, but I didn’t want to sleep. Those days, I had the strangest dreams, where my mother and I were in the living room, watching television, and I was sitting between her legs as she plaited my hair. At the dinner table, I glared at the lovebirds, and I wondered what my father saw in Lisa. It pained me to admit, but I didn’t think he loved my mother that way. I chewed fried rice with a bitter face. “We have something to tell you,” my father began. He was grinning, his arm wrapped around his wife. “Let me guess,” I interrupted. “You’re pregnant.” “No …” my father trailed. “What’s going on then?” I considered they could be trying to get rid of me, perhaps send me to my mother’s side of the family. “We just want to adopt a dog,” Lisa interceded. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “We thought it would be a nice addition to the family.” I looked at no one in particular. Lisa’s hand still held mine. Family? “Besides, we already have a child,” she explained, smiling. I yanked my hand away. “No, you don’t have a child,” I corrected her, shaking my head. “And I don’t have a mother.” “That’s enough!” my father said. There was bass in his voice. Lisa put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Violet, I’d like for us to be close,” she said. “You hurt my mother,” I said. Tears were streaming. I tried to storm out of the dining room’s double doors, so I could get to my room, where I could cry alone, but I didn’t make it. I collapsed in front of the couch in the living room. Before I could stop her, Lisa was holding me. She cried too. “We all miss her,” she said. “I never meant to hurt you.” I pushed her away, not violently, just enough to break free. I found my way to my room, and no one followed. We would be having the Christmas Eve dinner the night after tomorrow, and I knew I would have to fake an apology in the morning. Apparently, in my new life here, I was supposed to believe everything was wonderful again, fiction
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forget my mother was dead, stop having nightmares about her, stop hating my godmother for mixing herself up in all of this. My father had explained it all to me before. It was part of the process. Someday, I would get over it. I was only grieving, that’s all. The day before Christmas Eve, my hair was uncooperative. This would be the first time I spent Christmas with my father’s family in some time, and I wanted to at least look nice. I stood in front of the mirror in my bathrobe, trying to figure out my next move. Lisa passed the bathroom and backtracked. She rested her hand on the side of the bathroom doorway. I rolled my eyes instinctively. “Thinking of a hairstyle for tomorrow?” she asked. She still had her silk wrap on her head, protecting her braid out, I assumed. “I should have made a hair appointment,” I mumbled. “I could help you figure out a style.” She straightened at the door, her eyes narrowing in on my wet hair. “I don’t do perms anymore, but I don’t really wear my hair natural either,” I said. Her eyes darted from mine. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I don’t know anyone that could take appointments so late.” “I have a CHI flat iron I wanted to use, but I’m not really good at getting my hair—” “I could do that.” Lisa set up a station in the living room and plugged in the flat iron. I sat on a chair borrowed from the kitchen. She stood as she did my hair. I tried to be pleasant. There were no mirrors around, so I would have to go upstairs once she was done to take a look. She took a section of my hair to flat iron, and we talked because that’s what you do when you’re getting your hair done. “They’re so excited to see you,” she said. I knew it was true. My father’s family had always been fond of me. “I’m excited to see them too.” “Hmm, you want it bone straight or curled under?” “Curled under.” “Good choice,” she laughed. When she reached the end of my hair in that section, she flipped the flat iron over and moved on to another. Her hands moved more swiftly than my mother’s. The pressed part of my hair reached below my shoulders, grazing my collarbone. fiction
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“You cut your hair?” Lisa asked. “A while back, yeah. When my mother started chemo, I big chopped. She stopped buying perms for me because of all the chemicals.” “But you don’t wear it natural?” “With the school I’m in, it’s just easier to get it straightened.” “Mhm, that’s understandable.” She finished pressing the back of my head and moved onto the bangs she sectioned off. My father walked by, talking on the phone. I waited until I heard him close his office door. “Less looks.” I didn’t need to say any more. With my mother, I didn’t have these conversations because it required too much explanation. She didn’t have kinky hair like me. More tiring than having to put up with visible differences was feeling compelled to explain all the little things that come along with it to people who would never even have to. “Finished. One less thing you have to worry about.” She squeezed my shoulder and gave me a mirror. We locked eyes in the reflection, me, with my newly straightened hair and her, with her silk scarf still tied around her head.
Marian Ada Ifeoma Okpali
fiction
Stari Most Eli Polnerow
Storm Margaret Wroblewski
Thorsmork Victoria Sluko
Puerto Rican Soul Camelia Rojas
Bandera en Puerta Camelia Rojas
Anomaly Giselle Garnett
Upstairs Victoria Sluko
Up Above Margaret Wroblewski
ESSAY CONTEST
First Place
85
The Lagoon We floated slowly into the lagoon. The trees loomed overhead, glaring down at us ominously. The water was eerily still, any ripples made by our skiff seemed to stop dead before they began. “Aidan, you idiot. You trapped us back here.” I tried to sound angry, but my voice came out as a frightened whisper. My cousin, Aidan, our two friends, Maggie and Sam, and I all sat, shivering in a little aluminum skiff, trying to figure out how to get out. Our engine had hit a rock and died as we were motoring through the thin and particularly shallow channel that led into the back lagoon. The tide had slowly pushed us through the channel and into the lagoon, moving us farther and farther from the only exit. It was Maggie’s first trip to our cool but secluded cabin, and now we were stuck. “Why is it so quiet here?” Maggie asked softly. “I’m not sure, but it’s always creeped me out,” I answered, hugging myself against the cold. Maggie was right: when we passed through the channel, an unearthly kind of quiet descended on us. It was as if the lagoon itself were sucking away any noise. Not even bird calls broke the silence, which was pressing in on us like a dense fog. I had always been afraid of the lagoon, even though I had been back there more times than I could count. Something about it was just eerie, and my fear refused to go away no matter how many trips I’d made safely into its depths. There was something about the monstrous trees and stifling silence that made me feel small and helpless. “Do you think you can get our engine running again, Aidan?” I asked my cousin as he fiddled with the bottom of the motor. He cursed and yanked his hand out of the freezing water, his skin bleached white from the cold. “We actually have a slight problem on that front,” Aidan said as he rubbed his hand in an effort to warm it up. “You see that thing floating in the water?” We all craned our necks to see where he was looking. “Oh, no,” Sam moaned. “Yeah,” mumbled Aidan, “that’s kind of the propeller.” “Is that important?” asked Maggie. “Um, well, it’s the part that makes the boat move so… yeah.” Aidan turned back to the little piece of metal floating in the salty water. essay contest
86 We were all quiet as we began to realize exactly how bad our situation was. No oars. No engine. No hope of anyone at the cabin hearing us. On all sides, we were surrounded by glacial water and unholy silence. “We’re trapped,” Maggie said quietly, voicing all of our thoughts. I had never experienced this kind of helplessness before. There was no possible way for us to escape. If we tried to swim we would freeze, and we were too far from the cabin for anyone to hear if we screamed. There was nothing any of us could do to escape our situation, and that was truly terrifying. We really were trapped. It began to rain. Two hours later, we were still stuck in the pouring rain in that tiny aluminum skiff. A cold fog had settled on the shore around the base of the trees. We were still unable to come up with any good ideas for escape and had resigned ourselves to waiting for someone to notice our prolonged absence, and maybe come and save us before the tide went out again. I sat there in the rain with my hood up, my head bowed over my soaking jeans. The rain beating down on us was just one more thing I couldn’t control. Every drop melting into my jeans was just another reminder of how helpless I was. I had no idea how we would get out of this mess. No one had spoken in a while when: “Guys?” Maggie whispered, waving her hand at us to get our attention while keeping her eyes fixed on the trees in front of her. “Guys, I think we have another problem.” We all turned and followed her gaze. “Shit,” Aidan breathed. “Yeah,” I agreed. A large black bear had just wandered out of the mist. We all froze in place. The silence of the lagoon was suffocating us, but it didn’t matter; we were too afraid to breathe anyway.The trees seemed to lean in closer, as if anticipating a show. “Bears can swim,” Aidan whispered. “Yeah, thanks detective, got any other fun facts while you’re at it?” I shot back. “Aidan, if you don’t fix this right now I swear to God—” Maggie started. “Fine! Okay everyone stand up and clap, make a ton of noise. We need to seem really big and really loud.” Aidan stood up and began to clap and yell, and the rest of us followed his lead. The bear stared at us and stepped closer to the water. “Aidan, if that bear gets in the water, we’re dead! Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked frantically, still clapping. essay contest
87 “This will work, just wait!” Aidan yelled back. The bear took another step closer to the water. We all clapped and screamed louder. The bear perked up its ears, took one last look at us, and sprinted back into the dark woods. We all breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed back into the boat. I clutched the side of the skiff, my heart still racing. There was nothing we could have done if that bear had decided to come after us. It could have easily overturned our boat, leaving us to drown—or worse. We had been completely at the mercy of the bear. We had been completely helpless. Suddenly, I became aware of a noise. A soft thrum had managed to pierce the quiet of the lagoon. “A boat!” Sam yelled.The murmur of an engine grew louder and louder, and we all held our breaths, waiting to see if help had finally arrived. The sound reached its peak as another skiff motored into the lagoon, my little brother at the motor. Sam let out a shout of disbelief, and we all waved frantically to my brother as he guided his boat toward us. When he reached us, we tied the boats together, and he began towing us back to the dock. Everyone was talking eagerly about how excited they were to get warm and eat food, and the relief was contagious. I smiled and thought about how nice it would be to be inside after four hours trapped in the pouring rain and cold with a hungry bear watching us. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that helpless before. Of course, there were times when I’ve felt like certain things were out of my control, but it was never that big of a deal. Maybe my little brother was irritating me, and I couldn’t get him to leave me alone, or maybe I had to take a class I didn’t want to take. Incidents like these have happened to me often, and while I didn’t have any control over these situations, it was a long way from the utter helplessness I felt in that lagoon. All I wanted was to get away from that place, and that was the one thing I couldn’t do. I had no control over anything in the lagoon; I could have easily been dead in a second. Between the broken engine, the freezing water, and dead-eyed bear, I was completely trapped—and completely helpless.
