Penumbra Spring 2023

PENUMBRA

Penumbra 2023

Volume 33

The Art & Literary Journal of Stanislaus State

penumbra (pi-num ‘bre): n. 1. A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination. 2. The partly darkened fringe around a sunspot. 3. An outlying, surrounding region; periphery; fringe. [Lat. paene, almost – Lat. umbra, shadow]

All About Penumbra

Since 1991, Penumbra has proudly published poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and visual art by contributors from the Stanislaus region, throughout the U.S., and abroad. Our staff is composed entirely of students: they make all editorial decisions, including which submissions are accepted and how the journal is designed.

Because new students staff the journal every year, Penumbra constantly evolves. Each year, we receive hundreds of art and literary submisions, and through an anonymous voting process, we decide which works to accept. Students are responsible for all editing and design choices, creating the finished journal by the end of the semester.

Every Spring, English 4019: Editing Literary Magazines is open to students with junior or higher academic standing. Students from all majors are welcome: the course offers professional training in areas including art, business, and communications. Annually, we launch the new issue with readings on the CSU Stanislaus campus, near the end of the Spring term.

Thank you to the many contributors of Penumbra 2023. Your talent makes the journal what it is. Please continue sending us your work: submissions will open for Penumbra 2024 later this November.

Penumbra Staff

Faculty Advisor

Jarred White

Editors in Chief

Autumn Andersen

Andrea Wagner

Reviews Editor

Essence Saunders

Assistant Reviews Editor

Brittany Groves

Editing & Design Staff

Courtney Andrade

Kimberly Bean

Martina Bekasha

Ree Bowman

Marc Anthony Briones

Camryn Carpenter

Garret Compston

Odalis Guillen

Tania Gutierrez Medina

Jennifer Lopez

Lyla Mazuelos

Robbie Montes-Yepez

Dylan Rosenow

Sometimes I Can’t Sleep

David Romanda

On those nights, I think of my dad. I remember attempting to sneak out to meet a girlfriend in the middle of the night and getting caught. Dad was sitting on his recliner in his bathrobe. Just sitting there in the darkness. What was going on in his head? What are you doing? he said. I’m going to meet my girlfriend from school, I said. Then I asked, What are you doing? Don’t wake up your mother when you come home, he said.

Jazmín is Home

Fabián González González

When little Jazmín left, I was eight years old, sitting at my desk at school, in México. Our teacher bid us a farewell for her, and the children sang the saddest song I’ve ever heard on this cold earth:—Adiós, Jazmín, que te vaya bien en los Estados Unidos—. I did not sing along. I stared at Jazmín as she held her mother’s hand and retreated, not into the distance, but as if inward, into the deepest and most susceptible part of my memory.

Years later, I wondered why I didn’t sing along. Would it have changed the sound at all? Would it have changed my life? Strangely, the memory I recall with greatest ease is the way I could hear my arteries and veins beat like a dozen hives. My blood’s frantic buzzing, since then, has become the song I sing, alone, for my eternal and lost Jazmín, every day.

When I, too, left the village in which we were born, I thought about the hills covered in emerald cacti and acacia, I thought about the silver water streams that descended from the hazy mountains after heavy rains. No longer would I stand beneath my favorite huizache tree, or run like my goats did in the meadows filled with cinco llagas’ golden hues.

While I was away, I did not yearn to see Jazmín as much as I yearned to be within the house of stone in that fairytale village I was proud of calling home.

But on returning as an adult, I no longer felt the life beneath the world I’d left. As I saw a boy fly a kite, I guessed both the boy and the kite knew where home was, for they only tried to reach the sky. And I remember pining to be rooted as a tree, longing to be the next valley glade for the nightingale or run like water in rivers and streams...raving to be the bread, the very blood flow to keep the memory of Jazmín alive. And I felt lost.

Place, location, that which might be home, is the memory of little Jazmín bending to tie the pink shoelaces on her purple shoes. Then springing up, full of life, full of flight... Her spirit was a song, so that now the birds’ chirping in the morning and the crickets’ evening serenades bring, to me, her soul.

Place, location, as such, has ceased to matter when once it was the only thing my compass sought. I have a mind to change my mind, to revise the visions of my wakeful nights.

Blinding

Lucinda Zaharris

Oil Paint

Prometheus’s Inheritance

Alex Carrigan

I forgot when I was first chained to this rock. For the longest time, I just assumed

that my back was wide, rough, and gray. I assumed I was born with such

heaviness that my legs would atrophy and I would remain here until

the rest of me would erode away. I assumed I would become a feast for a wayward vulture or for something to emerge from beyond my view

of the sky. No one came to partake my flesh, and I assumed it was because they didn’t want to

break their teeth upon my granite bones. I assumed the chains were heirloom jewelry

passed on from mountains before me, before they crumbled and formed

new piles of stones like me. I just assumed that I was always meant to lay here

and wait until a nomad’s foot knocked me out of place and pushed

me down the path or into the gorge. But travelers picked other paths up and down

the mountain, so I was left here chained, stiffened, and inert, waiting for someone

to show me that I could carry my rock out of here if I allowed myself to be overturned.

After Raegen M. Pietrucha

Potter’s Wheel

Andrea Janelle Dickens

An ocean crashes against hot volcanic rock, a shore still being formed. Somewhere the rain grinds down a hillside towards the sea. My hand pours water onto clay, centers it, one deft move, this leaning-in and waiting still.

In my sketchbook, a drawing, smeared graphite wobbles. This mound of clay will never bear resemblance to any such designs. Each movement of my fingers is a door to a different form.

Each leaves its mark, which I can keep or scrape away with metal ribs. We shape clay into a pot, Lao Tzu said, but we really seek the emptiness within. Everything disappears into an ocean for a moment.

The picture fades into the distance, the past horizon towards which I once shaped this clay. It always falls short, long. It falls into a universe no sketched image will ever conjure up. My fingers trace a koru as they travel outwards, the sign of peace, journey, harmony—

yet I know nothing but to work in tandem with the clay, negotiating new agreements through each piece. The wheel slows, my hands coax slippery clay out some more.

The mud forms a slow disc; a rim appears, jutting upwards. Little pieces of this universe stick between my fingers. I have to dip them in the slip bucket, remove the world before it becomes too much and skews my grasp.

The plate laid out, in repeated trips from center to edge, I compress and re-compress to echo the form I’ve conjured up, as if committing it to memory. Finished, my fingers skid one last time across the surface of the plate, like the call of a gull across the shore at sunfall.

i feel so scared when i get hungry because i am always hoping to use my teeth for other, more exciting things. to sink them into the salty, taut flesh & to moisten my lips with the blood & to rearrange the guts in a way that i understand— that would be a dream come true, and a far better use of my time than pacing the kitchen and opening cabinets just to shut them again. searching for food that is safe, searching for food at all.

and i am always looking for a way to shout, but quietly, because i am equally scared of being alone as i am of asking for help. and it’s sad, but merely ten minutes of attention can satisfy me for two whole days before the doubt and the loneliness respawn and i am once again trying to shout without being too loud. i need it. i need it. but no one will ever know unless i beg, beg like the dog whining to be let back inside— he promises he’ll be good, he’ll behave,

he won’t make a mess or get too excited or jump on visitors when saying hello. no one will know unless i’m on my knees, and by that time i’m so far gone that so much as a single glance in my direction will have me panting & thumping my tail against the floor.

i am sorry for being too loud when you come around. but you make me want to use my teeth for all the right reasons— and who am i to deny myself the simple pleasure of taking a bite?