McKayla Coyle
essay contest
88
Second Place
Eliminate the Choices In the award-winning documentary The Boys of Baraka, Miss Jackson addresses a group of “at-risk” twelve-year-old boys in the most violent ghettos of Baltimore City: Most of you have about three choices. Three things that might happen to you by the time you turn eighteen. The first thing that you might get—is you might get an orange jumpsuit with some nice bracelets that go on your arms. The second one is a nice black suit with a nice brown box. Think about that one. And then the third one, is you might get a nice black gown and a nice cap and a diploma in your hand. (The Boys of Baraka) This glimpse into the lives of such young children in Baltimore City may seem a bit dramatic. However, many youth find themselves in these positions. As Miss Jackson alludes, many students have a choice between two things—high school and the streets—and those who choose the streets land behind bars or, perhaps, even worse. The two decisions rarely overlap. In fact, “a mere one out of every eight juvenile prisoners will likely graduate from high school,” and a shocking “12 percent of former juvenile inmates have ever graduated from high school” (Biddle). The choice between finishing their education and living on the streets may not seem like a choice at all for those of us not in their situations. This thought is far from the truth. The alarming reality is that “85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate,” meaning that they did not just fail to finish their schooling, but they did not receive a proper education in subjects such as reading while in school (“Literacy Statistics”). Additionally, many have found that these juveniles often behave antisocially or exhibit “repeated violations of social rules, defiance of authority and of the rights of others, deceitfulness, theft and reckless disregard for self and others” (Hanrahan). A 1994-1996 study of adolescents designed to determine the connection between inadequate literacy and violent behavior found that “participants with below-grade reading skills had higher rates of self-reported essay contest
89 violent behaviors compared with those reading at grade level” (Davis et al.).The Crime Study Commission attempts to explain the connection to one another by arguing that “reading failure is the single most significant factor in those forms of delinquency which can be described as anti-socially aggressive” (qtd. in Wright). So why is the correlation between low literacy and delinquents/ inmates so prominent in our society? The underdevelopment of students’ skills in subjects such as reading education carves a life of illiteracy or low literacy for students. In order to best understand illiteracy, we must first define literacy. Literacy, as defined by The National Literacy Act of 1991, is “the ability to read, write and speak English; compute and solve ... to achieve one’s goals; and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (Colter). An illiterate person is unable to perform these tasks with ease at a high-functioning level, and someone with low literacy is able to complete these tasks at some level but not completely or with ease.The effects of low literacy cripple people in many ways, although many function in society at a basic level. For example, most low-literate people may only be able to “obtain and understand essential information” (“Consequences”). Low-literate people are likely to have “a lower income” and “lower-quality jobs” and even “low self-esteem, which can lead to isolation” because of a lack of education (“Consequences”). Although low literacy and illiteracy may not be the exact cause of these delinquencies, there is no debate that illiteracy and all forms of crime intertwine. The Department of Justice found that “more than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate,” proving that there is a longterm connection between incarceration and illiteracy (“Literacy Statistics”). With such a high correlation, the connection between the two seems almost unbreakable. The Department of Justice even goes so far as to say that “the link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure” (“Literacy Statistics”). In order to understand the connection among delinquents, inmates, and low literacy more deeply, we must look to the root of the problem: the school system. In a city school system with the slogan “Great Schools, Great Kids,” it is astonishing to see that on average only 56.4 percent of students in Baltimore City public schools graduate in four years (“High School”). Almost half of the students are left behind. In Baltimore City public schools, these students who soon fall into delinquency “typically experience chronic academic and behavioral difficulties essay contest
90 … [and] grade retention” when they attend school (Vacca). Grade retention is when “children continue with their age peers regardless of academic performance” (Davidson). Grade retention is extremely common in these juvenile delinquents. In fact, “the typical juvenile inmate is just over 15 … and although at a ninth-grade level by age, reads at the fourth-grade level” (Vacca). Additionally, “studies show that reading grade levels of the delinquent populations are two or more years delayed” (Wright). Those most likely to be retained include the following: boys, African Americans, those with attention, behavioral, or emotional problems, and those who come from families with incomes below the poverty level (Davidson). This statistic follows those delinquents and other low-literate people around as the Department of Justice found that “over 70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level” (“Literacy Statistics”). As you can imagine, grade retention makes school become incredibly frustrating, pointless, and difficult for young students. It becomes nearly impossible for students to keep up with their school work—especially that which is written—and enforces a feeling in the student that he or she is not “smart enough” or “good enough” in general. These students often drop out of school, get expelled, or are “pushed out” of school by teachers and administrators (Vacca). When these students ultimately fail in the schooling system, they turn to other things to be rewarded and successful, which often leads them to delinquency (Vacca). Personally, when thinking about these statistics, I am reminded of Richard, one of the Baltimore boys featured in the documentary The Boys of Baraka. Richard was deemed “at risk” by educators of not finishing school and ending up on the streets. Richard and the other Baltimore boys were voluntarily taken to the Baraka School in Kenya, East Africa, to get them away from their crime-infested environment, improve their education, and give them a greater chance at becoming successful. The educators of the Baraka School found that Richard, a determined, stubborn, and incredibly hard-working seventh grader, was at a second-grade reading level. To their knowledge, Richard had never been evaluated in school. While Richard may not be completely illiterate, he was far below a high-functioning level of literacy and was constantly surrounded by high-crime environments. Miss Jackson summed up this situation simply by saying, “If he makes it to ninth grade, he’ll be lucky. If he makes it to tenth grade, I’ll be shocked. If he graduates from high school, I’ll probably drop dead with surprise.” essay contest
91 Not only were the educators implying that they would be surprised by Richard’s success in education but also by his ability to rise out of his crime-infested environment without being helplessly pulled in. When the Baraka School had to unexpectedly close for security reasons at the end of the film, Richard was shown back in Baltimore City public schools with a weakened spirit, refusing to complete his work. Education offers opportunity; it offers an opportunity for the student to rise from his or her background or environment. As Richard’s story demonstrates, when this opportunity is taken away, many struggle to rise from their environments. Although this issue seems distant from our chaotic schedules and busy lives, this issue overwhelms the citizens of Baltimore as a whole. Baltimore is constantly ranked as one of the ten most dangerous U.S. cities with a violent crime rate of 1,417 per 100,000 residents (Forbes). No citizen who calls Baltimore his or her home proudly embraces this statistic; it is a label that many are ashamed of. Many seek to clear the name of Baltimore as one of the most dangerous cities in America. Advocating for struggling students, both academically and behaviorally, and supporting programs that improve the support and resources for Baltimore City public schools would decrease both the illiteracy and lower literacy rates as well as the juvenile delinquency rate in Baltimore incredibly. The most effective way to hone one’s literacy skills is to start early. High quality early childhood education benefits three to five year olds through “warm, nurturing care and enriched learning experiences designed to stimulate a child’s development” (“What Is Early Childhood Education?”). The early years of a child’s life are incredibly important developmentally and often mold their later experiences in education. Thus, these programs critically affect students’ literacy development. However, “the children who would most benefit from the quality preschool experience are the ones least likely to be receiving it … because such programs are not available for them for financial and geographic reasons” (Hornbeck and Connor 170).Those who participated in early childhood programs had “more years of high school completed … lower cumulative rate of grade retention ... [and] fewer juvenile arrests” (Hornbeck and Connor 171). By ensuring that all kids start their education with equal opportunities, the schooling system will begin to tackle the seemingly indestructible monster that is grade retention. Consequently, reducing grade retention also would reduce juvenile delinquency. Even those who are not able to receive early childhood education still essay contest
92 could benefit from other literacy examples. When looking for examples, I struggled to find literacy programs for children in Baltimore, further proof that this issue is not being addressed properly. The program READ 180 is one which students, especially in Baltimore, would greatly benefit from. Founded in 2004, “READ 180 is an intervention program for upper-elementary, middle and high school students who are struggling with reading” (Slavin, Cheung, Groff, and Lake 295). The program refuses to let students helplessly fall behind their peers by giving them the extra instruction and support they need so they do not veer off of the education track. The program demands 90 minutes of instruction per day, which is implemented through a plethora of modes of instruction, such as video content, teacher engagement, and audiobooks. In a 2006 study with two groups of students who “were nearly identical on pretest measures,” one group was given READ 180, whereas the other received no extra support (Slavin, Cheung, Groff, and Lake 295). After one full year of READ 180, the groups who had used READ 180 had substantial and significant gains in their scores on reading tests. If programs such as this became readily available to struggling students in Baltimore City, the overall literacy rate would skyrocket, and the grade retention rate would drastically drop. Not only would investing in better mentoring programs for students lower the juvenile delinquency rate, but it would also lower the overall incarceration rate. Approximately “55 percent of all incarcerated juveniles ... end up ... rearrested” because once people get criminal records, getting the resources they need to make lives for themselves, such as housing and jobs, becomes nearly impossible (Biddle). Therefore, investing in better programs would help make Baltimore a more successful and safer city for all of its residents. Although many complain that these programs that increase support and resources for students are expensive, if the incarceration rate is lowered, the city would have increased money to fund these programs for students. On average, “America spends $5.7 billion on incarcerating juveniles and billions more on the entire juvenile justice system” alone (Biddle). In Maryland, about “$288 million a year [is spent] on incarcerating people from Baltimore in Maryland’s prisons,” clearly demonstrating that massive amounts of money are being unnecessarily funneled into the prison system (Wagner). If the Baltimore community were to decrease the rate of delinquency in juveniles by putting forth money to support these students, the money from running prisons would be funneled back to the programs. The long-term effects of bettering “at-risk” essay contest
93 students’ educations would not only lower the overall incarceration rate but also open up more money that could be allocated to more important causes, such as the future generations’ educations. As a result, Baltimore would become a safer and all around more positive place for all of its residents. As a part of the Baltimore community, it is our responsibility to eliminate these “choices” for our youth. The only way to do so is to enhance our system of schooling to ensure that students are not being left behind and that students do not fall victim to their environment. By implementing a strategic plan with much more time devoted to reading, as well as a stronger evaluation system of students’ progress, we can be certain to end grade retention and change future prospects for these children. We have a responsibility to rid the images of silver bracelets and black boxes for our kids’ futures. Instead, we must paint a colorful picture of successful kids with caps and gowns.
Grace Hymel Works Cited “The 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities.” Forbes. Forbes.com. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. Biddle, Rishawn. “This Is Dropout Nation: The High Cost of Juvenile Justice.” Dropout Nation. This Is Dropout Nation. 23 Nov. 2010. Web. Apr. 2015. The Boys of Baraka. Dir. Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady. ThinkFilm, 2006. DVD. Colter, Angela. “The Audience You Didn’t Know You Had.” Contents Magazine. Web. 17 Mar. 2015. “Consequences of Illiteracy.” Literacy Foundation. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. Davidson, Tish. “Children’s Health.” Retention in School. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. Davis, Terry C, Robert S Byrd, Connie L Arnold, Peggy Auinger, and Joseph A Bocchini. “Low Literacy and Violence among Adolescents in a Summer Sports Program.” Journal of Adolescent Health 24.6 (1999): 403-11. Elsevier. Web. 18 Mar. 2015. Hanrahan, Clare. “Antisocial Behavior.” Encyclopedia of Children’s Health. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. “High School Graduation Rates in Maryland.” Maryland Equity Project. 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. essay contest
94 “Literacy Statistics.” Begin to Read. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. McKeon, Denise. “Research Talking Points on Dropout Statistics.” NEA. 1 Feb. 2006. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. Slavin, Robert E, Alex Cheung, Cynthia Groff, and Cynthia Lake. “Effective Reading Programs for Middle and High Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis.” 291-322. Best Evidence Encyclopedia. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. Vacca, James. “Crime Can Be Prevented If Schools Teach Juvenile Offenders To Read.” Children and Youth Services Review 30.9 (2008): 1055062. ScienceDirect. Web. 16 Apr. 2015. Wagner, Peter. “New Study: Maryland Taxpayers Spend $288 Million a Year to Incarcerate People from Baltimore City.” Prison Policy Initiative. 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. “What Is Early Childhood Education?” PreSchoolTeacher.org. 1 May 2014. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. Wright, Peter W. D. “Reading Problems and Juvenile Delinquency.” Wrightslaw. 1 Jan. 1974. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
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Third Place
Cheering for the Other Team The bright little screens caught my attention in the darkness of the swaying bus. They were fixated over the rows of seats, and each was surrounded by a fuzzy halo of glowing white light, a side effect from my over-exhausted eyes. I watched the screens as they simultaneously displayed a series of young women, sitting on plush couches, sharing their stories. Each story was some combination of finding the church’s support and experiencing God’s intervention. All of them ended the same way: the woman chose not to have her abortion. Everything grew slower, yet clearer, while I drowsily watched the illuminated squares in the dark. As much as my school tried to reinforce its teachings about life, from taking us to the march that day to playing the all-too-cheery anti-abortion video on the bus ride home, that night, I decided that I could not play along anymore. It was January 22, 2010, and I could see my breath as I walked across the deserted church parking lot at six in the morning. A large bus waited to carry a mix of my classmates, some parishioners, and myself to The March for Life in D.C. I climbed up the steep stairs of the bus and was immediately greeted by Mrs. O’Malley with her wispy lemon meringue hair. She was one of the moms who volunteered to chaperone us for the day. She handed me a lunch bag, and I made my way to the back of the bus, where there were only a few other kids I did not recognize. I sat in my seat, waiting for my friends, and I began to create pre-construed visions of what the protest would be like as I fell back to sleep. I was fourteen years old, and I went to St. Mary’s, a small private school in a small town. At school, we wore uniforms, walked in lines, prayed for our meals, and got detention in typing class. At home, we were liberal. You could believe what you wanted, though some morals were good. Cheating was bad, but so was mom’s swearing. Sometimes, we ate dinner at nine, and sometimes, we skipped mass. I realize now that my beliefs would make me stand out the more I tried to play along. Eventually, I woke to a pale blue sky and the sound of the wheels humming beneath my seat as the bus carried us to D.C. Everything was hushed, and people were sleeping. I noticed a small old woman with long dark hair was essay contest
96 in front of me, whispering to herself. She grasped a long chain in the form of a loop and carefully held onto one bead at a time. She was praying, I assumed, for the poor unborn children of God, as they taught us in religion class. “We’re going to protest for the right for all babies to live,” I said to my mother. I was convincing her to sign my permission slip weeks prior to the trip. “Are you sure that you want to go to this? People get arrested at these things.They can get violent,” she said as she looked at the yellow permission slip. “Mom, it will be okay. I’m sure that if they are letting seventh graders skip school to go to the march, it won’t be dangerous. I promise,” I said, but I did not actually know what I was assuring to her. In my mind, I was very excited to finally be a part of a cause for the church. It was my chance to stand up for the lives of others, march in the street, and make some noise. I imagined myself in one of those movies about the hippies who protested against the war in Vietnam or the period when Martin Luther King Jr. marched in D.C. during the Civil Rights Movement. It was time for me to make my big difference in the world. When we arrived in D.C., the sky had turned a perfect blue, as it does on beautiful days, and we were surrounded by the atmosphere of the city. As I peered out the window, I saw the bases of tall buildings made of cement, and the smell of car exhaust and chaos was in the air.When I stepped off of the bus, I was overwhelmed by the masses of people surrounding us. People were chanting and shouting into loudspeakers, while eager protesters forced pamphlets and buttons into everyone’s hands. In the background, I could hear anthemic music echoing in the atmosphere with acoustic guitars and unrecognizable singers— Christian music. It blared every couple minutes at groups of people passing by. The scene was a spectacle, and my initial reaction was fear, fear that I was experiencing because I was standing amidst a crowd of united people, and I was beginning to wonder why I was there. I did not know what I was getting myself into, but I started to realize that it was here that I did not belong. After going to a morning mass full of a combination of overenthusiastic music and thousands of priests, I followed my group as we were herded into the massive crowd. The march had begun. We made our way into the streets of the capital, where we were instantly immersed into a sea of protesters. They shouted and chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho. Roe v. Wade has got to go!” I blindly joined in without even questioning what “Roe v. Wade” meant. I followed the motions of the crowd as if I were at a sporting event cheering for a team that I did not even know. As I followed along with the people surrounding me, a mob essay contest
97 of winter coats, hats, and mittens, I reassured myself that I was there for a good cause and that I was fighting for life. Although, in actuality, I was fighting for my sanity. As I hurriedly followed along in the swarm of protestors, we began to make our way toward the final point of the march, Capitol Hill. I caught glimpses of the crowd of people moving toward the large elevated building with stone-white pillars and took in flashes of picket signs with more phrases saying, “Roe v. Wade” and “Choose life!” My initial uneasiness toward the march that I had felt earlier that day began to catch up to me. I stood in a subtle panicked frenzy as I recalled my mother’s worries in my head, and the explicit side of the protest began to unveil itself before my eyes. She warned me about violence, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. It was some form of life, but not the one that we knew. A small gel-like creature with black emotionless eyes was laying on a metal table covered in blood. As hard as it was to watch, it was even harder to redirect my gaze. In that moment, I felt horrible as I marched with the spirited crowd, cheering for life, because the pieces and my emotions began to make sense. My true feelings of protest began to arise, but they were not pro-life. I remembered my reaction that I had earlier that day upon overhearing a few kids sitting behind me on the bus having a conversation. “Well, I just think the whole abortion thing is wrong,” a boy with blond hair said. “I agree. I don’t understand how people think that it’s okay to just kill a baby,” said a girl. “Yeah, how could anyone believe that murder is wrong but being prochoice is okay?” I thought about the words of the kids, and I thought about where I stood coming to a march to help preserve life. I had not taken the time to seriously consider my personal position on abortion. I did not believe that putting a bullet to someone’s head was morally right, but the thought of someone having an abortion did not strike me in the same way. I thought hard about the kids’ stance, and I wanted to feel as strongly as they did, but something kept pulling me in the other direction. I realized that, although I was physically surrounded by reminders of the outcomes of abortion and its impact on children, it was not the gruesome posters and the signs about hell that I feared. It was the fact that I was beginning to be severed from everything that I knew and everything that I thought I had believed. I was beginning to realize that I was not pro-life. Standing in the crowd, I looked around my church group to see if essay contest
98 anyone else had noticed the poignant protest signs. Everyone saw them, but no one seemed to be as panicked as I was. I noticed the people cheering around me in the street: teens with their youth groups, parents pushing their kids in strollers, elderly men and women marching forward. I felt conflicted and worried. I began to second guess my reaction, I could not comprehend my emotions, and I was drowning in a body of people supporting life. How could I be so cruel to even consider favoring the option of giving someone the choice to kill? What would these people think of me if they knew? The march came to an end and the protestors disappeared. The Mall became a large field of trodden mud and dirty snow speckled with remnants from that day. The streets were lined with trash: posters, wooden stakes, and soiled t-shirts. The air felt brisk, and it bit through our coats as we made our way back to the bus. We filed into a line and retreated to the safety of our seats. Feeling defeated, I gazed out the window at the stragglers left behind on the muddy lawn. A couple walked by carrying a white flag as they made their way to their whereabouts. It read, “Pro-Choice,� a rare sight for this particular day. I identified with these two protestors immediately and finally felt a sense of comfort that I had not felt all day. I did not have a doubt in my mind that their beliefs were my beliefs, but I do not think that at the time I completely realized what I was experiencing. It was an internal rebellion against myself that was fighting against the part of myself that wanted to feel like a significant piece of the church. A part of me felt like I was wrong for what I was feeling because it was against the church, an important establishment in my life. But the point in life came where I began to grow up and not play along with everything that was taught to me. In the end, I was just a seventh grader who was sent on a field trip to defend life. I was also the seventh grader who came home from a field trip defending the opposite team, but this time, I knew which team I was cheering for.