Sabastion at Delicat Arch

Terry Brinkman

Acrylic on recycle board

On the Fool.

Alexa St. Martin

I know you.

I know how you feel everything, in your bones at an arm’s distance.

The way you splay yourself bare, your rotten insides on display for all to see, because this is the only way you’ve ever learned to love.

I know you.

I was there when you thought you were yielding, and every time you walked away.

I know you. And I know what lies beneath your rotten flesh and withered bones.

Deep in the cavity you have carved for yourself the innocent fool lies crumbled, weeping on your cold, lifeless floor.

I know that with every act of supposed destruction upon yourself, your love for the fool grows stronger ever still.

Desperate and alone at the bottom of your well, the fool’s poor heart is breaking with you.

I know how easily you would sacrifice yourself, and leap to your death to protect your fool.

I know this is how you choose to survive, and I know that you always will.

“Beautiful”

Yuu Ikeda

you are the most beautiful moon in this world.

wrapped in a cocoon of winter, you wander emotionally. soaring snowdrops around you are like a necklace that only you can wear

even if destiny changes the season, you are the most beautiful moon in this world. even if clouds change your shape, you are the most beautiful moon in this world.

Planter Boxes of Earthly Delights

Andrew Cain

Needle Felted and Sewn Fleece, Foam, Expanding Foam, Wool, Wood,

Metal Pipe, Poly Fill, Latex, Acrylic Paint, Carpet, and Milk Paint.

Penelope’s Joy Andrea

Wagner

I used to think that Penelope must’ve been pissed that she had to constantly undo her burial shroud since Odysseus was taking his sweet time out at sea. Sure, it’s brilliant—she manages to keep, mildly put, angry suitors at bay, but at what cost?

Incessant undoing with no end.

Would there be an end? How could she know? This might be her new life, her new eternity. Weaving, weaving, then unweaving. Knowing, numbly, that the weaving goes nowhere.

It’s become a recent tradition each Christmas for me to have the bright idea of taking up crochet. It sounds romantic, and it’d be good for my hands to do something rhythmic. The Platonic Ideal comes to mind: the hat, the scarf, the acrylic/wool sweater. Tantalized, I get to work.

And shortly it unravels, or more appropriately, gets stood up in favor of something else, only to be remembered vaguely for the next year. So goes the cycle.

Until a few weeks ago, when I did something heartbreaking. Bravely, I took the strand from the latest brown yarn semi-circle-meant-to-besquare. I yanked.

Pop. Pop. Popopopopopopop.

Layers and layers: removed. Hours of time: erased.

I was so scared. I thought it would hurt me. I thought of Penelope, her bitter resentment, undoing, undoing, undoing.

But Penelope, I think I’ve found your joy.

What, monotony? No, multiplicities.

I can do so many things, break them, and do so many more. The shroud forms, rips, and new realities take place.

Penelope, I’m sorry for what they did to you. Your anguish haunts my fingertips.

Oh but Penelope, Isn’t it wonderful?

Gillian Wegener

But not a nurse and not a secretary and not a teacher (conditional). That was women’s work. So what else? My dad said I could join the Navy. “They have uniforms for pregnant sailors.” My mom didn’t say anything (ellipses), but then again, she was a secretary. My dad said, “Learn to program this computer.” So I followed the directions—early binary code, 0’s and 1’s delineating boredom—and a tiny spaceship flew across the gray screen. My mom said, “Can you make dinner tonight?” And I did and no one liked it. My parents thought, with all the advice, that they were being helpful, but my dad said, washing his hands of it, “Well, you’ll marry an English teacher and live in Bend, Oregon.” My mom said, washing her hands of it, “You’ll figure it out.” I wanted a fortune teller to read my palm or my tea leaves or her crystal ball, but no fortune teller was listed in the PennySaver. I tried to figure it out. I candy striped. . . okay, not a nurse. I file-clerked. . . okay, not a secretary. I said, “I’ll become an English teacher” and my parents shook their heads. The wrong choice was made (passive voice). I made the wrong choice (active voice). “She’ll never make it. She won’t last five years,” they said after waving goodbye (situational irony that I didn’t know about until much later). “She can’t. She won’t,” and so on (hyperbole, but not really). I didn’t know about their Deep Disappointment for years, but it mostly doesn’t matter because I proved them wrong, but still. I was a people pleaser (past tense). I am a people pleaser (present tense). Given a choice and then making a choice that they thought was the wrong choice. We all learn to live with disappointment—no matter our choices (theme, followed by metaphor). Disappointment, USA, just a mid-sized city marked in red on our pocket-sized roadmaps.

My parents tell me I can be anything I want to be when I grow up

My Father Didn’t Want to Have the Talk

Ace Boggess

He gave me a book because I liked to read. I was, what, twelve? Thirteen? Of course, I scanned every page of oversimplifications, Cliff’s Notes to clitoris & cock, not an idea I hadn’t read about explicitly in other books or watched in porn on VHS. I felt it my duty as his son never to refuse even the meaningless gifts. This was postdivorce, after all, & each of us needed some kind of tether. I doubt my father read the book, but can’t imagine him asking a clerk for it at Waldenbooks. He’d be more embarrassed today, or offended by hints of other versions of the world those pages discussed in passing. Older, too, I know there are some fires you walk across,

others you dance around. This was one to flee like a house ablaze, & on the way out, grab everything you can.

How to Make a Picture Book For the Soul

That You Miscarried

Rikki Santer

*Content Warning

Fly by night and cover your eyes with ivy Play hide and seek with the God behind God

Turn up the volume on that long rusty squeak March into root-rough corridors that are narrow

Screech like a banshee

Murmur many sad hymns

Ride every wave of fur and feather

Get to know the rabbits and owls

Drink chai from a moon jar

Sauté everything you find naive

Backstroke in that cauldron of murky chowder

Fold every dry into wet to make a mercy batter

Lay on your back for hours pondering treetops

Fall in love again with waterfalls and creeks

Nevermind the minds of gale and whirlpool

Remember what fits into the palm of a newborn’s hand

Seek those who need to come to dinner

Wonder for what’s just over the brow of that hill

Believe that each next breath is your best Give credence to the cleansing in scrawl and scratch

B.L

Once There Was Nora Isabelle

Nora rocks back and forth in a warm spot of sunshine. Rustling leaves blanket her porch. All sounds beyond her front door sound like shoes slapping against stepping stones. Nora utters a groan and shuffles toward the peephole.

Her swollen right hand grips the brass knob and she slowly turns its once glossy surface. A smile sweeps away a grimace, but it isn’t necessary. Only a crisp autumn wind blows into Nora’s once vivid hazel eyes.

Nora returns to the mitten in garter stitch blue.

When foxgloves, primroses, and daffodils dance in distant gardens, Nora knits booties for the grandchild she has never met. Chiffchaffs and Chaffinches chirp on peeling porch rails. All sounds beyond her front door sound like chit-chat.

Nora wraps her hand over the brass knob disguising last fall’s finger marks. A slight smile wipes a crumpled face. Pale lips get ready for a rusted hello, but it isn’t necessary. Only three sparrows stand on a slice of wholemeal bread, hardened like a wooden raft drifting across an abandoned porch.

Nora returns to the bootie in garter stitch pink.

Trees stand naked circling a river. Nora stands naked too among photos of once happy families. Pearls snake over a dusty jewelry box as if recovering from a springtime splurge on raspberry cough syrup. Long, grey needles poke out of sewing baskets like Javelins waiting to be held. Hungry, thirsty for a good, quality yarn.

Nora stops waiting. Stops knitting in garter stitch pastels and falls asleep.

Ice Storm Kenneth Pobo

How many bologna sandwiches did I eat under a Chinese Elm’s shade?

On a windy day it swayed and swayed, standing firm, releasing leaves. An ice storm busted it.

The tree never recovered. Nor did I.

Brown

If You Love Me... Megan

...map my body in the stars constellations of flesh wounds healed to crescent stars where you can trace a tongue of Latin syllables to bind me

...ring my body, aureole hands around my waist an echo of Saturn orbiting my vastness

...name me sunlight in this abyss no matter the miles I will warm you, through the atmosphere of breath between our lips

...taste the milky way of milky white skin, gravity guiding our revolution we are tied, like Jupiter’s moons to the hulking red of this reality

...see the inevitability of our ruin. Cosmic bodies leaving trails of ourselves in the night sky, the heat of each night together dissolves what we are

...be my memory, the lingering light behind closed lids the cricket-whisper over a body that you made a constellation.

I Want to Know my Mother

Kailey Blount

I want to know my mother like only her mother can the rhythm of her bare feet hitting kitchen tile on Sunday mornings the top of her head lolling back on car rides home from dance class waking up at midnight to her knees on my chest cheek on my breasts she’ll ask me if everything will be okay

I want to know my mother like her father with a liquored heart carrying her yellowed picture in my wallet bent on the corners like my spine my pockmarked face staring in the bar’s bathroom mirror smudged with drunken sweat and drowning regret beer on my breath

i’ll stumble home to her epiphany we’ve got the same eyes

I want to know my mother like her sister sent to be her shadow our fingers intertwined on home’s sloping steps i’ll steal her shoes, her socks, her face her place in a world too small for two cut from the same wrinkled cloth she’ll hold me tight to her chest until i find shoes that look like hers yet fit like mine she’ll chase the pressure my soul left behind climbing up stairs I built crooked to hug me one more time to tell me one last time you’ll be alright you’ll be just fine

I want to know my mother like her best friend lost to growing pains sipping on stolen wine beneath the covers of her childhood bed sheets talking about our futures to the moon. swearing to the stars we will stay silly little fools and when its 64 degrees in December

i’ll pray all her wishes came true because there’s a whisper on the wind saying I’m still rooting for you too

I want to know my mother like her first love left in basement boxed photographs teased hair and teasing smiles tripping through her teens alive on green beans and what could be a green lanterned man whittled with age i’ll hold her picture the way i should’ve kept her safe so she’ll live on in dust mite bitten memories a broken piece of ecstasy whispering incessantly I could’ve been okay if only you had stayed

Most of all

I want to know my mother before she knew me when all she had to be was herself

Everything Looks Different in the Morning

Joy Alicia Raines

Everything Looks — and thank god dissolved into the Everything looks — and how wonderful million shades of me. Weak to all

Everything looks — and I can’t tell weight burrowed spat emotion without do I feel this way?”

No matter the night, there will be light

— and thank god for that because last night my body dissolved into the gushing cold winds and dotted sky.

Everything looks different in the morning

— and how wonderful that is, when the evening crept its million shades of grey and black onto my skin, smothering me. Weak to all but sleep.

Everything looks different in the morning

— and I can’t tell you how nice the morning is after the weight burrowed in my chest, after my eyes fogged, after I spat emotion without control, after my salty lips spoke, “Why do I feel this way?”

No matter the night, I can guarantee, there will be light in the morning.

“I Love You Only At 3 A.M.”

Yuu Ikeda

I love you only at 3 a.m.

Time when I’m merry on madness. Time when night resounds loneliness. Every guilt vanishes. Every hesitation becomes ashes.

I love you only at 3 a.m.

There is no melody to blend with our breath. There is no wind to cool our skin down.

I love you only at 3 a.m.

Vehement night begins. Vulnerable morning comes.

Julia Shiel

I have to ask, when you told me I was fire, fey magic and quickening blood was it only a game of seduction?

You met me in the darkness on the edge of where souls merge, saw me spinning under lurid stars a tribe of one lonely witch.

When you caught my shivering heart it was a fierce and feral thing, hiding in the tangled barrens of love and dark desire.

You fed it, a lean gray cat rubbing against your thigh, gentled it to your touch but you should know you can never return a tamed beast to the wild.

Memories and the Circle of Life

Diana Raab

Ever since I was a little girl, my father, a Holocaust survivor who died in 1991, instilled in me the idea that not only does history often repeat itself, but there’s also a circular trajectory to life. While at the time, I didn’t completely understand what he meant, now that I’m in my 60s and what people have called ‘a wise elder,’ I completely understand.

My children and grandchildren live nearby, which was such a blessing during the pandemic, as I’ve spent more time than usual playing with them. This helped me get in touch with my inner child, and I’ve also had a number of vivid memories about playing with my own kids, all who are now in their 30s.

I’m also reminded of the special times I spent with my maternal grandmother, who died when I was ten years old, and everything she taught me. Her most lasting gift was that of the written word, she taught me how to type, which eventually led to my career as a writer and storyteller.

Her typewriter was perched on the vanity in her bedroom beside mine. It was a hot summer Saturday morning when she invited me into her room.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to her vanity chair. “I’m going to teach you how to type. This is a handy skill for a girl to have, Plus, you never know what kinds of stories you’ll have to tell one day.”

She stood behind me, her reflection in the mirror showing dark roots framing her bleached-blonde hair, and her glowing smile revealing the rather large space between her two front teeth. I wasn’t surprised to learn years later that as a young woman she’d won beauty contests in her native Vienna.

Grandma took my right hand and positioned it on the home keys, carefully placing one finger at a time on each letter, repeating the same gesture with my left hand. “This is the position your fingers should be in. When you become a good typist, you won’t have to look at the letters. Let’s see if we can type your name.”

With my left middle finger, she had me press on the “D.” Then we moved to the right middle finger and moved up a row to type an “I.” Then my left pinkie pressed the “A,” a tricky maneuver for a novice typist. She then instructed me to move my right thumb down to the bottom row to type an “N.” Then my left pinkie typed the final “A.” I glanced up at the paper to see the results of my efforts, and then proudly looked up at my grandmother’s face in the mirror.

“You see—you did it!” she exclaimed, squeezing my shoulders. “Like anything in life, the more you practice, the better you’ll get. You must work hard to get results; you’ll learn that soon enough, my love.” Needless to say, I wrote my first short story on that typewriter.