Giselle Garnett
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Fourth Place
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Correlation Versus Causation in the Entertainment Industry and Society We live in a society that compartmentalizes generations based on a ten-year scale. For example, we talk about events that occurred in the 60s as if they were completely different from events in the 70s; every decade starts with a clean slate, time wiping away the accomplishments and failures of the previous generation, giving the current generation the opportunity to break the mold. This isn’t something people are consciously aware of while it’s happening, but in retrospect, there is a clear distinguishability. There seems to be an increasingly negative connotation with change, like our generation is speeding down a dead-end road fueled by increased violence and an apparent widespread faltering morality. The people who are often blamed are the ones in the public eye: music artists, actors, celebrities, etc. The increasingly violent themes seen in today’s popular culture that encompasses music, movies, video games, and other multimedia platforms cannot solely be blamed for the inevitable transformation today’s society is undergoing. Furthermore, musicians cannot be held responsible for this unavoidable change we’re experiencing, although they are often the ones we blame. This trend can be seen in almost any generation in the United States, and today’s is no different. Not only is music unjustly blamed for the gradual changes in culture; it is also blamed for events that shake the foundation of our society. Horrible tragedies, such as the school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School in 1999, for example, hit close to home for families all across our country. A horrible tragedy where thirteen innocent lives were claimed forces everyone to raise the question, Why? How could someone do such a thing? People started looking for answers. People needed answers. A popular controversial artist at the time, Marilyn Manson, was a public figure who seemed to be spearheading essay contest
100 the counterculture movement of the 90s and represented breaking the norms. Just like that, the media made the correlation between Marilyn Manson and the Columbine Shootings, unjustly attaching his image to a horrible tragedy. People started pointing fingers at Manson as if the awful tragedy could have been avoided altogether if his music hadn’t been produced. The media portrayed the shooters as avid Manson fans and used this to rationalize the horrible murders they committed. In actuality, the two shooters disliked Manson’s music. However, had the shooters been fans of Manson’s music, is that enough to justify what they did? Is musical preference enough to get someone to conduct such violent actions? Manson gave his own insight, defending himself in the 1999 Rolling Stone article titled “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?” Manson brought artists who represented counterculture in their respective times back into the spotlight: “It’s comical that people are naïve enough to have forgotten Elvis, Jim Morrison, and Ozzy so quickly” (Manson). His point was that, even when tragedies didn’t take place, music was still blamed for leading some apparent peace-breaching counterculture movement. Elvis, for example, was ostracized for breaking the norms and blamed for cultural externalities. Society and traditions were changing, and the driving force was the people of that society, not Elvis’s obscene sexual hip movements. Similarly, artists today are often blamed for creating an irresponsible and immoral generation. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Wiz Khalifa produce music with questionable lyrics, alluding to cultural taboos, such as casual drug use and sex. For example, in one of Miley Cyrus’s most popular songs, “We Can’t Stop,” she says, “We like to party, dancing with Molly, doing whatever we want.” This song was played over the radio countless times, and the YouTube video has almost 500 million views. This song specifically has been at the heart of controversy because many people believed Cyrus sang “dancing with Miley” instead of “dancing with Molly,” an illicit drug that has become increasing popular among celebrities in recent months. She cleared up any controversy and agreed it was a drug reference, stating, “It depends who’s doing what. If you’re aged ten it’s ‘Miley,’ if you know what I’m talking about, then you know. I just wanted it to be played on the radio and they’ve already had to edit it so much” (Strang). She’s saying that the lyric is referencing the drug “Molly” and that it only says Miley on the edits so that her song can be heard by millions on the radio. Miley Cyrus used to play the iconic character Hannah Montana on Disney Channel, so anything controversial she comes out with today seems to come with ridicule. People still hang on to the Hannah Montana image that Cyrus has essay contest
101 clearly strayed from in recent years. People need to realize that they’re holding on to personality traits of a character on a television show and that Miley Cyrus is in no way responsible for holding on to these traits. We cannot ostracize these musicians for making songs that appeal to their respective fan bases. The music is an outlet for the youth, who value things such as individuality and rebellion. Is Miley Cyrus supposed to just hold on to the innocent roots that were once a part of her acting career, sacrificing her freedom of expression as an artist just because it’s convenient for people and appropriate for children? Between people needing answers and artists demanding freedom, there seems to be a middle ground that needs to be reached to appease both sides. At the heart of this push and pull is the idea of artist responsibility. Do artists have to be held accountable for the music they release to the public? In my opinion, artists should have the indisputable freedom to release whatever they want, regardless of if it strays from societal norms or not. The problem people have with this limitless freedom that artists have is that they believe it directly influences, and even encourages, certain undesirable behavior. The popular belief is that music, and even movies, television shows, video games, etc., desensitize people to things such as violence and sex. Furthermore, the increased exposure to these themes portrayed in music leaves a person devoid of any moral sensibility. However, Rosalyn Weinman, a panelist on Popular Culture: Rage, Rights, and Responsibility, argues that there is no concrete evidence that desensitization equals imitation: “For every researcher who says there may be an issue with imitability and that there would be consequences, there’s another researcher who says that all that will happen is someone will be desensitized.” The various panelists, including artists and producers, were pushed by host Charles Ogeltree to get to the bottom of why producers choose to either approve or object to signing certain artists or releasing certain songs. Panelist Michael Franti explains simply that it “doesn’t happen that way. Just like I said before, is that what happened with Bush sitting up and listening to Frank Sinatra or something saying, I’m going to bomb Iraq? Doesn’t happen.” Although Franti doesn’t have concrete facts to support his claim, he still has a point that he expresses with clear frustration; being an African American musician, the work he dedicates his life to is constantly under fire for causing problems it didn’t create. This plea of impending imitability is a false notion that’s created for convenience, an attempt to explain the unexplainable, to justify the unjustifiable. essay contest
102 One of the main groups of artists carrying this unnecessary and invalid burden are musicians in the rap industry. Rap music, an industry with predominately African American artists, has been the smoking gun for causing societal problems since its creation. For example, songs like “Cop Killer” by Ice T and “Straight Outta Compton” by N.W.A. were portrayed as such immense threats in their times that they were removed from production; Time Warner pulled “Cop Killer” and the FBI had to intervene when “Straight Outta Compton” came out (Barker). If these songs were such great threats to society, clearly there would be statistical evidence that reflected spikes in violent crime that the songs portrayed: increases in police mortality, homicide rates, robbery, etc. However, exactly the opposite was found: “Judging by changes in crimes rates, quite the opposite—overall violent crime has actually been steadily declining since the heyday of gangsta rap, with homicide rates among African-Americans seeing some of the sharpest drops” (Barker). Music and film critic for the renowned entertainment magazine Variety, Andrew Barker, goes on to raise a great point in a rather cynical manner by writing, “Of course, no reasonable person would take this to mean that the rise of gangsta rap caused a reduction in crime, though a corollary argument would surely be made were the numbers reversed” (Barker). If there was an increase in violent crimes, surely it would be because of the rising popularity of rap music, but when the crime rate drops, it has to be due to some external influence. A positive outcome of rap music is simply unfathomable for those who blame it for negatively impacting society. Artists are often seen as the cause of this cultural shift that is way over their heads, but they cannot be blamed. It’s pure coincidence that the horrific Columbine shooting took place during the time that Manson’s music was popular, or unpopular, among so many. Had today’s controversial artists been popular at the time of the shooting, they would have been accused. There is no concrete evidence that proves crime or violence or straying from societal norms is a direct result of today’s music. It’s a problem with myriad dimensions that many are viewing as a black and white problem, as if removing music with these problems will make them all disappear. What we don’t consider is what if the inverse is actually happening. In my opinion, musicians try to write their music to fit society, rather than musicians’ lyrics dictating how we act as a society. Music is merely a form of communication between the artist and listener. Songwriter for the Talking Heads, David Byrne, stated: “It has been proposed that this shared representation is essential for essay contest
103 any type of communication. If we didn’t have this means of sharing common references, we wouldn’t be able to communicate” (Byrne 341). This widespread misunderstanding in today’s culture is fueling the fire of blaming and fingerpointing, just as it did in Elvis’s and Manson’s times. So when people say that our generation is heading down a dead-end road, they’re not necessarily wrong. However, it’s not from the increasingly violent themes seen in music; it’s from a perpetuating ignorance we display as a society when analyzing the inevitable changes of our culture.
Tyler Van Houten Works Cited Barker, Andrew. “No more rap on culture.” Variety, 2013: 70. Business Insights: Essentials. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. Byrne, David. How Music Works. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2012. Print. Cyrus, Miley. “We Can’t Stop.” Bangerz. RCA Records, 2013. MP3 file. Manson, Marilyn. “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?” Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone. 24 June 1999. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. Popular Culture: Rage, Rights, and Responsibility? A Fred Friendly Seminar. Films On Demand. Films Media Group, 1992. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. Strang, Fay. “‘They Took out Literally Everything’: Miley Cyrus Reveals Raunchy Video for We Can’t Stop Was MORE Explicit as She Opens up about Shedding Her Squeaky Clean past.” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 20 July 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2014.
essay contest
Odds and Ends Mark Welch
New Life Itzayana Osorio
Keyana Sabbakhan Overgrown
Self Portrait with the Sun Itzayana Osorio
Keyana Sabbakhan Efflorescence
Reverie Margaret Wroblewski
Pont du Gard, Nimes Camelia Rojas
That Troddlin’Town Stephanie Hakeem
Terror in Copenhagen Eli Polnerow
Jade Kamilia Arroyo
NONFICTION
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Feminist Fatale:
Double Indemnity and Female Empowerment A woman in film noir is typically portrayed in one of two ways: she’s either a dependable, trustworthy, devoted, and loving woman, or she’s a manipulative, predatory, double-crossing, and unloving temptress. Noir labels the cold-hearted and ruthless woman archetype as a femme fatale. A femme fatale is walking trouble, and she’s aware of it. This woman is gorgeous, refined, eloquent, and commands the attention of any room. When the femme fatale desires something, she pursues it. If there’s an obstacle in her way, she overcomes it. If she can’t handle it herself, all she needs to do is bat her eyelashes, and the nearest man is all too willing to take care of it for her. In essence, the most dangerous thing about the femme fatale is her ability to exploit her attractiveness, to ensure the achievement of her goals. Her astuteness and desirability are what enable her to entrap her male counterparts and bring about their demise. This is especially true for the film Double Indemnity, as it’s known to be the most “noir” film ever made. Double Indemnity starts off by immediately throwing its audience into the chaos of the plot. Not too long into the film, it’s revealed that the main character, Walter Neff, is a murderer and that he was tricked into committing the crime by a woman named Phyllis Dietrichson. Phyllis is then presented to the audience as the femme fatale, and the narrative centers around her actions of deceit and manipulation. At the core, Phyllis and the idea of a femme fatale can be viewed as concept shrouded in misogyny, but with a closer inspection, they both seem to symbolize a notion that advocates for feminism. The entire construct of a femme fatale defines her as a strong female character with distinctive characteristics that adhere to that, and whose very foundation is more about female empowerment than oppression. Double Indemnity tells the story about how salesman Walter Neff gets roped into a murderous scheme concocted by the beautiful and sensual Phyllis Dietrichson. Phyllis is illustrated as an unhappy housewife who seems absorbed by the notion of killing her husband and living off of the fraudulent insurance nonfiction
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money. In contrast to Phyllis, Neff is originally depicted as an innocent bystander who gets swept away by her sensual charm and falls prey to her feminine wiles. The establishment of her character within the film’s universe, especially with regard to her relationship with Neff, define and exemplify Phyllis as a true femme fatale. At the very core of a femme fatale is a soft, feminine character that has a rock-hard edge, which seems to threaten the system of patriarchy built around her. In understanding the mind of the femme fatale and her motives, a viewer is typically asked to review her character in relation to men. Double Indemnity often depicts Phyllis as being a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The film builds her up as an overtly-sensual woman, capable of luring men into doing her bidding by playing the damsel in distress. This becomes evident when she reveals that her motive behind wanting her husband killed is due to the fact that she’s been abused, but the film never delves further into the topic, and it’s immediately written off as irrelevant.This is where the misogynistic tones of the film start to arise, and they can cause a misinterpretation of the significance of Phyllis to the film. Phyllis’s strength as a character comes from her awareness; she’s exceedingly conscious of her sexuality and she’s not naïve toward the effect she has on men. Her first appearance in the film captures her allure and dominance as she appears naked at the top of the staircase staring down at Neff. She is a combination of both power and sensuality, and her verbal wit is what highlights her as a force to be reckoned with. However, despite the fact that Phyllis appears to have all the power in their relationship, the film actively tries to undermine that strength. Double Indemnity gives the impression that a woman with control is not only dangerous, but lethal. The film wants its audience to believe that a world where females are aware of themselves independently from males cannot be sustained, and if such a world were to exist, the end result would be a tangled web of destruction. Double Indemnity and film noir work to promote an idea that women should remain passive and without acknowledgement of the rights that they share with men. The role that this noir seems to be enforcing upon women is awfully misogynistic in nature, and it appears as though Double Indemnity is trying to stamp out any feelings of empowerment within its female viewers. However, I’d argue that, in spite of those efforts, noir actually manages to foster those very feelings it tries to suppress. Interestingly enough, this is done through the same concept it uses to try and break down the construct of empowerment. The femme fatale, a character whose very nature is supposed to bring about destruction, is also a perfect role model for females. What makes the femme nonfiction
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fatale worth emulating are her defining characteristics. To be a femme fatale, one must be a woman who’s self-centered, has an overt sexuality about her, and possesses the ability to effectively seduce and control. These three portions of the femme fatale character are her reclaiming ownership of herself, which leads to her gaining an awareness of her worth within society. Typically, these characteristics are condemned by the femme fatale’s misogynistic counterparts, but through them, the femme fatale actively reclaims her role in society by expressing her awareness and control. From this arises a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants and one who isn’t afraid to play dirty to level the playing field. The femme fatale isn’t a damsel in distress, and her self-attained empowerment as well as ownership embodies the very core of feminism and feminist ideals. Therefore, even though Phyllis is seen playing the victim, what truly makes her a dangerous character isn’t her vulnerability or the way she’s claiming her sexuality for her own, but rather the self-awareness she has over that fact. Phyllis Dietrichson is the ultimate example of a femme fatale, personifying the ideas of female empowerment rather than female oppression. Phyllis doesn’t let herself become defined by a system of patriarchy, but instead, uses the three characteristics to try and achieve her life desires. Throughout Double Indemnity, we’re bombarded with hypersexualized moments where the camera catches Phyllis in a state of almost indecency. The first one is when Walter and the audience first spot Phyllis, and she’s standing in nothing but a towel. The second time we get a sexualized look at Phyllis is later in that scene where her anklet is showing, and Neff seems to be captivated by it so much that he feels he had to comment on it. Double Indemnity tries to portray the sexuality of Phyllis in a subtler manner, but the clear sexualization and the fact that Phyllis doesn’t tend to shy away from these moments, are her assuming ownership over her sensuality. Double Indemnity has also managed to cast Phyllis in a self-centered light, and while she does admit that she’s never loved anyone in her life, is she really to blame for wanting to be financially independent and rid of someone who verbally berated and possibly physically abused her? That seems like an understandable thing for a woman in her situation to be feeling. Even though she may go about it in the wrong way, at least she recognizes that her situation is unhealthy and one she needs to get out of. Phyllis refuses to let the actions of her husband define her; she isn’t a dutiful housewife but someone who should be cherished and her acknowledgement of that is more an act of selfnonfiction
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preservation than one of self-centeredness. While Double Indemnity tries to demean Phyllis because she’s able to entice Neff and get him to orchestrate a plan for her husband’s death, the blame should really fall upon Neff. Out of the two, he’s the weaker character. Neff knew going into the situation that Phyllis was potentially bad news but ignored his original instinct for her pretty face. However, because he fell for her tricks, we blame Phyllis, but I think the issue is really that Neff wasn’t strong enough to stick to his morals and thus succumbed to her seduction. To hold the femme fatale solely responsible for the destructive mess is ignoring a crucial part of the plot and belittling the value and strength of the character. Knowledge, awareness, and self-preservation are all qualities innate within every human, and it’s unfair to demean a character for using those qualities to her advantage. When discussing the archetype of a femme fatale, feminism isn’t normally a topic brought up in association. However, when deeply analyzing the characteristics of a femme fatale, the similarities between the two concepts become clearer. This is especially the case when looking within the noir genre and at films that embody every aspect of noir, such as Double Indemnity. Double Indemnity and noir are perfect examples of how oppressive a film could appear to be at first glance. However, upon a deeper inspection of Double Indemnity and everything it has to offer, it’s easy to see that, although it tries to define and belittle its femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson, by her actions against her male counterparts, she’s really the strongest character in the entire film. Her resilience in ensuring that she obtains her every desire is what sets her apart. Her actions at first glance could come across as being self-centered, but all Phyllis is truly after is security, which is more self-preservation. Phyllis is a character who is exceedingly aware of not only herself as a person but also the power this awareness has over men. That self-awareness and ownership of one’s body, as well as the ability to take that knowledge and level the vastly unjust playing field, is the very core of feminism. Therefore, the femme fatale is not a character that needs to be defined by a male. To truly define a femme fatale, one must characterize her by her own strength and ability to achieve her desires in life.
Keanna Morgan
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Mirror, Mirror You step out of the shower and make your way to the large glass mirror on the wall. As you dry off your body enough to cease your shivers, you take your towel and wipe off some of the fog that has clung to the mirror’s surface and look at the image in front of you. How would you feel if the reflection staring back at you were a vivid representation of the stories you’re too afraid to share? Better yet, how would you feel realizing that the image staring back at you is the rawest form of yourself, undressed, uncovered, unhidden? We often interpret reflections to simply be the physical parts of us that are shown in an image. Yet, we fail to grasp the tales that are voiced by our distinguished features. Hundreds of stories can be told from the perspective of our noses. Memories flood into our brain when looking at the birthmark that sits blatantly pressed to the skin on our right forearm. But still, we choose to ignore these imperceptible hints by either concealing them or by distracting ourselves from the truth with routines, thoughts, and actions. In moments when I have contemplated my face in the mirror, I have begun to understand the words and stories that live beneath my skin, confirming that the crevices and curves that make my face often voice the stories that remain untold. Through them, I have relived time with the eyes that made me swoon, the words that made my heart beat fast, and the overall moments that left me speechless. Two people of the same gender, completely in love, in what felt like a timeless moment that stilled the world for just a second. And, in that second, I found warmth and comfort that shone through him and his comfortable attitude, a characteristic I found both enticing and admirable. But the idea still loomed alongside the now-shining moon: we were unconventional. He was unconventional. I was unconventional.Yet, in those stilled moments, I felt alive. His name wasn’t important, and to me, neither was his gender. What truly was important was that I was there, allowing myself to be free and exposing myself enough to be the taboo I was made to dread. In my home, there was no room for disparity. But I was exactly that: a divergence in a seamless pattern that had been successfully woven in the same manner for years. I was untraditional and confused, for I felt that I had exiled myself from that fixed pattern in the name of love. I was aghast at my comfort with incongruity and felt estranged. nonfiction
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And so, through Descartes’s theory of existence, I created a distorted reality: I felt estranged and denigrated, existing in a state of insistency for failing to love like others did. I felt estranged and denigrated, existing in a state in which I was lesser for falling off of society’s normality radar. Despite my fears, I indulged in that fleeting moment of comfort, but I never said a word to him about it. I was sitting across from him, my legs crossed and my fingers intertwined around the surface of a warm cup. He had taken me to a beautiful and antiquated church that was hours away from our reality, a rather bold decision. And yet, I had never felt so at home in a place where I thought I could never show my face again. The wind whistled as it made its way throughout the decaying and colorful walls that now emitted a pale azure under the limitless sky. I took a sip of my drink and let my eyes wander along the colorful Virgin Mary murals on the walls, finally letting my focus settle on his seamless green spheres. We were not saying anything in particular, but our eyes were. In his, I did not see a man, or a stereotype, or even a sin; in his, I saw a future I longed for and a reality that I no longer wanted to hide from. And in mine, I knew there was fear—fear of being caught, fear of being damned, fear of falling for the haven that peered back at me under the blue. My lips parted, and I finally broke the silence that the moon and the multiple Virgin Marys had somehow sanctified. Again, I stood under the watchful eye of the moon and the stars. The scene felt like a snapshot before I uttered and ruined the moment, once tinted only by God’s windy whisper. I heard myself start, and I knew I should have stopped myself. “Thank you,” I said. In that moment, he smiled back at me, not knowing the extent of my gratitude. I was thankful for his kindness and chivalrous demeanor. I was thankful for his unwinding green peace. But, most of all, I was thankful for the innocent warmth that he had the courage to brew between us. I bit my lip in fear of words flying out again. But my uneasiness never seemed to unsettle his calm demeanor, whereas I was a constant blabbering mess. I was afraid of being different. He was not. I was terrified of letting go. He was not. I was mortified of feeling something. And he definitely was not. He held me after I spoke, making me feel through his embrace that there was nothing powerful enough that could unsettle our private universe. And as the night progressed, he made my inhibitions vanish one by one, crumbling each wall with his unwavering grace. In the end, he was there, I was there, and so were all the Virgin Marys. There was no kiss to seal our perfect nonfiction
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night. Before we left, however, I stood and enveloped his warm, chubby hands in my honest embrace and smiled. There was no sealing canoodle under the faithful blue sky, but there were fireworks. We lit up the sky above us with our newfound affection. Like two conjugate forces, we merged and settled: the universe was finally in equilibrium. It has been some time since that moment, and I have never felt so lonely and in love.The truth is that there is not much company in being unconventionally out of the bounds of the norm. While I do find support and comfort, those are often tied hand-in-hand with segregation. I am still marginalized to the outer bounds, either to be praised or condemned. In trying to alleviate the unrelenting force of discrimination, I am still set aside as an anomaly, that is either weak and in need of help, or sinful and corrupted. But that person with the green eyes, who once made me swoon under the watchful eyes of the moon and the Virgin Marys, still makes me swoon incessantly. Through him, I was set free. When we lose ourselves in daily routine, we fail to embrace the small details that make up our whole reflection. We fail to see the bright pools of happiness in our eyes, the small whispers of truth in our lips, and even the vivid expressions of joy and passion in our cheeks. The moments where I have contemplated my face in the mirror, I have come to relive those incredible scenes that are narrated by the small details my features offer. And, by knowing this, I can be sure of the question that should be asked to your mirror when you stand before it. Do not inquire about your value and worth in the world but, rather, delve into the stories that comprise your entirety.
Christian Lopez-Ashby
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Frida Kahlo, Jr. You must have stared at your reflection for an hour before the choice was made. Your eyes followed up the slope of your nose to your eyebrows and the hairs subtly connecting them. Shaving was an easy decision to make if you didn’t think about it, but not thinking was never really your style. So there you sat, contemplative, turning a pink, plastic disposable razor back and forth in your hand. If you didn’t think hard, you were convinced. The hairs were ugly, so, if you shaved them, problem solved. But not really, though, because if you shaved them, everyone at school would know you did it just because Jason MacInerny made fun of you. And what if you cut yourself? Or shaved off part of your eyebrow and made it worse? Your mind was a war, raging turmoil over a few stray hairs in between your eyebrows, where apparently no hair is supposed to grow. How many times did you stare at your face, wishing for beauty that seemed unattainable, all because of six little eyebrow hairs? When you made the decision, everything started happening very fast. You made a grab for the shaving cream, only to reconsider a moment later, and try hand soap instead. You would do a test first and angle the razor just so, making sure to slice off the unwanted eyebrow hair delicately, without nicking the skin or a patch of your inner brow. You were very careful the first time and happy with the results. The space above the arch of your nose was smooth and hair-free, the way it should look, right? This became your weekly routine, shaving the barely-there unibrow in secret, hoping your mother would never notice. But, of course, she eventually did, because that’s what mothers do. The initial embarrassment wore off quickly, and soon after came the horror of the realization that your mother might make you stop shaving your eyebrow, leaving you victim to the unyielding dark brown hair. When she looked at you with an unwavering gaze, she said, “Why the hell are you shaving your eyebrows?” And when you told her why the hell you were shaving your eyebrows, you expected sympathy, maybe a hug. But, instead, she laughed and simply said, “Stop shaving your eyebrows off.”You tried to tell her that you were merely trimming around the edges, but she refused to hear nonfiction
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it, saying you were beautiful the way you were, which, if you had to admit, was nice to hear.