Four years later I found my grandmother dead in that same room where she taught me to type. She’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills. At the time, my parents hadn’t spoken about my grandmother, but years later I learned that she’d taken her life as a result of the trauma of being orphaned during World War I at the age of eleven.

Many years after my grandmother died, my mother stumbled upon Grandma’s journal, where she chronicled her childhood growing up in Poland. I loved how it reconnected me with her. To share her story, I wrote a book about our relationship called Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal and now I’m now working on a follow-up book.

I feel deep gratitude to my grandmother for planting the seeds for my life as a writer not only because she was devoted to the written word (evidenced by her daily journaling)—but because she taught me how to type and instilled in me my love of storytelling.

My five grandchildren are all under five, but I’m already pondering what I’ll be teaching them and how they’ll remember me. From the time my own children were little, I gave them journals and books, and I’ll continue that tradition. I have boxes and boxes of journals that I’ve written over five decades, so my grandchildren will have a lot of reading material if they choose to plow through. My hope is that they will also take up journaling as a way to honor the circle of life.

Next to Cleanliness

P.C. Scheponik

You tell me your brokenness, and I’ll tell you mine. It doesn’t matter who you were with yourself or others. It doesn’t matter how many times.

Damages, being what they are, are never really done. We have a will for “shalt nots,” and a penchant for guilt. Put them together, and you have enough milk spilt to drown in. Be all things as they may, it’s never too late to find your way back to the fields that are always open.

There are wildflowers and goldfinches waiting for you, and don’t forget the groves of trees with their leafy, low-hanging branches and the sun-kissed streams that babble below them, ever ready to sing you their song. Remember the sky, blue and wide enough for every dream you’ve ever had, still open and waiting to gather your thoughts in cloud-filled arms.

The world is always with you, willing to take all the dark things you’ve ever done and wrap them in green, turning your sorrows into a pond of love, letting you bathe in its waters until you are clean.

Jesus Shrugged

Stephen J. Dempsey, Jr.

Jesus shrugged when I leaned upon him.

Guess we all have our crosses to bear.

Perhaps his

More than mine, Perhaps...

Once in a while

The light doesn’t shine.

The darkness slides

Over us all,

Lasting and true.

Limp and failing

The battery lights the hazards

One last time.

(The dog chews the bone)

The lager fills the cracks

Of happiness

And time is mine.

The late hour

Only matters

When it’s up. And then...

Kneeled and clasped

I try, try again.

The salted water

Slaps the floor.

The silence

Blankets me.

Infinity Pustule

Ashwini Gangal

There’s something about the runny nose, the nasal drip that never goes

The febrile tremor, that ancient chill, fevers that die, fevers that kill

The buba that grew on many a groin, and spread the pox from loin to loin

The rash has always been a friend, kissing our skin centuries on end

Bugs went on ships, on decks so damp, giving sailors the diarrhea cramp

Moist and sick was the soldiers’ tent as humming mosquitoes chased their scent

Lungs, livers, guts—such cozy nests, for bacteria, parasites, fungi, pests

Pains and aches, through time and space

They love us all, no matter our race

It crippled armies, it inspired art the plague’s been with us from the start

The species barrier is but a sieve, was, is, will be the reason we grieve

The wrath of God is eons old, before the biblical locust was sold

The asteroid struck, we’re here by chance, alas, with microscopic monsters we dance

You and me, rats and fleas, jiving in the discotheque of disease

In Rome

Robert Minicucci

Rushing to find antiquities to gawk at I discover a man in habits having a private moment. Here is one to ogle on

Has he received bad news from far away? Is he undertaking a daily ritual of prayer? contemplating his fate, his place in the holy world? coming to terms with his calling?

Hard to tell what’s more out of place holy man standing by a mini-cooper near a modern street on a warm May afternoon

Or the sporty quirky vehicle invading his moment in a place of divine antiquity on Via Eufemiano

Or my own contrarian ecumenical self-dialogue

In a place of holy history, of nugatory antiquity

I flick a shutter and Run to the van before it leaves

Relieved to bequeath unanswered questions to the surrounding ancient terra cotta walls.

Rebuilding with Love Natalie

Miraziz

Watercolor, colored pencil, paint pen, and marker

Anatomy of a Restless Mind

Natalie Miraziz

Acrylic and ink

Forgive me when I praise my wealth of irrational fears:

the way I panic when I see blue lights parked ahead or behind me in the mirror, although I know I’m innocent for now;

how I enter a room full of strangers & cannot speak as though they all hold knives under tables, this awareness of the flaw in me & tricks of patience I’ve learned to get past it;

arachnophobia—no circumventing that, but at least each shiver leads me now to poetry.

I confess, I’m afraid of the neighborhood raccoon, waddling by each night around ten, hoping for a morsel I’ve cast out. I praise how we’ve come to an understanding: She walks the grid while I watch, & I won’t disturb her unless she gets too close.

Praise, too, the doe that stares me down, protecting her fawn, until she remembers that she was the young one once, & I was here: smoking, coughing, menacing nothing, & praising her for already appraising me.

Mazzina

For Next Time Alyssa

If the way I make you feel doesn’t make you wanna write a terrible teen queen pop song, don’t waste my time, boy, move along.

If the way we are together doesn’t make you dizzy doesn’t give us wings to fly don’t waste my time, you’re not the guy for me.

If this love don’t swallow you whole it’s not big enough for me

If you can breathe when I’m not yours

If I’m not the sweat oozing out your pores

If I’m not everything and more it’s not enough, and there’s the door.

You’re not sure you’re in love with me? You won’t get another shot. Don’t get to change your mind, boy, you’re in love or you’re not.

Not sure just means you’re not, not enough to be half enough for me

I’ve been loved half-heartedly by more than enough men. I’m done collecting crumbs, give me feast or famine.

I won’t be your good enough not me won’t be your back-up plan or anything but your everything.

Don’t waste my time with anything less than wild stupid crazy big and sloppy messy inconvenient scary love.

You miss me? Yeah, I bet you do. The only way out is through it. Thought you could live without me? Go right ahead and do it.

The Body Keeps The Score

Jewel Rodriguez

Oil on Canvas

Five More Minutes

Jerrice J. Baptiste

Five more minutes to be comforted. Tucked under my blanket. I postpone leaving the gentle warmth. My bed always feels cozier when I must join the world in a frenzy.

Five more minutes for my skin to savor. I curl up, then think of my departed kin who worked the land starting before dawn. My grandmother raised children, and cattle. She was on her way to the street market before tint of blueness appeared in sky.

Five more minutes to sink further into softness. Avoiding the black shadow of a noisy city. Each morning, my grandmother greets me bedside. She strokes my forehead. I uncurl. My arms stretching north, toes pointing south.

Five more minutes to recall the scent of Jean Naté on her turquoise Caribbean sun dress. I miss red hibiscus outside her kitchen window. “The oranges will not squeeze themselves, if you want fresh squeeze, ma belle!” Smoothness of her voice and hands on my hair.

Don’t Take It Personally

KJ Hannah Greenberg

*Content Warning

Don’t take it personally, but I don’t like you. It’s not your yippy dog, nor your tendency to fart, but something else.