Emma Ditzel
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Fix the Ladder, Fix the World Some numbers boggle the mind due to their immense size: the speed of light, the number of bacteria on the Earth, the size of the vast universe or the infinitesimal electron. Try 781 million; that’s a tough one to wrap the head around. That is the number of adults worldwide who would have no clue what is written on this page, and who could not even write a sentence of this paper; 781 million adults on this planet are illiterate. Here’s another number to try to tackle: of the total number of illiterate adults, two-thirds—496 million—are women (International Literary Data 2014). The world population of literate adults from 1970 to 2010 climbed from 56% to 83% (Roser), and yet “the female proportion has remained virtually steady at 64%” (International Literary Data 2013). Adult female illiteracy is a pressing issue festering in the global community today. Gross travesties such as this one only exacerbate the current world climate of conflict, repression, and stagnant social standings. The socioeconomic ladder is broken at the bottom, offering nearly no possible way up. What is more, the difficulties entailed with overcoming poverty, unemployment, and institutional favoritism only intensify when women do not have the tools to, as Fredrick Douglass believed, “be forever free.” But it extends far beyond freedom; women, children, and both the local and global communities are greatly hindered by an illiterate female population. Micro and macro commitments to combat a calamity such as this will propel women and the world to a higher rung. Women have incredible potential to rectify global issues through their welcomed presence in the job market and should be championed as productive and necessary members of society.Yet, despite their prospective benefit, women continue to suffer. Studies indicate that one in four women will experience some form of domestic abuse over the course of their life (Domestic).Violent behavior is the most common form of abuse. However, financial abuse has stifled the expansion of our society and, most importantly, truncated the development of women as independent persons. The perpetrators of financial abuse on women take advantage of positions of trust through lying, hiding information, coercion, nonfiction
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stealing, and even halting the woman from becoming employed. Independence is stolen. The fastest way out of a violent relationship is leaving the relationship, but this has proven difficult because of the financial abuse of economic dependence. An often overlooked aspect of literacy is financial; financial illiteracy and reliance can force women to remain in abusive relationships for fear of poverty and the welfare of children. Often, women cannot protect themselves from this form of abuse because their knowledge and experience on economic questions is limited and kept secret by their partners. Looking to understand this vicious cycle of abuse and dependence, Rutgers University and Allstate Insurance studied the ability of women to leave violent partners and the necessary components of making the split sooner and easier.While the study did not focus on how financial literacy may help prevent abuse, it did conclude that financial literacy greatly aids in the recovery from these violent relationships and subsequent independence and security of an effective and lasting departure (Palmer). Domestic violence is a beast in and of itself that needs not to be tamed but slaughtered, and financial literacy is proven to be a successful measure of reclamation in the aftermath of such a horrid violation of female wellbeing. The health and wellbeing of both men and women is important, but pregnant women especially must be safe and well for the sake of their lives, their children, and the society their children are about to inhabit. To track the rate at which pregnant women are able to birth safely, the Central Intelligence Agency compiles data on both Infant Mortality Rates (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR), and organizes the worst to the best rates among countries in the world. Statistical analysis of data from the best ten and worst ten countries for each of the two rates, as well as adult female literacy rates for each country, uncovered a relationship between female adult literacy and both IMRs and MMRs. Turning to IMRs first, the worst ten countries have an average IMR of 89.51 infant deaths out of every 1,000 births, and the best ten average 2.427 out of 1,000. For a point of reference, the worst country, Afghanistan, has an IMR of 115.08/1,000, while the best, Monaco, has an IMR of 1.82/1,000 (“Country Comparison: Infant Mortality Rate”). When these rates are assessed with the backdrop of adult female literacy, we note a striking correlation. Using proper mathematical and statistical procedures in addition to up-to-date demographic information (“Population”), the average female adult literacy rate of those worst ten countries is 41.57%. For the best, 98.5% (“Country Comparison: Literacy”). nonfiction
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Moving now to MMR, we see a similar trend. The best and worst countries analyzed are different for the two respective rates, but the same process was deployed. The worst ten countries’ average MMR is 971.4 out of 100,000 births, and the best ten average 4/100,000. For reference, the worst on the list, South Sudan, has a MMR of 2,054/100,000, and the best, Estonia, is 2/100,000. Still committed to proper procedure and data, the worst ten countries average an adult female literacy rate of 53.6%, and the best ten averaged 98.9% (“Country Comparison: Maternal Mortality Rates”). What is going on here is: the greater the adult female literacy rate, the lower the average IMR and MMR of a country. When women have access to literacy, the likelihood of infant and mother mortality in pregnancy drastically diminishes. And, because society entrusts women and children with the responsibility of promoting the future of the population, a wider commitment to adult female literacy ensures a sound foundation for societal longevity. Literacy is a force to be reckoned with, but so too is illiteracy; the world’s females face a skewed uphill battle in combatting societal and socioeconomic institutional bias, corrosive relationships, and health of both themselves and their children during pregnancy. But the responsibilities women are called upon to take up cannot possibly be fulfilled without the great necessity of literacy. Beyond the role women play in the market or society, adult female illiteracy stifles the gender from maximizing its potential and creating for the world new ideas, products, or programs. It takes literacy to be free. It takes literacy to reach the top, and women at the top puts everyone at the top.
Zachary Fechter Works Cited “Country Comparison: Infant Mortality Rate.” Cia.gov. CIAWorld Fact Book, 2015. Web. 4 Nov. 2015. “Country Comparison: Literacy.” Cia.gov. CIAWorld Fact Book, n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2015. “Country Comparison: Maternal Mortality Rate.” Cia.gov. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2015. “Domestic Violence: Statistics & Facts.” Safe Horizon. Safe Horizon, n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2015. nonfiction
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“International Literacy Data 2013.” International Literacy Data 2013. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 30 Aug. 2013. Web. 27 Oct. 2015. “International Literacy Data 2014.” International Literacy Data 2014. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 17 July 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2015. Palmer, Kimberly. “How Financial Literacy Can Fight Domestic Violence.” US News & World Report. US News & World Report, 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. “Population by Gender, Age, Fertility Rate, Immigration.” Worldometers.info. United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 13 June 2013. Web. 4 Nov. 2015. Roser, Max. “Literacy.” OurWorldInData.org. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
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A Researched Open Letter to Dr. Ben Carson: On Mental Health and Mass Shootings
Dear Dr. Carson: I distinctly remember the first time I learned your name. On the first Wednesday of every month at the Christian high school I attended, a lovable old priest would substitute for an anatomy or English or calculus teacher and lecture my class about moral goodness by using anecdotes and referencing world events. I was in the eleventh grade when this priest emphasized the importance of education, faith, and self-determination through the story of a poor boy from a single-mother household who became a neurosurgeon that successfully separated conjoined twins. It was a story about you. I was so inspired in hearing your account that learning of your now-ended presidential candidacy instilled within me hope for a more righteous America. However, as a citizen of this country, as a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a Christian, and a human being, I have been gravely disillusioned by your responses to mass shootings in recent and current American history. I write to you with closed eyes, furrowed brows, and a two-thousandpound heart because your reactions to the urgent mass shooting epidemic trouble and frustrate me deeply, and would shatter the spirit of my elderly high school mentor. I write to you as a first-year student from the library of my university, a place like the high school classroom in which I learned about you that I cannot enter without being tormented by my subconscious awareness that a gunman could be lurking through the crooked bookshelves. I write to you with fear, bewilderment, and anger, but more powerfully, with the need to be seriously heard. A Chinese proverb wisely asserts, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” This mindset must be applied to our country’s response to its horrifying and abnormal mass-shooting crisis. In this eighteenth year of my life, according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 352 mass shootings. A mass shooting is a situation in which at least four people are shot—but not necessarily killed—at a time. In 336 days, nonfiction
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there have been 352 of these instances; there have been more mass shootings than there have been days. And 2015 is not over yet. Dr. Carson, I understand the importance of prayer—I do. But I implore you to stop asking only for my thoughts and prayers in the aftermath of mass shootings. I applaud your apparent concern for the mentally ill, but I implore you to start talking about mental health, not just in the aftermath of a mass shooting. I implore you no longer to stigmatize, make blanket claims, and use stereotyped and obscure terminology to talk about mental health but, instead, propose solutions to improve our mental health system. I implore you to consider the benefits of stricter gun laws and of comprehensive and universal background checks. On December 2nd, fourteen people were killed, and seventeen wounded, in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. The 352nd mass shooting of 2015 happened during a conference at the Inland Regional Center. I invite you to know that, according to the center’s mission statement, it served to work “with generic services to normalize the lives of people with developmental disabilities and their families by working to include them in the everyday routines and life rhythms of the community and by facilitating needed supports for them.” Those killed in this mass shooting were not the patients at this center; however, they very easily could have been. Before you use stigmatizing terminology—like “crazies,” as you have done repeatedly in the past—to label the shooters, please consider who could have been subject to the bullets. You have said in a Fox News interview, “[If Democrats] can show me how to stop these mass shootings, I’m willing to listen” (“Ben Carson on Hillary”). In this letter, I am going to provide you with multiple reasons to listen. In the same interview, you said, “We need a better way of categorizing, identifying, and treating these people” (“Ben Carson on Hillary”). Not once have you ever actually proposed solutions to improve the lives of the mentally ill or what you see as a faulty mental health system (“Grading the States”). I find your approach to talking about mental health in the aftermath of mass shootings to be expedient, uninformed, and unacceptable. According to a study done by the Violence Policy Center, in 35.5 percent of gun killings in 2012, the victims were personally known to the shooter (“Firearm Justifiable Homicides”). This fact refutes the popular stereotype that you have fed into repeatedly in the aftermath of mass shootings, making claims like, “It’s hard to imagine that you would shoot a bunch of people nonfiction
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if you didn’t hate them.You don’t do that to people you love” (qtd. in Sullivan). It is important for you to know that science and fact has proved otherwise. I believe that, by making uniformed statements like this one, you are adding fuel to the fire of stigmatization of the mentally ill. A study done by The American Journal of Psychiatry shows the results of an online survey given to the public to test the “effects of news media messages about mass shootings on attitudes toward persons with serious mental illness and public support for gun control policies.” The survey displayed three different news stories, the first describing a mass shooting executed by a severely mentally-ill person, the second describing the same mass shooting and proposing stricter gun laws, and the third describing the same mass shooting and proposing a large-capacity magazines ban. The study concluded that the mass media’s coverage of mass shootings in their aftermaths almost always raises both negative attitudes toward the mentally ill and public support for stricter gun laws. In the same interview as mentioned above, you wonder, “When do we get to the point that we have people who actually want to solve our problems rather than just politicize them?” (“Ben Carson on Hillary”). It seems to me that you are politicizing the issue because you seem only to promote this study’s conclusion about the mass media’s negative effects regarding mental health stigmatization. The public in this study called for stricter gun control laws in the aftermath of mass shootings, but you have rejected America’s cries. Dr. Carson, you are both a doctor and a Christian; yet, in light of recent tragedies, I have realized that you do not seem to be well-versed in either mental health statistics or the ethics of gun safety. A recent study shows that less than five percent of the 120,000 gun-related deaths in America in the years between 2001 and 2010 “were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness” (Metzl and MacLeish). In the same study, it was indicated that those diagnosed with mental illness are responsible for only four percent of violence in the United States. “In this sense,” Metzl and MacLeish write in an American Public Health Association report, “persons with mental illness might well have more to fear from ‘us’ than we do from ‘them’” (Metzl and MacLeish). What’s more, “Blaming persons with mental disorders for gun crime overlooks the threats posed to society by a much larger population—the sane” (Metzl and MacLeish). A reporter from Forbes has shone light on the fact that you did not mention anything about mental health in your issues statements (Willingham). This frustrates me deeply because it seems that the only time you address issues of mental health is in the aftermath of a mass shooting, in a manner that John nonfiction
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Oliver believes is to “veer the conversation away from gun control” (“Last Week Tonight”). I have analyzed both present Republican and Democratic responses to mass shootings in America, and what I have discovered is this: both parties recognize mass shootings as a result of different issues, but both parties agree that solutions need to be made to bring an end to these shootings. Where the concession ends, however, is when a Democratic candidate like Hillary Clinton, who views the crisis of mass shootings as an issue of gun control, actually proposes tangible solutions to fix what she sees is the issue. For example, Clinton perceives mass shootings as an issue of gun control, so she proposes that our country needs stricter gun laws. She then formally makes public her plans to end things like the “Charleston loophole” and the three-day rule in background check procedures, supporting and defending common sense legislations like the Brady Bill, which “instituted federal background checks on some gun sales” (“Hillary for America”). Those on the right tend to perceive mass shootings as an issue arising from mental health, so you propose that we need a “better way” of finding and stopping these people, but unlike Clinton, never actually plan out a better way. A reverend and editorial writer for the Huffington Post makes an interesting argument about those opposed to gun safety laws. She juxtaposes the NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s statement that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” in a biblical context. Indeed, she states, “I wonder how the Gospel story would go if Jesus had taught his disciples: ‘The only thing that stops a Roman soldier with a sword is a Jewish rebel with a sword’” (Harader). Dr. Carson, your resistance to the implementation of stricter gun laws is in line with the NRA’s fundamentally non-Christian values. I concede that the Second Amendment is extremely important, but I believe that feeling safe and protected in your own country is even more so. I believe that keeping innocent civilians alive matters above all. The facts are the facts: more guns leads to more crime. Countries like Australia and England experience dramatically fewer instances of mass shootings; this is not because these countries do not have bad people, mentally-ill people, violent video game-playing people, or fatherless people. These countries simply have fewer guns (“Republican Candidates’ Dangerous”). According to the political specialist Firmin DeBrabander, whose lecture on gun safety I attended at my university, the United States has approximately 270,310,00 guns in circulation (DeBrabander). Whereas a country like Australia has approximately twenty guns per one hundred residents, nonfiction
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the United States has a startling eighty-eight. It is also startling to know that fifty percent of these firearms are owned by only thirteen percent of the population, meaning a small fraction of owners possesses the majority of guns in circulation. And that doesn’t scare you? Without comprehensive, universal background checks and with the faulty loopholes in the background check system, it has been made too easy for individuals like Charles Carl Roberts IV, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Dylann Storm Roof, and Harper-Mercer to obtain guns. I implore you to hear—and listen to—my solutions. Studies have shown that the establishment of universal background checks and increase of federal restrictions would significantly decrease the number of mass shootings in the U.S. (Webster). States like Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Washington, and Oregon that have passed and strengthened their background check laws have learned from experience how important and necessary it is to have guns less accessible to potential killers and, therefore, fewer guns in circulation (Khimm). These states, since the strengthening of their background check laws, have experienced a dramatic decrease in mass shootings. Dr. Carson, I believe you would make an empathetic political leader in the United States. I believe you hold values that are true and just, and that would improve this country’s current predominant focus on money and power. But I cannot stand by and watch another handful of American citizens die for no reason, and I cannot sit and listen to you ask for my thoughts and prayers. If you are going to blame mass shootings on the mental state of the person behind the gun, please do so with accuracy and knowledge. And please propose tangible solutions to fix the issue, not offensive and incorrect blanket statements to classify them. In the case that our country experiences yet another mass shooting in the future, which I sincerely hope is never the case, I ask you to use both your heart and your mind in responding to the issues. Thank you for your time.
Amanda Waggoner
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Works Cited “Ben Carson on Hillary Clinton’s Gun Control Push.” YouTube. Fox News, 6 Oct. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015. DeBrabander, Firmin. Do Guns Make Us Free?: Democracy and the Armed Society. Yale UP, 2015. Print. “Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use: An Analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Crime Victimization Survey Data.” Violence Policy Center. Vpc.org. June 2015. Web. 1 Nov. 2015. “Grading the States 2006: A Report on America’s Health Care System for Serious Mental Illness.” National Alliance on Mental Illness. Nami.org. 1 Mar. 2006. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. Harader, Rev. Joanna. “The Good, The Bad, and the NRA.” Huff Post Religion. Huffington Post, 24 Apr. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. “Hillary Clinton on Gun Violence Prevention.” Hillary for America. Hillaryclinton.com. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. Khimm, Suzy. “In Tragedy’s Wake.” The New Republic. November 2015: 13-15. Web. 24 Oct. 2015. PDF file. “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Mental Health (HBO).” YouTube. HBO, 4 Oct. 2015. Web. 22 Oct. 2015. Metzl, Jonathan M., and Kenneth T. MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms.” American Journal of Public Health 105.2 (2015): 240-249. PMC. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. “Republican Candidates’ Dangerous Incoherence on Guns.” Editorial. Washington Post. Washington Post, 7 Oct. 2015. Web. 24 Oct. 2015. “The Concealed-Carry Fantasy.” Editorial. NewYork Times. New York Times, 26 Oct. 2015: A20. nytimes.com. 26 Oct. 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2015. Sullivan, Sean. “How the 2016 Presidential Candidates Are Reacting to the California Mass Shooting.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2015. Web. 02 Dec. 2015. Webster, Daniel W., ed. and Jon. S. Vernick, ed. Reducing GunViolence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis. Baltimore: JHU Press, 2013. books.google.com. Web. 25 Oct. 2015. Willingham, Emily. “What Does Your 2016 Presidential Candidate Say About Mental Health?” Forbes. 6 Sept. 2015. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.
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Memory In loving memory of Nancy Quinn, 12/20/29-2/13/16 There are several framed black-and-white pictures that clutter the hutch in our family room—photos of my grandparents. One of these pictures, in a pearl-lined frame, shows the parents of my father. They stand on the front step of a house, probably one that I have never been to. My Pop-pop is wearing a shirt so stark white its edges are lost in the background of the white house. Though I have never met him, he is noticeably a member of the family. He eerily resembles my father, the second David Thomas Quinn: tall and stoic but simultaneously warm—my mother calls my father Gulliver, a giant man stuck in a human world. And he is his father’s son; my Pop-pop stands straight, his head tilted to rest on my Nana’s, who, even in heels, only reaches his shoulder. One hand sits tightly in his pocket, his other arm invisible around my Nana’s waist. The look on his face is one I’ve seen my father make a thousand times when a camera is pointed at him while my sister and I yell, “Smile!” My Pop-pop’s face with his barely-there, tight-lipped smile is almost expressionless—except for his eyes. His eyes are the exception to the rule of his indifference; they are filled with warmth and love for the woman on whom he rests his right cheek. My Nana is dressed in all black—a long black dress and black heels to match her dark curls. She exhibits the opposite of Pop-pop’s white, stoic demeanor. I never knew her like this—a young wife just beginning to make memories. She is turned into him, her arm stretching across his stomach and disappearing between his arm and his side. Her right foot is almost popped off the ground as if stepping into a hug. She smiles widely behind red lipstick, her teeth spreading across porcelain skin—she is beautiful. Her eyes almost disappear, nearly closed from her loving smile. She is the epitome of young and in love, her petite figure pressed against the tall frame of my grandfather, her wrinkleless skin crinkled in happiness. She is blissful: in this moment, she is looking ahead to the memories she is about to make. After the picture is taken, she will step into the house behind her and unpack her new home. Over the next decade, she will have four beautiful children, two girls and two boys. Her house will turn into a home as they grow nonfiction
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up—my father kicking a soccer ball on the front lawn, my aunt calling home during her semester abroad in France. She will watch each of them leave for college, three of them marry, and eventually, she will hold five grandchildren in her arms. And then, she will watch them grow up too. She will babysit and give them a necklace on their first communion. They will play hide-and-seek in her house on Christmas Eve while their uncles watch the yule log in the next room. But soon, she will forget. Her black curls, her slim figure, and her radiant smile—these will not change. But she will forget why she is smiling. Long after Pop-pop dies, long after I am born, she will not be able to recall the memory captured in that picture taken long ago. Even though he looks identical to the husband she once loved, she will not recognize my father as her child. She will call my uncle her brother, mostly because she can’t remember the word for son. When her actual brother dies, she will not go to the funeral. Nobody will even tell her what has happened because they know she won’t be able to understand; she won’t even know she had a brother, or a husband, or a memory at all. And yet, her memory remains—in the way her daughters hum happily while finishing chores, as her mother always used to; in her grandchildren’s promise to each wear one of her Christmas-tree pins every year around the holidays; in the picture frames that line the hutch of her son’s home. At the end, she couldn’t remember why she was smiling, but it is because of her, and the families she created, that they continue to.
Anna Quinn
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A Scary Essay The horror film genre offers an array of approaches to scare, startle, and terrify its viewers. Horror films have been in existence since the 1920s, and even today, directors are still searching for new and exciting ways to terrify their audience. Some horror films keep us in mystery the entire way through, wondering who the killer could be, while others reveal the killer to us right away and build the rest of their story around this opening. The classic horror films Halloween, directed by John Carpenter in 1978, and Scream, directed by Wes Craven in 1996, each have one of these two plot lines. Halloween introduced the plot device of a prologue depicting the murder scene and murderer from the beginning, and then has it bear heavily on the overall plot (Dick 192). Scream, although also introducing us to a murder scene from the get-go, does not reveal the killer until the very end. This paper will focus on the timing of the reveal of the murderer, the role of the mask, and the effect it has on the viewer. It will also discuss how the directors’ use of specific camera shots, lighting, and music make these scenes scary, with the result of making both Halloween and Scream effective horror films. Up until Halloween, introducing the murderer in the very beginning of the film was not a widely used technique. However, shortly after this, other films began using a similar method by opening their movies with a murder scene. When we watch scary movies, we have many—and, often, high—expectations for them. We want them to scare us, intrigue us, and have plot lines that we can understand. Typically, the most exciting part for the viewer is revealing the identity of the killer, and this is often discovered at the end of a movie. What makes a movie so scary to us is the mystery behind who is committing the crimes. How often do you make a prediction about who the killer is from the beginning? How frequently throughout the film do you insist on that person or change your mind? I found myself changing my mind several times while watching the film, Scream. However, in Halloween, the director introduces us to the killer in the first five minutes of the film, and yet we still find the movie incredibly terrifying. Why is that? John Carpenter uses different film elements that work together, within Halloween, to enhance the scary factor of the movie. The movie begins outside in the dark, and all we hear are distant voices and the chirping of crickets. But, nonfiction
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most importantly, we are looking through a subjective lens, meaning we are seeing what the character sees, and we, in fact, become that character (Dick 57). We then begin walking along, outside in the dark, looking into a window at a teenage boy and girl on a couch. They soon retire to the girl’s bedroom, and the minute the light goes out, there is a menacing, high-pitched note of music that immediately puts us on edge. Suddenly, we are walking through a door into the house and watching a hand—which now feels like our own hand, since we are sharing eyes with this figure, as well—grab a knife from the cabinet. It is from this moment on that the viewer knows exactly what is going to happen. Still stuck in our subjective view, we walk up the stairs and pick up a mask that we place on our face so that we are now only looking through eyeholes. We proceed forward into the girl’s room, approach her and start stabbing her to death. We are breathing heavily, and at one point, maybe out of amazement, we look away from our action and instead, at our hand that is performing the deed. We then run down the stairs and outside, and as the mask is lifted off our face, we part from the murderer, who is now revealed to us as a young boy named Michael Myers. The subjective view offers us a one-sided take on reality (Dick 56) and makes a huge impact on the viewer from the very start. By placing us into the eyes of the killer, Carpenter has physically, and even emotionally, placed us into the movie. We have already played our role, as the killer, in the first five minutes, and now we have to sit back and watch it all unfold. He also sets up the feeling of the movie from the beginning, with the viewer lurking in the dark, outside the windows and with the eerie, chirping crickets in the background. Soon, music plays its role, and it acts almost as a warning symbol or alarm. As the lights go off in the bedroom, a high-pitched ring sounds and the human, whose eyes we are looking through, springs into action. Throughout the rest of this movie, music and sounds similar to those in the beginning are now our warning sign that the killer, Michael Meyers, is nearby. Wes Craven uses similar, but also very different techniques, when revealing the killer(s) in his movie, Scream. Throughout the film, the characters and the audience are constantly taking guesses as to whom the killer could be. Every time Craven makes it appear that the killer is one person, we turn around, and that person ends up wounded or dead. As we come to the end of the movie, with the body count piling up, we become frantically obsessed with wanting to know who the killer is. The reveal of the killer in this scene uses multiple short cuts and shot/reverse shots. Short cuts hop from image to image, nonfiction
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while shot/reverse shots have the camera going back and forth from person to person during a conversation. The use of shot/reverse shots during the reveal scene fits in nicely with the taunting game the two killers play with the main character, Sidney, throughout the entire movie. The camera switches back and forth between Sidney and the two boys, and whenever it is on the boys—the killers—it is a low angle shot, giving them a menacing appearance. Whenever it is on Sidney, it is a high angle shot, making her look small and weak. The camera is even tilted at a strange angle, enhancing the uncomfortable situation taking place. Similar to Halloween, there are high-pitched notes of music that bring forth the audience’s anxiety and heighten its awareness of bad things to come. The music that we have been hearing continuously at the presence of the killer finally plays once more when the boys reveal themselves as the murderers. Unlike Halloween, the reveal of our murderer is not in a dark setting but instead, in a fluorescently lighted, stark white kitchen, making the streaks of blood all over the house jump out at the viewer. In both Halloween and Scream, the directors use a mask to hide the killer(s) from us. Covering their faces produces several different effects: it scares, interests, and disconnects us from them personally. Throughout the whole film, we do, and do not, want to know who or what is behind the mask in fear of what we might see. The scary thing about the mask in Halloween is that, at one point, we are behind it. When it is taken off, we are revealed and so is the killer, Michael Myers. This is the last time we really see him without a mask before he wears one for the rest of the movie. This then only piques our interest even more because we saw him as a young boy, and now, we want to see him as an adult. Scream also uses a mask to hide the killer, but we do not get to see his face until the very end and in a much different way than in Halloween. Carpenter makes a big reveal moment by removing the mask and separating us from Michael Myers. In Scream, we never see the boys removing their masks; they just show up unharmed, even though there is a killer loose inside their house. (I could speculate that the reason why Craven does not show them removing the masks is to keep the sense of mystery behind whether or not it’s really them, but four movies later, who really knows?) So if both films present their killers in completely different ways, why are they both so scary? As stated previously, the use of different film techniques helps to enhance the overall terror factor in these movies, but it is the way we mentally approach the films that makes them equally as scary for us. Both films take advantage of sound with the use of high-pitched, heart-racing music, nonfiction
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as well as scenery by providing us with the dark and ominous outdoors and a fluorescent white kitchen splattered in blood. Both of these scenes enhance the overall anxiety and fear that we have been feeling throughout the whole movie. By being immediately introduced to and participating in a murder, such as in Halloween, we now know who is committing these crimes throughout the whole film, which fills us with anxiety because we know what he’s capable of. Scream, by comparison, fills us more with anxious wonder because we are not introduced to our killer until the very end. Regardless, each director uses his own style and approach to create timeless horror films that will continue to scare us no matter how many times we watch them.
Madeline Galler Work Cited Dick, Bernard F. Anatomy of Film. New York: St. Martin’s, 1978. Print.