It’s your hands. They’re kinda big and awfully fat, but Mom taught me not to judge, so their size isn’t the issue.

Rather, it’s how you use them. Bad touch is never okay.

And yet, you kept visiting. You kept hoping I’d tell no one that you reached for my private places again and again.

What you didn’t know is that I’m a hero. I told Mom. I told the police.

At first, no one believed that a “lady” could be an offender. I told them otherwise. I even pointed them to websites that show while men are most of the perpetrators, women are perps too.

The police took careful notes. They asked Mom if I could come to a lineup at the station.

Mom nodded. After they left, she cried. I guess you were her friend since high school. She should have picked better friends.

For a while, I sat with Mom on the sofa. I didn’t hug her, though. I still need time away from touch.

The lineup was kinda interesting. I’ve seen them on TV and in movies. Real life is different. I didn’t look through a one-way window at people, but at a bunch of photos. The one of you didn’t include your dog. I’d never seen you without it.

Anyway, later, you were dismissed by the court on some sort of technical issue. That’s how monsters keep prowling.

You’re no longer welcome at our home. These days, Mom won’t talk about it. So, I get my support from an online chat group.

Really, don’t take it personally. Statistically, you, yourself, were likely abused.

Just remember, bad touch should never be rationalized or ignored. Maybe you can help. There are free clinics for this sort of thing.

In her shoes, to her songs

Caetano Barsoteli

His heart aches with every passing day; his nights grow ever busier with cries. Her empty spot his solitude replays; her belongings left where her absence lies. Riveted, he reaches for her clothes, fetish driven, or as a way to keep her near. He dons her hat and shirt, her rings and hose, and pretends she’s standing right here. His guise, her looks; his figure, her curves, and for a moment, his ache starts to wane. To be her very being, this he yearns, to find himself in her form, in her name. At last, he dances in her shoes, to her songs. She’s still deceased, but nothing else is wrong.

Interior 1

Alexander Chubar

Acrylic on canvas

green Alexandra Colaneri

i never asked to have to speak when forest buds and algae bloom or mountain avens dot the rocky peaks

could moss grow where my eyes once saw or tongues stretch into silent paths no longer chained by human law

i grew among the grasses, tall and proud you told me that i must speak to live then turned and asked me why i spoke so loud

if i painted myself hunter green and brown would you let me go and live among the trees or would you ask me how to cut them down?

Silent Conversations

Hugh Cartwright

My love for you is boundless. And yet you are the source of unrelenting pain.

###

I pick up the phone and tap in your number, eager for the comfort of your voice.

“How are you doing, love?” I ask. “How has your day been?”

I call every evening: my attempt to redraw history. Not waiting for your reply, I rushed on.

“You’ll never guess who arrived at my door today,” I continue, “your mother. Can you believe it?”

In one hundred days, she has not visited the home that we three loved so much. “You can’t cope with more pain John, so I’ll stay away for now” she had written on that black-rimmed card. As if I’m to blame for all that happened.

“We sat in the garden, just like our happiest times,” I carry on, “warmed by the sun, the air thick with the scent of roses. I kept looking around for you; but you were never there.”

###

It’s dusk. Your mother has kissed me, consoled me, and left.

I hug the phone; listening, waiting. There is only silence.

For one hundred days it has been the same. I cannot hear your voice or feel your touch. I know I never shall.

I have made a hundred calls to you, my beloved dead daughter. I hang up, and my tears flow again.

That Night the Phone Rang

Loren Niemi

It was after 2 AM

And as no phone call at that hour Is good news, this one did not pretend To be any different.

With dreams fled, what slumber Might return was replaced by the sound of My first wife’s weeping that her lover was dead. As often as I had wished that,

I did not ask how, the broken sobs Were prophecy enough. What I did Ask was where she was and if She needed me to retrieve her.

Such was the end of our marriage That her reason to leave was gone And the one who was left could Not return to an unhappy safety.

I would never hold her again Without wondering if it Was me she saw or a ghost At the foot of the bed.

White wine and daisies garnish my daydreams; Glass clear as crystal, Mind in a foggy embrace, Sleep a patient friend.

Sunlight pillars frame the lazy heat of awakening; Truffles and coconut sweeten the bitter tang of a morning start.

Find clouds in a sip and freedom in a memory; Rose gold nights, Steps like piano strings until the music fades.

Art a living purpose, It is the frame and we are the paint; The pictures we leave are stained with colors of the night.

The limits of time and space lost in the night sky and a sunset waltz; Cast away all limits for a fading into the sound.

Song for the Dreamers Schuyler

Becker

Bite of Youth

Joy Alicia Raines

If I had met you in a later life, would I have had more of my youth to bite into? Juicy and sweet, dribbling down my chin.

Untamed and vibrant, would I be more wild than I am? Carving paths with bare hands, dirt under the nails, calluses growing on heart lines. Ebbs and flows of unbridled joy. The mirror, my only witness.

It’s not you. It’s just that I had dreamt of youth as a solitary act. Solitude as a fortress of indelible magic.

And marriage, you can imagine, doesn’t have that same ring.

Somewhere in the City

Tom McFadden

While the city clings to the end of night, a still sleepy short-order cook begins to prepare sustenance for the coming day beneath a café kitchen’s lonely lightbulbs while outside, in the dark, brushes of a street-cleaning vehicle sound their approach, then fade back into the dark. Somewhere in the city, an urban nomad briefly opens his eyes on an alley bed of cardboard slabs, wondering why wonderful tomorrows never came, then recloses the eyes that seem no longer to know the way while elsewhere in the city a smile seems to form inside sleep, then pulls the soul of a songwriter into awakening. Out of bed and toward a cluttered desk she hurriedly stumbles, listening to her mind, to grab pen and nearest paper, happily jotting down notes before they disperse so a new song can stay. Then she stares out, at the dark, listening to the music play. Sirens inhabit the hours, lonely headlights of police cars fall onto warehouse walls, and taxi drivers rise groggily for the start of another day. Somewhere in the city, an old security guard’s ball of keys rattles as he finger-searches without looking for the right one to open the gate, for, before you know it, biographies will revive in all parts of the city

and the multi-colored lights of the tall, disparate buildings will rhythmically extinguish, one by one, like a beautiful, dramatic, nocturnal picture slowly unpainting itself.

Seeing the Far Woman

Mary Simmons

The far woman waves from tall grasses waving, too, as to swallow her whole, bone and flesh and eyes blotted sunspots.

She calls in names I have yet to claim for myself, her voice salt in my ears. With every step to her, I forget I hold

that dying animal, hunched between ribs. She beckons over the space I do not fill. I find in her the meeting place, our two selves

flooding water balanced still, horizon and dish, shallow with reflection. In winter, I see her between shadow

trees, flickering beyond any hope of warmth. She withers in cinemascope, frame by frame undrawn and redrawn and stretched into—

what? The far woman sits behind every window of the four a.m. train stalled in a corn field, does not wait at the top of any staircase.

If I reach for her, if I try to capture the curve of her open-eyed longing, I will only find the imitations, repetitions folded into smooth linen. Is this absence all I can hold of her? She remains, shapeshifter erasing shapes.

Climbing a Date Tree

Alex Carrigan

I knew that I wanted to gift you dates from the trees that peppered the edge of our shared property.

You could have walked under the trees with a woven basket on your head and waited for them to plummet to you,

but I wanted to be the one to take those medjools and put them in your hand, one by one, each one a child I would promise to give you once I finished working on that beater car in my garage.

To acquire those promises, I covered my hand with a glove that had a curved hook on the end. I held it up to the sky, matching the shape of that evening’s moon, and wondered if I could hook it and bring that down to you as well.

With only one hand free as I began my climb, I knew that I could easily carve a crescent in my throat if I slipped. Would you stand under me and catch my blood in your basket if that were to happen? You could take that as a gift instead and use it to water the base of the date tree so that the next jewels

to grow from its branches are rubies you could use to pay off your mother’s medical bills.

My core is strong from years of laboring the fields, and my balance is strengthened from walking along the curve of the earth for even longer, so I reach the top and pluck dates into my shirt pocket before I begin my descent.

When I reach the earth once again, will you please hold out your hands so that I can first hold them to my cheeks? My ascent up the tree wasn’t as frightful as I assumed, but even I knew that any treasures I bring to you could easily become cursed if I didn’t follow the ritual properly.

Then you’d be burying dates on top of my grave in hopes that I could become a tree with a bent trunk that foolish young men could walk up to collect the jewels up top.

After Christine Sloan Stoddard

A Few More of Your Least Favorite Things

Jewel Rodriguez Oil, yarn, pushpin, and tape on canvas

cycle 2nd

Mark A. Fisher

today ain’t the day there’s just too much grief more innocent lives lost don’t talk action yet there’s just too much grief we need thoughts and prayers don’t talk action yet we need this time to weep

we need thoughts and prayers to comfort those afflicted we need this time to weep we need some time to heal to comfort those afflicted with more gun money coming we need some time to heal debate’s in poor taste with more gun money coming more innocent lives lost debate’s in poor taste today ain’t the day

Cradling Time

Rikki Santer

*Content Warning

My grandparents from the old country I never met or learned of those from further back, but I’m fond of one aunt’s story that my young Russian grandmother whose name I carry, skated on the family pond and rode bareback

across fields with her longhair undone and flowing. Did my first breath travel to tether and curl around each letter in some ancient Hebrew manuscript to claim a broken, unredeemed world? Is my DNA haunted by someone

who perished in pogrom or gulag [or] whose timid hand reaching for a beer on a wooden table in a Berlin cafe was pierced and pinned by the knife of a storm trooper [or] who frail and toothless, refused to leave a cramped

and drafty room in an abandoned synagogue, yearning for just one more serving of herring in oil with black bread warm from the bakery in her radiant town now pillaged [or] who brilliant in Yiddish theater and the poetry of King Lear couldn’t escape the bloody jaws of Soviet execution [or] who to survive, pulled apart then burned naked bodies, flames flickering from their Jude eye holes and buried journal in his barrack to tell us so [or] who

nervously hid yarmulke under a newsboy cap to run errands outside the ghetto for ailing Bubbie [or] who altered her name’s “cumbersome” consonants and vowels to play piano in the lobby of an American hotel with signage: no dogs or Jews allowed? Today I may bristle

at the thin spit of a colleague’s jew him down, the swastika scrawled inside a turnpike bathroom, the antisemitic tweets of celebrities or weep again and again for violent murders

impelled by domestic hate inside my own country, but I stand guilty of a spectator’s distance from the timeless and insidious dusks aimed at my persistent tribe.

The Way of the Spinneret for

Spider Dan

Salvatore Salerno

So it begins as any fine thing does for beauty, with a single slender strand from the body that suspends, wavering a while and then depends on the vagrant breath of a breeze to append

onto what is there in its world, then the work extrudes a new line that descends to another anchor the rest, a unique pattern that repeats, made of the same matter as the first thread, spiraling then taut ready to catch

whatever thought [if a poem] or whatever prey [if a spider] comes its way and draws closer to be savored [if of like words] or consumed [if of like matter] to feel more of life or just to remain, alive.

Interior 3 Alexander Chubar

Acrylic on Canvas

Lame Ass Shit

Robbie Montes-Yepez

Without a wasted whisper, or a munchkin of muted breath, There is room for bluntness to persuade.

As your face lays on my steadfast façade, we staple and stitch, sew and tape, A “collage” of fooling around.

we are, “uninsured,”

“messy,” “wasted,” and then, “away,”

Next day, I mention, “I did some lame ass shit.”

Reconnected Julia Poole

Troy slowed the car, passing row after row of trees, headlights exposing branches laden with apples. Wooden pallets lined the orchard’s edge, empty and ready to hold the harvest.

“Ever walked in an orchard at night?” said Billy.

“No,” said Troy.

“Me either.”

Troy slowed and turned onto a dirt path that accessed the orchard. Sweat from the palms of his hands made handling the steering wheel slippery. He extinguished the headlights. Weeds whacked the car’s underside. True, they were trespassing, but meant no harm, Troy told himself even as his stomach tightened. The vehicle swayed as tires traveled over bumps he couldn’t see. He crept the car a bit farther, made a sharp right, and slowed between a row of trees. A few limbs whacked the windshield—the soft thud of apples falling on the car. Troy braked, parked, and turned off the ignition switch. Keys jangled on his keychain. While the motor tinged and popped, Troy’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and his heartbeat pounded. Or perhaps it was the beating of Billy’s heart.

How random, running into Billy working at the car wash earlier in the day. The last time they were together they were eighth graders in Billy’s bedroom, one minute high-fiving after finishing a science project and the next Billy brushing his lips against his. Then Billy’s mom walked in and said, “Oh, Lord.” Billy pulled away, and he stayed away for all the days that came after.

For the last hour, Troy had driven with no destination in mind as their conversation had traveled over the past three years. He spoke about his parent’s divorce, his evolving understanding of his bisexuality, and his growing passion for environmental causes. Troy listened as Billy talked of his conversion therapy, his commitment to Christianity, and his ongoing struggle with depression. And now, the conversation details blurred, the words and meanings sucked out of the open front windows.

The silence compelled Troy to blurt out, “Your hair’s fantastic.” What a stupid thing to say.

“Not compared to your Harry Styles look.”

Billy tousled Troy’s hair. It was something Libby did all the time, and he loved it, but when Billy’s fingertips grazed his scalp, a tingle traveled down his spine.

Troy shivered.

“You didn’t mention a girlfriend or boyfriend. Are you seeing someone?” said Billy, who looked straight ahead while the fingers of his right hand glided back and forth across the open window frame. For a fleeting moment, Troy thought about how much he wanted more from his friendship with Libby, even now as his body desired Billy’s touch. “No.”

“Thank God.”

“And you...is there...”

Billy shook his head, stretched his legs, and arched his head back and over the top of the headrest while his hands brushed curls away from his face. Troy stared at the length of Billy’s body, his thin frame, and long, bony fingers. The sound of insects buzzed. Troy smelled fall’s decay, overripe apples, but the closeness of Billy’s

sweaty odor overpowered him. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw his reflection, his flushed face. He faced Billy and inched off his seat. Even though shadows darkened Billy’s features, Troy saw the bump of Billy’s Adam’s apple, the blueish vein alongside his neck pulsing, the freckles too numerous to count. Billy closed the gap, his lips connecting with Troy’s.