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The Legendary Pizza The legendary pizza is only baked in Ocean City, Maryland, at Captain’s Pizzeria. A classic vacation confection—can’t get it anywhere else. I was six years old when my dad placed the order on the phone in my Pop’s condo to a pizza place—Captain’s—and asked for an “extra-large pizza, please.” What arrived at the door was more beast than pizza. The box would not fit through the door of our seventh floor condo. Getting that slab of cardboard inside was a two-man job that left my dad and the delivery man occupied with a problem of geometry for several minutes while the monster pizza quietly intoxicated me. A greasy fog poured out of the two pinholes on the corners of the box, licking the inside of my nose to say, “Come here.” At age six, pizza was my life. My daily efforts could be cleanly divided in two categories: eating pizza and working to secure the procurement of future pizza. Studying for my spelling tests, being polite to Mrs. Pfiffer from down the street—all part of my long-term pizza acquisition schemes. My brain was pizza shaped, and dreams flowed through it like oil through thick crags of just-sogooey mozzarella. The corners of the pizza box hung powerfully over the edges of Pop’s round glass table. It was truly ominous, that gargantuan cardboard monolith. My dad tightened his grip on the lid and unveiled a vision that haunts my tongue and heart to this day. Miles of cheese exploded into view, filling my eyes and touching every corner of my world. Crispy, greasy, pepperoni zigzags crosshatched the oildrenched surface of the pizza pie to end all pizza pies. In the center of it all, a plastic outlet-protector (the thing you put in the wall socket to stop babies from sticking their fingers in and going fried chicken on you) stood relieved of its burden, keeping the cardboard from dipping into the pizza by the simple droopy physics of gravity. Rich, red sauce oozed from beneath the surface, like a shield volcano pushing magma through the pores of the earth. The cutwork was immaculate— precise strokes sliced the legendary pizza into generous sixteenths that make your local joint’s eighths look like chump change. My dad let me have the first bite. I gripped the crusty rim of a plump slice and pulled it up and out. Thick ropes of stubborn cheese tried desperately nonfiction
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to call my pizza back home, climbing high into the air before growing thin and tense, then surrendering back to the pie’s surface below. I tried to bring the pointy end of the slice to my mouth, but it slumped down below my chin, dripping streaks of oil across my dinosaur t-shirt. “Hold on, Pal,” my dad intervened. He showed me the right way to hold the pizza: “All-American style,” folding the pizza down the middle, like a taco. This method makes a channel for the grease and improves your mechanical advantage over a given slice of pizza pie. I took a bite. My mouth steamed up; sweet oil shot under my tongue and through my cheeks and filled the back of my throat and my soul. The pepperoni and pizza sauce stewed out from the edges of my tongue in a flash, like a mellow firebomb. The cheese was perfect. Gooey, sweet, textured, and singing with fat and substance. I saw with new eyes. The legendary pizza defeated me with two slices; I fell asleep full and peaceful. I deserved it for all of my labors. I fell in love that day. Not with a woman, but with an idea. A spirit. A pizza. I was insufferable on vacations afterwards. Almost every night, when my mom would ask my dad, “What should we do for dinner tonight?” I would beg for the same thing: “I want a legendary pizza from Captain’s!” They wouldn’t have it. Apparently, my dad never intended to get a pizza that big, that was just a weird thing about Captain’s. My dad thought an “extra-large pizza” would get him about an 18-inch pie, but instead, he got a monster novelty pizza twice that size. It was expensive too, fifteen whole bucks. One day, to abate my nagging, my dad offered me a compromise, “We’ll get one again when you’re older and can finish it with me.” A challenge.Years passed. But when I turned twelve, I knew I was ready. I was about to be a teenager. As far as being a kid went, I was a grizzled veteran one year away from retirement. This time I would conquer the legendary pizza. I professed my case before the “Court of Dad,” and finally, he dialed the number, then handed me the phone so I could place the order. I was honored. A crackly voiced teenager answered the phone. “Captains?” he groaned. He sounded like a bored frog. I asked him, “Hi, can I get one extra-large pizza delivered?” with a greedy smile on my face. The kid answered me with a rehearsed “Okay sir, do you want our large 18-inch pie or our extra-large 32-inch pie?” I didn’t like having it spelled out like that, knowing the legendary pizza’s diameter in inches. “Extra-large. The big one,” I answered. nonfiction
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My stomach kept me going. The half hour spanned a millennium. Kingdoms rose and fell while I waited for the Captain’s delivery boy to knock on our door. Then it arrived, the same monster cardboard beast. My dad paid the guy and ushered the pizza diagonally through the door.We put it on the same round glass kitchen table. It still hung off the edges. I opened the lid, and I was heartbroken. The legendary pizza was not so. The cheese looked pale and dry. The sauce looked store-bought. Honestly, it was pathetic. It tasted fine, like a pizza. My dad and I finished it, but that wasn’t too hard. It wasn’t even that big, really. I asked my dad, “When did Captain’s pizza get so bad?” He shrugged. “Same as I remember, buddy.” I cleaned the scraps and napkins up, broke down the box and took it to the garbage chute at the end of the hall. The sign read, Rubbish: 9AM-9PM. No Boxes. But the cardboard in my hands wasn’t any box, it was a carcass. I crammed it down the chute, quick to be rid of it There is nothing better than good pizza. Nothing. No romance, no dream, and no God can compare. Pizza done right is a blessing, and Captain’s does not do pizza right. Some places do. I find it funny that Billy’s Pizza—a mere block away from Captain’s—makes much tastier and practically sized pies. I had a deep dish pizza in Chicago once that utterly slayed me. I forget the name of the place, but I’ll never forget that feeling of biting into a thick-asa-mattress slice of red onion and pepperoni pizza. In Indiana, Puccini’s Pizza is the untouchable champion. The cheese so perfectly balanced, the sauce so sweet and confident. Good pizza is like love. You can find it in all places if you look hard enough. But the specter of the legendary pizza looms large. Inimitable, perfect in itself. I still believe in it. I believe that the streets of Heaven are paved with pepperoni, that the rafters of the mead halls in Valhalla are cobwebbed with gooey strings of hot, fresh mozzarella cheese, and that the river Styx runs red with sauce from the Captain’s bosom. The legendary pizza was only baked in Ocean City, Maryland, at Captain’s Pizzeria when I was six years old. It still sings its greasy hymn in adulation of what a pizza pie can be.
Michael Ebmeier nonfiction
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Land of the Midnight Sun I feel certain I know what darkness sounds like. It is the whisper of the trees as they bend beneath winter’s weight, the flutter of raven’s wings as they beat toward the mountains. For me, winter has always been darkness. It has always been night with snow falling silently and stars winking overhead. Winter is a night so intense that, when the sun rises on any given morning, there is cause to stop everything and watch the mountains turn blue, purple, pink. I remember sitting in class, looking out the window and seeing a hint of sunrise, illuminating the mountains and bringing a hush over the room. It was as though the sunrise was something that needed to be heard as well as seen. In Alaska, darkness is more than just a time of day; it is a being, living and breathing, sighing in stars and humming the moon. The night is absolute and alive, and it commands such a presence that people have been telling stories about it for thousands of years. When I was little, I had a picture book that told a story from the native Tlingit tribe of southeast Alaska.The Tlingits tell how Raven brought light to the world, and this legend has always stuck with me. Raven was born with the ability to create a world; buried in his dark feathers was the spark of life. His father taught him how to use this power, and when Raven was old enough, he began trying to create his own world. Raven was clever and cunning, but he could not seem to make this world. He struggled; it seemed there was no method that would work. Then one day, a strong, cold wind blew. Raven listened to it, and as he concentrated, he shook the world from his feathers. He shouted and danced, then leapt into his world, only to discover that there was a problem: this world had no light. Looking up, Raven could not even see stars. He stood in a vast void of night, his black eyes shining. The world was cold. It was cold as I lay on my back in the snow, staring up at the sky. I was ten, lying on my front porch in my snowsuit. Everything was dark. The snow swirled dizzyingly around me, landing on my eyelashes and covering me in white flakes. The sky above me was black; clouds hid all the stars from view as if they had all been blown out, their flames turned to smoke that swept through the firmament, burying everything in dark. The darkness made me feel isolated; nonfiction
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it surrounded me, filling my lungs. I felt like I was choking on the cold, night air. The snow continued to rush past as I stared up, motionless. There was nothing but a glass door separating me from my house, but I felt strangely alone, isolated. I closed my eyes and felt the snowflakes sting my cheeks, plunging myself into further darkness. When I opened them, I realized I could see a light. I moved my head to look inside and saw my dad sitting in the living room. As I watched, I saw my brother and sister come downstairs and join him. The warm light spilled out from the living room and reached toward me. Taking a last look at the snow and the darkness surrounding me, I stood to go inside. As Raven stood, surrounded by darkness, he began to hear noises. He heard children laughing, fishing poles clinking. Raven realized that this dark world was full of people who lived and worked and played in this darkness. Listening to the chatter echo around him, he decided he had to help them; he had to bring them light. Raven heard the people whisper about a chief near the Nass River who kept baskets of light—baskets he shared with no one. Raven spread his wings and flew into the sky to search for the chief and the baskets of light. He flew for days until he saw something sparkling on the horizon. The light was coming from the chimney of a long cedar house. When Raven landed, he heard a river gurgling nearby. In the firelight from the longhouse, Raven could see the chief’s daughter drinking from the river. Suddenly, he had an idea. Raven transformed himself into a feather and drifted down the river to where the woman sat, drinking. He floated into her cup, and she drank the feather along with her water. The chief’s daughter, having drank her fill, stood to go back into the house, her long, black hair swirling in the wind. Soon, the daughter realized she was pregnant. Her father was pleased; he had always wanted a grandson. The daughter’s stomach grew and grew, and the chief became more and more excited. He promised that his grandson would have anything he wanted—no gift would be too great. It was not long before the daughter gave birth to little boy. The boy had a full head of feathery, black hair. When Raven opened his beady, black eyes, he saw light. Light dripped softly from the tree, illuminating the ornaments and pooling on the carpet below. The sweet tang of fresh pine floated through the room as my dad, brother, sister, grandparents, and I all settled into our seats. We just finished decorating the Christmas tree, and it was part of our tradition to turn off the lights and admire our work. My dad turned off the music, and I switched off the lights. I sat down on the couch next to my sister, settling in against the soft pillows. While just a moment ago the room had been full of nonfiction
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conversation and laughter, it was now nearly silent. Outside, the snow twirled past the windows, spiraling wildly through the darkness. The night seemed to hover around us, the darkness filling the room. I could feel it pressing against the windows and hear it howling outside. The tree seemed to dim. But just then, my little sister, Rosie, turned to me. “The tree looks even prettier in the dark, doesn’t it?” she whispered. I looked at Rosie, her face a sketch of shadows and contours, her eyes shining bright. I could see my brother next to her, his glasses illuminated by the light of the tree. My dad and grandparents sat across from us, and in the dark, they seemed younger, their age melting away into the shadows. It was as if we had all been here for thousands of years, sitting here in the dark, in the middle of winter, together. The dark seemed to hold a sort of magic, a spell to quiet everyone and somehow connect us. The tree seemed to shine brighter. The fire shone bright in Raven’s eyes as he searched the room for the chief’s boxes. While the chief and his daughter cooed over the new child, Raven crawled around the room, crying and hunting for the sun. He looked at the chief’s daughter and saw three woven grass baskets hanging behind her, all of them glowing faintly. Raven cried louder and pointed to them. “You want the baskets?” the daughter asked him. Raven continued crying and pointing. “Give him the smallest one. He’s just a child, it won’t hurt anything,” the chief said. The daughter brought Raven the smallest basket. Raven opened it and saw the stars glittering inside. He threw them out the chimney, and the stars flew into the sky. Then, Raven began crying again, pointing at the other two baskets. “Grandson, I will give you another basket, but you must keep it shut,” the chief instructed. He handed Raven the next basket, and as soon as he let it go, Raven threw the basket open, exposing the silvery glow of the moon. Raven threw the moon out the chimney as well, and it settled into the sky with the stars. Again, Raven began crying. The chief looked at the last basket, sighed, and handed it to Raven. Raven took the basket from the chief and, in a swirl of feathers, resumed his true form, the largest basket grasped in his talons. The chief gasped as Raven flew out of the longhouse and into the night. He opened the basket, and the sun burst into the sky, flooding the land with light. The people of the world cheered and thanked Raven for bringing them sunshine. Raven soared over the land, proud and elated. In the midst of the darkness, in the middle of winter, Raven had found light. It was the middle of winter when I came home from college for the first nonfiction
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time. Snow wreathed the trees like lace, covering the ground and glowing softly. It was dark and cold, but I had missed the way the stars sparkled and the way my breath froze in the air like a cloud of moonlight. On the drive home from the airport, our car was full of people. Everyone talked at once, asking me questions and telling stories. I was relieved to be back with my parents, my siblings, and all of our friends. My vision seemed to swim with sound and light, and I opened the window to let the cold, night air wash over me. The first night I was home, I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs to the living room, where the Christmas tree stood, its lights dark. I sat on the floor next to it, staring out the window. It was dark out, but the moon and the snow made everything glow white. I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and when I looked up, I saw the northern lights dancing across the sky. I watched them pulse and sway, flickering red and green. They seemed to stretch for miles, lighting up the dark sky in cascading arcs of color. As I watched them, I thought about how much I had missed this darkness. I missed the embrace of the night, the cold air that hugged me close and the snow that seemed to sing under the moonlight. But then I realized, as I watched the aurora paint itself across the sky, that this was not really darkness. In the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, the sky was pierced with light and color. Here in the dark lived everyone I had ever loved. Here in the dark, I had found a home. The night wasn’t black; it was full of stars.
McKayla Coyle
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Pink I hate pink. When we hear “pink,” our thoughts wander to sweet, girly, cheerful things. Why do we think of it as gleeful when it has only brought sorrow? They—the infamous, ambiguous, illustrious they—will tell us that pink means strength. But they are wrong. The strength of pink comes only after it has been wiped away. My mother had pink. The strongest, liveliest woman I have ever known was brought to her knees by pink. Pink made her body weaken, her organs rebel, her health fail. My mother was not free of pink’s vise-like grip for two years. And, for a time, roles were reversed: a daughter caring for her mother. I remember the exact day my mother discovered the pink that was living inside her. She picked me up from school in her shiny black car adorned with soft supple leather, the smell of her everywhere—Chanel perfume, pooled with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. She smiled, the smile reserved just for me, and I smiled back. But, on the inside, I was grumbling because of the inconvenience that threw a wrench into the afternoon schedule I meticulously crafted. My eleven-year-old mind could not comprehend the ramifications of this seemingly inconsequential doctor’s appointment. How selfish I was. The person who gave me life would soon begin the fight of her life, and I was angered at the untimeliness. I sat, and I waited. And I waited. My legs stuck to the plastic chair beneath me as I crossed and uncrossed my legs with impatient anxiety. My mind wandered to the worst possibilities, but pink never crossed my mind. Pink must have been too busy to plague my thoughts, for it was plaguing my mother. I checked the clock once more as a flock of butterflies took full flight inside of me, attempting to escape up my throat, but they could not—they were trapped. Just like I was, inside this office that smelled of sickly-sweet disinfectant. Just like the pink that was inside of my mother. She finally emerged, wearing that smile that was reserved just for—no, that was not my smile. This smile was different. A mixture of love, worry, and most perturbing, anguish. We got in the car that had not lost its shine or its smell, yet, somehow, it was different. Because she was different. The air was thick and heavy with unsaid words and fearful questions. I looked toward the highway, but instead of losing my thoughts in the whir of cars, all I could see was that smile—a vague shadow of what was once reserved just for me. The smile nonfiction
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that had now been tainted with the shadows that pink brought into our lives. That night, my worst fears were confirmed. I looked out into the world, thinking it might have changed now that my own personal world had. An uncontrollable surge of pure fury rose up inside of me when I realized nothing had changed. Birds still chirped and children still played as my mother began the fight of her life. My anger could not last; my anger could not taint these years— ones that very well could have been her last. My fury was fueled by what they will tell those who have pink, explaining how survivors will be strong because of it, how survivors will walk taller because of it. My mother walks with beauty, and my mother walks with strength. But she does not walk with beauty and strength because of pink. She walks with beauty and strength in spite of pink.