Troy caressed Billy’s face. Hardly a trace of stubble. He leaned his forehead against Billy’s, gently brushed Billy’s hair away from his eyes, then kissed each of his closed eyelids, the tip of his nose, his cheeks, and the sides of his neck. “Oh,” whispered Billy, the heat of his breath against Troy’s ear. Fingers fumbled around jean buttons, and the sound of unzipping displaced the hum of nature outside.

Jacob Glenn Hello

Thank you for your interest in The Good Life. Unfortunately, due to the volume of applications we receive, we often have to reject numerous wonderful pieces by talented applicants.

Yours may or may not be among these. It’s probably better if we don’t say. Honestly, the lack of personalized feedback is better for your self esteem. At least you can take solace in the fact that this submission deserved a form letter response.

We wish you luck with any and all future endeavors, and would be happy to consider new pieces from you down the line. Please wait at least six months before applying again.

Thank you,

Editor in Chief, The Good Life

not a good fit for the good life

The Lessons Birds Teach Us

Erik Peters

Lesson I

It was a cold morning in early spring when we found the fledgeling on the sidewalk.

“Daddy! Daddy! You have to save her!”

Perhaps it was the chill air, or the two-story fall, or the fact that large hands are ill-suited to fine work, but it was a hard lesson for Sarah.

Lesson II

“Ewwwww! That birdy’s covered in blood! He’s a bad guy!” I smiled. “He’s a purple finch. That’s his plumage.” She frowned.

“Er, it’s his way of showing his wife how happy he is.” She hesitated. I nodded reassuringly.

“Ooohhhh! So pretty!”

Lesson III

“Look! Shhhh! See that’s birdy? He’s a —” But before I could finish she let go of my hand. In a flash of yellow feathers the oriol was gone. Sarah stood at the edge of the path, lip trembling.

“It’s okay,” I said, taking her small hand in mine. “But... he was so pretty. I just wanted to be friends...”

“He’s not the kind of pretty you can befriend.”

Lesson IV

The apartment was strangely hushed. Brillig ruffled his feathers uneasily in the cage.

Wrapping Mimsy in a plastic bag, I placed her in the freezer. Already her wings were stiffening.

I wiped my eyes and strode into the bedroom.

“Sarah, time to get up.

She cooed, stretched, and sat up.

“Daddy, why are your eyes all puffy?”

I swallowed hard. Brillig chirped in the kitchen. This would be a hard lesson for Sarah.

Allergic Reaction

Oula Miqbel

Take a deep breath in / Then close your eyes.

That pounding in your chest / Ignore it.

Focus only on what you see in this room / Pretend you don’t feel that sharp pain that comes with

this soul-shattering moment.

Before the panic sets in and the nervousness rips itself loose / Like a hot itch beneath your skin.

That buzzing in your brain that becomes electric / The intensity of the sound drowns out your own voice.

All rationality / Rolls itself into deliberate insecurity and anxiety sets in.

Like water washing over your body / This emotion drowns you.

Your cheeks become hot / Flush with feeling.

Every inch of you begins to tingle / Like your body’s having an allergic reaction to fear.

But there is no epi-pen to prick yourself with / Try to hyperventilate in peace.

But you feel it / Everything.

Mind racing / Self-deprecation

All at once / A lifetime rushes past.

And then / Nothing.

There is no cure for your suffering / Just put on a brave face.

Silueta Ilyssa Chavez Oil on canvas

Clear Skin

Dylan Rosenow

Born with soft skin of a babe; my hands are now calloused in an attempt to get a grip on life. These hands not made for fighting, my knuckles are bruised squaring off with my fears.

I have eyes made to see nature in color, yet I was born colorblind. Socks and shoes to comfort my steps, but I’m barefoot, I feel the weight, the heaviness.

A tongue meant to taste the cuisines of life, buds now dead, they refuse to bloom. Broad shoulders to carry the weight of the world, but not broad enough, I slip through the cracks.

Ears meant to hear the birds sing, but instead I hear Iraqi babies crying. A nose to smell perfumes of Paris, instead I smell black licorice poured in my drink.

I am imperfect, a reminder I am me. Because of these faults, I’ve grown content, being a man who can breathe.

Beautiful Moment P.C. Scheponik

I wanted to write something beautiful, but the sorrow of your leaving overshadowed my mind the way the summer thunderheads block out the sun just before the downpour. Everything went silent, dark and heavy as a sky pregnant with storm.

I was so sure the rain would come and drown everything. But then, one lone sparrow landed on the lawn, followed by another and another until a throng of brown wings and taupe bellies were foraging and fluttering among the dew-soaked blades of grass. And just like that—the poem began writing itself before me. and just like that—it was beautiful.

As they slumber

Ellyn Newall

I lie upon the bed, When I feel a gentle nudge. A creature soft and warm, Has now refused to budge.

Their toe beans in the air, With their belly to the sky. Their gentle purr a comfort As they dream upon my thigh.

I cannot move my body, For it is against the law, To stir a creature sleeping Or to move a single paw.

If I need the restroom, They give no care of this. For they now own the land They have chosen for their bliss.

Even though I may not move I give a gentle smile, For the moments I spend stuck like this I’ve loved for quite a while.

These moments are a treasure, If we just stop to pause And think about the love we share With those four tiny paws.

Everything Goes On Pizza

Jarred White

In 2022, New York pizza restaurant, A Slice of Yours, put out a call for home-made pizza recipes. Their call was featured in The Post, The Times, and The Sun Notably, the call was not officially featured anywhere online. The owners of A Slice of Yours, Robert Waters and his son-in-law, Chris King, stated that they wanted to keep the recipes for their upcoming cookbook, Everything Goes on Pizza, focused exclusively on the tastes and techniques of locals.

They branded it as “a showcase of the upper crust styles of New York. From the exotic to the time-tested classics, our recipes will show that, with enough talent and care, everything goes on pizza!”

The following are some of the pieces submitted to their call.

Name: “The Sailboat”

Ingredients: 2½ cups of cold water. 3 cups grated mozzarella. 2 cups tomato sauce. 1 teaspoon sugar. 3 teaspoons yeast. 6 cups flour. 2 teaspoons salt. 3 tablespoons olive oil. 5 whole pepperoni sticks. 4 artichoke hearts. 6 gingerbread men (small).

Directions: Mix the water, sugar, salt, and flour in a large bowl until doughy. Place the dough in a pan greased with olive oil. Distribute evenly. Use a spoon to spread tomato sauce. Sprinkle the grated mozzarella. Slice the pepperoni slices in half and arrange the slivers into the shape of a boat. Trim the artichokes and arrange the clippings into wave-like patterns around the bottom half of the sailboat. Place into a preheated oven (400-450 ° F) for 10-15 minutes. Remove pizza and, while still hot, arrange the six gingerbread men within the artichoke clippings. Their legs may either be placed underneath the waves or simply broken off, but their arms should preferably be outstretched towards the upper half

of the pepperoni boat. Their faces were pale, and in the eerie moonlight, paler still. Serves six. Serves them right.