Elisabeth Freer
nonfiction
Bean Town Stephanie Hakeem
Suffocating Nature Camelia Rojas
The Divide Clara Moore
Black Creek Juliana Neves
The Gift of Home Ashley Dellefave
Lake Matheson, New Zealand Julia D’Agostino
Untitled Mark Welch
WastedWaterways Lexie Tunnell
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Milkshake My silhouette and your silhouette, checkered and blurred by diner glass. Hungry comers think we’re lovers— a boy, his girl, high school sweethearts with a table between them only for lunch. But a red-lipped waitress knows better, sways her hips left, right, left, right. You admire the rhythm, let your shake melt back to milk. I sip cherry Coke through a plastic straw. On my tongue, the soda is flat, stale, waiting. I ask you to pass the ketchup, touch my fingertips to yours as you hand it to me. But my arm stays there—lifted, extended, reaching for the bright red bottle for a few seconds too long. I don’t think you notice— or, if you do, you don’t say that you do. Instead, you keep watching her hips, swaying left, right, left, right.
Blake Lubinski
poetry
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Darth Vader Plays Baseball for the First Time Today, I am in the outfield. The sun sticks to my black plastic armor like a magnet. Salty sizzling sweat oozes into my eyes. I try to stay loose and limber for a play, but it is not so easy in my full suit, and I sort of have to pee. “FLYBALL!” screams the pitcher. This one is for me. I take one, two, three steps back toward the fence and raise my gloved hand high—oh no. I did not do that right. I caught it in my force grip. The ball hangs in the air like an orbiting planet, waiting for my hold to loosen—“Is he out?” Turn of the inning, and I am up to bat. I wipe away the steam from my thick, evil lenses. My heart rate quickens, and everyone mimics my nervous breathing—WHOOOO-PER. I square myself to the plate. My ghost-like cloak slithers along the rocky batter’s box. The smirking pitcher leans in close for the stretch. I snap my saber on and slice that ball in half—and that, that was the end of our baseball game.
Eli Polnerow poetry
166
Corridors 2016
Girl with a Pearl Earring She looks over her shoulder as if to say, “I know what you’re thinking.” But her eyes speak of a weariness or maybe an apprehension, some unknown fear that waits in the shadowy depths of the dark background. From out the darkness, she has come to turn her back on us. Her face is the only thing bared. Her scarves, gentle coils of fabric, wrap around her head like a crown that cascades like flowing water over a mountain of carefully guarded secrets. Eyes searching, glistening mouth parted, she waits for us to find what we came here for: The single, plump pearl dangling from her shadowy ear like the weighty anchor of a ship stuck in the harbor.
Megan Suder
poetry
167
Corridors 2016
Early Riser I remember the scent of my grandfather, Phillies cigars mixed with sliced potatoes, chopped sausages sizzling in melted butter, a recipe that survived from his army days. I remember the sound of my grandfather, soft footsteps creaking outside my bedroom, the cue I listened for after the August sun nudged my eyes open. With the green fishing hat on his head, my grandfather waited at the back door. Together, we silently strolled down 70th street. The summer’s rays burned beneath my bare feet, so I quickened my step, eyes fixed ahead on a red newspaper box. At our destination, my grandfather handed me three quarters. My tiny fingers delicately pushed them through a slit. They disappeared. The machine jingled, then clicked. He pulled on the handle, reached into the stack and handed me the “the only reliable news.” Clutching the newsprint against my nightgown, I trailed behind, happy that our sole companions were the shadows of soaring seagulls. I listened to my grandfather whistle as we returned to the sleeping house. I’d sit and watch him read the paper, just the two of us, breathing in the final silence before the others would wake.
Siobhan McKenna poetry
168
Corridors 2016
Loch Down where darkness reigns, where light is banished, is where the mysterious power of the loch dwells. It is not beauty that draws people to the Scottish lake. It is the tale of the unknown creature, the draconic sovereign of Loch Ness, that did battle with Saint Columba and has for millennia escaped eyes ever searching for this eternal mystery that lures people to her kingdom. She calls to those who wish to uncover the occult mysteries of the world. She is the beast etched in the pages of history, bringing the forbidden waters into the realms of dreams.
Sydney McClure
poetry
169
Corridors 2016
Where You’ll Find Us You will find us in strange places and tight spaces. You will find us in between your couch cushions and behind cartons of freshly bought milk. You will find us under piles of paper on your messy desk and the coin compartment of your first self-bought car. You will find us in the back corner of your medicine cabinet and beneath the box of winter sweaters in your bedroom closet. Like gum wrappers that were never thrown out and spare change that was too heavy for your pocket. Like a half eaten sandwich re-wrapped for later and an unfinished cup of Earl Grey tea. Like a crumpled up sticky note with a helpful reminder and an old grocery list for a big family dinner. This is where you’ll find us. This is what we’ve become.
Rodlyn-mae Banting
poetry
170
Corridors 2016
Funeral February 14, 2012, Syria Inspired by:“Photographs of the Syrian Civil War” by Alessio Romenzi Her arm rests under my hand, my fingertips grazing worn pink fleece. I held her as an infant—just her, her father and I in a hospital room—swaddled and new. We took turns when she cried, bouncing her in our arms in the silence of night. But her father’s body now lies in front of us, our gazes evading his colorless face. Collapsed over his corpse, her face contorts into a sob—eyes full. She’s seen the images on TV—sneaked glances from the doorway before I changed the channel. She’s overheard muted conversations—the tones hushed and panicked. But now, the bombs detonating in Damascus are uniformed men shuffling outside her window. The speeches made over podiums are substituted for gunfire waking her in the night, and the face she woke up to, the man who soothed her nightmares, the mustache she tugged as a child,
poetry
Corridors 2016
171
lays lifeless, replacing the unknown bodies on the screen. And I cannot change the channel for her.
Anna Quinn
poetry
172
Corridors 2016
Benevolence, Georgia When I think about 1945, I think about peaches. Sweet and fuzzy with a fat, brown pit smack in the center. I remember biting into a fresh May peach from the backyard when my mother ran into the kitchen crying the war was over. I was twelve. Mother hugged Aunt Bev and they cried into the nape of each other while I licked my sticky fingers and tried not to dribble on the floor. They started calling it Victory Day, but to me, in southern Georgia, the only victories were the three peaches I ate while sitting on the kitchen floor. My mother stayed inside all day to listen to the radio. I collected the eggs like I did every morning. I waved at the mailman. I picked more peaches from the tree in the yard and thought of ways to politely ask my mother if she would bake a pie. Aunt Bev cried all day that Uncle Frank would come home soon. I put the eggs in the cupboard. The static drone of the radio, summer cicadas. I went outside to wait for fireflies and watch the sun abandon another day. A furry caterpillar climbed on my bare foot. It was a Tuesday. The boys next door were playing cops and robbers, finger guns in hand.
Emma Ditzel
poetry
contributors Kamilia Arroyo, 2018, from Church Hill, MD Communication major with a Photography minor I’d like to give thanks to my professor Dan Schlapbach & Jade O’Connell. Rodlyn-mae Banting, 2019, from Eastchester, NY English & Writing interdisciplinary major with a Gender Studies minor Caroline Barada, 2016, from Portola Valley, CA English major To you and everyone who has ever found comfort in the unknown. Jennelle Barosin, 2018, from Georgetown, MA Classical Civilizations & Writing double major Sending my love to everyone but especially to Colin; writing about love means nothing without you because you are the meaning behind all my words. Isabel Bernate, 2016, from Baltimore, MD Writing major Emily Cashour, 2017, from Harford County, MD Sociology & Writing double major Thanks to my dad: without our strange relationship I would never have been inspired to write like this. Alexandra Chouinard, 2017, from Saratoga Springs, NY Writing & Communication double major McKayla Coyle, 2018, from Anchorage, AK Writing major with an English minor Thank you to my family for supporting me and being generally wonderful. Julia D’Agostino, 2017, from Trumbull, CT Communication & Photography interdisciplinary major Ashley Dellefave, 2016, from Hamilton, NJ Communication (Journalism) major
contributors Emma Ditzel, 2018, from Ocean City, MD Writing major Michael Ebmeier, 2016, from Harford County, MD Writing & Quantitative Economics double major Inside the mailbox there was nothing. Nothing after nothing came pouring out. Zachary Fechter, 2019, from Avon Lake, OH Global Studies major Thank you to Dr. Leary and my Messina group. Elisabeth Freer, 2019, from Wayne, NJ Political Science & Writing interdisciplinary major with a Spanish minor Thank you to my family—I am blessed to have such a wonderful foundation of support, inspiration, and love. Madeline Galler, 2016, from Bucks County, PA Art History major Giselle Garnett, 2018, from Hagerstown, MD Psychology major Thanks to Professor Wold, I always feel “too blessed to be stressed” when I am making art in your class. Stephanie Hakeem, 2018, from New Bedford, MA Global Studies major with a Spanish minor Thanks to all who have supported me in my hobby and to all the people that served as my subjects. Tyler Van Houten, 2018, from Rockaway, NJ Finance & Accounting double major Thanks to Professor Southworth. Grace Hymel, 2018, from Silver Spring, MD Sociology major Thanks to Dr. Andrea Leary for inspiring me to connect my passion for social justice with writing and for always believing in my abilities.
contributors Connor Lindeboom, 2019, from Moorestown, NJ Undecided major Thanks to Sam Scott and Charlotte Rijsberman for continued inspiration. Christian Lopez-Ashby, 2018, from San Juan, Puerto Rico Biology & Writing interdisciplinary major Thank you, Alberto Muñiz, for inspiring me to be bold and for pushing me to let myself be “free.” Blake Lubinski, 2017, from Lutherville, MD Communication (Journalism & Advertising/Public Relations) & Writing double major I hoped my poems would be good or at least “acceptable.” I’m on this page.They were. :D Conor MacNeill, 2019, from Scituate, MA Quantitative Economics major Conor divvies his time between Loyola’s main campus and his Massachusetts home with 4 dogs. He is only available to reach via smoke signals. Sydney McClure, 2016, from Martinsburg, WV Writing major with a Computer Science minor Siobhan McKenna, 2016, from Exton, PA Biology & Writing interdisciplinary major with a Sociology minor Clara Moore, 2018, from Houston, TX Photography major Thank you to all the amazing photography professors here at Loyola! Keanna Morgan, 2017, from Magnolia, DE Global Studies major Thanks to Lucas Southworth, who encouraged me to submit my paper. Juliana Mae Neves, 2018, from Poughkeepsie, NY Global Studies major with a Sociology minor Thank you Keenan McGinnis.
contributors Madison Nicolao, 2018, from Princeton, NJ Writing major with Business & Spanish minors Thanks to Carolina Ardilla, who made this memory possible. Marian Ada Ifeoma Okpali, 2016, from P.G. County, MD English & Writing interdisciplinary & Philosophy double major Thanks to Gabriella Green & Matthew Hobson for the encouragement. Itzayana Osorio, 2016, from Bowie, MD Photography & Communication (Advertising) double major A special thanks to Professor Mary Skeen for inspiring me to explore my culture through photography. Eli Polnerow, 2016, from Thornton, PA Psychology major I would like to thank my family—without them nothing would be possible. Maggie Powell, 2015, from Denton, MD Studio Art & Communication double major Inspired by “Ritual Union” by Little Dragon. Anna Quinn, 2016, from Fairfield, CT Political Science major with Spanish & Writing minors For my mom. Camelia Rojas, 2016, from Puerto Rico Studio Art & Communication (Digital Media) interdisciplinary major Thanks to Mary Beth Akre who introduced me to encaustic and who pushes me to go outside my comfort zone. Matthew Rossi, 2018, from Perry Hall, MD English & Writing interdisciplinary major Thanks to my family, girlfriend, and to Professor Hobson for always encouraging me. Sawyer Scott, 2019, from Denton, MD Writing major
contributors Allison Sledge, 2019, from Sparta, NJ Undecided major Victoria Sluko, 2016, from Jessup, PA Communication (Journalism) major with Photography & Writing minors I’d like to thank my parents for allowing me the opportunity to travel. Megan Suder, 2017, from Langhorne, PA Writing & Studio Art interdisciplinary major Thanks go to Nick Johnston who helped inspire many of my poems. Lexie Tunnell, 2019, from Richmond, VA Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences major Amanda Waggoner, 2019, from Staten Island, NY Writing & Psychology double major With faith in and appreciation for the youth of America—promote peace. Anna Rose Waniak, 2018, from South Brunswick, NJ English & Art History double major Thanks to Diane Belnay. Mark A. Welch, 2017, from Perkaise, PA History major with a Photography minor Thank you, Dad. Margaret Wroblewski, 2017, from Washington, DC Communication (Digital Media & Advertising/Public Relations) major with a Photography minor margaretsblog.com