Name: “The Refined Gentleman”

Ingredients: 9 cups warm water. 8 cups cubed pepper jack. 7 cups classic pizza sauce. 3½ teaspoons sugar. 2 tablespoons salt. 13 cups all-purpose flour. 3 packets of extra-thick bacon. 4 pounds of glazed ham. 2 pounds of Boston style butt (pork shoulder). ½ cup cooking sherry.

Directions: Place the water, sauce, pepper jack, sugar, salt, and flour into a very large bowl. Mix thoroughly. Place the dough into a greased cake pan. Given the size of the dough, you may need to find a larger pan, such as one used for the production of wedding cakes. Cook at 375 °F for 40 minutes (or until deep brown). Pour in ¼ cup of cooking sherry every 20 minutes. While the pizza cooks, prepare the bacon, ham, and pork shoulder to your preferences or not at all. Once the pizza is removed from the oven, place the bacon, ham, and pork shoulder onto or into it. Serve either to domesticated or wild hogs. Feeds up to ten, but a single hog can do the job, if properly motivated.

Name: “The Afternoon Delight”

Ingredients: 3 cups flour. 2 cups hot tap water. 2 teaspoons of sugar. 3 teaspoons Kosher salt. 1 cup spaghetti sauce. 1 pound of cheddar cheese. 2 packets of dry salami. 1 packet of pepperoni. 3 cups of diced pineapple. At least 1 adult cooking partner.

Directions: Spend ten minutes trying to find a damn bowl while your cooking partner watches with the occasional dismissive glance. Locate the bowl, realize you haven’t cleaned it since last October. Shrug. Stick the flour, water, sugar, and salt in the bowl. Mix as best you can. Your partner notices that you’re struggling to mix the thick dough. They come over to help, brushing gently against your shoulder. Your hands press together, the warm dough squeezing into the tight gaps between your palms. Suddenly, your eyes lock, a hungry chill

runs down your spine. Without warning, your eager lips meet, the fullness of their body pressing breathlessly into you. Then either fall to the floor or place your partner on the kitchen counter, preferably on top of the dough. Cook at your desired temperature for as long as you can. Later, notice that the salami, pineapple, and cheddar have all gone bad. Throw them away. Shrug.

Name: “The Perfect Pizza”

Ingredients: ½ pound ground beef. 1 slice of Monterey jack cheese. 2 leaves of iceberg lettuce. 1 slice of red beefsteak tomato. 2 grilled sections of a red onion. 3 thin slices of a dill pickle. ¼ teaspoon salt. ¼ teaspoon pepper. ½ tablespoon yellow mustard. ½ tablespoon tomato ketchup. 2 sesame seed wheat buns. 21 ounces of cola. 8 medium sized ice cubes.

Directions: Do the math, geniuses.

Name: “Mom’s ‘Fill-em-Up’ Classic”

Ingredients: 5 handfuls of warm river water. A Parmigiano Reggiano wheel. 6 tomatoes taken from the back garden. A torn sack of sugar bartered from a neighbor. An overpriced bag of yeast from the market. Whatever flour you can find. Too many pinches of salt. Lard taken from your childhood pig. Aged meat from dad’s smokehouse. Clumpy spices from an unspecified region of India. A sense of guilt and unfocused longing that you’ll never make it as good as your mother.

Directions: Remember how, when you’d come walking home from working in the orchards with your four brothers—all of you blistered and burned by the life-giving hatemonger sun—you could smell the wafting aroma of mama’s gift drifting out of the crumbling walls of your too-small home. Remember how, as the youngest sibling, you were always served last. Remember how mama, seeing you try your best to hold back tears at the dinner table, would sometimes slip you one of her pieces when no one was looking. Most importantly, never evendream of making “Mom’s ‘Fill-em-Up’ Classic,”

so that you’ll always remember the last time you ate it with her.

At the time of writing, A Slice of Yours is still accepting submissions for their upcoming cookbook, Everything Goes on Pizza

Is This What You Meant?

Gabrielle Medina

Acrylic paint, canvas, rhinestone gems, sharpie, beads, rhinestone strands, acrylic nails, hot glue, glitter glue

Grieving and Weaving

Diana Woodcock

No harm in grieving as long as at the same time you are weaving yourself into the earth where miracles still occur—caterpillars still turn into butterflies, and the White-tailed deer give birth each spring to flawless fawns.

Though the times be leaden— overshadowed by Armageddon— be filled with hope and passion. Read the sacred scripture of nature. Be caring and kind to all sentient beings, seeing through their eyes till you realize you are not separate and above. Be filled with love. Everything under the sun is one.

Grieve and weave, though your bit of earth be raw and crusted over. Believe there’s no harm in making allowance for a touch of Darwinian fatalism, but let water flow through your hopes and dreams though you go on living in a desert— the lack of it sparking the very fact of faith and willingness to wait.

Grieve and weave not only into the earth but into the lives of those who work the land—sympathize and empathize with them, become streetwise. Let your eyes look directly at poverty and abuse. Refuse to let go, except of everything you think you know about clouds and love and life.* In spite of all the strife, go on weaving and believing in the midst of you grieving.

*reference to Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now.

The Kiss

Ken Anderson

Two butch men stripped and fell into bed, and when they kissed, a jagged bolt of longing flashed through their bodies, lighting nerves and soldering lips, as if for forever, in a steel-hard weld.

They could not let go, sucking each other’s mouth in a charged, salivary mélange of slick gums, pheromonal skin, wiry, coppery beard.

It was sensual mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, simultaneous oral copulation of slippery tongue in silk mouth.

It was completely opening themselves, like their mouths, telling each other, not with words, but a brash, flame-like flick of the tongue how utterly accessible they were, how much they wanted each other, to meld with each other in a basic, selfless, homousian One.

They could’ve slept like that, face pressed to face, eyes closed, chests rising and falling slowly like boats on tranquil waves.

They were sharing breath like a soul, breathing the other’s hot humid air into his lungs, the other breathing his into his in a pulsing Mobius strip so deep and intimate that, as they fumbled in frottage, their groins hummed like a live line of innocent ecstasy.

And though they knew they would break apart in time, single, panting, sweating on the sheet, such a shocking, unrestrained kiss had already salvaged everything in life.

saulo (one)

Lena Hamilton

It was the winter of 92, that much I know can’t tell you accurately if we had crossed over to 93 in any event it was in the far-away time of before.

I can still see that streetlight behind you & how it lit up your hair. You looked like the angel gabriel or maybe his badass younger brother.

Cómo te llamas? You wanted to know & we were so goddamn young, remember? I answered in the only language I will ever use with you. It would take a long time for you to translate my answer and that was ok because anticipation is everything.

Cat eye

Dottie Lo Bue Oil and Paper

What to Say to the Demon Who Guards Your

Coffee

Caleb James Stewart

The demon that sat by my coffee pot set on a timer to start making coffee at six thirty, so that by the time I get to it at seven, it’s done and cool enough for drinking, waited for me again this morning. There was nothing special about today. No anniversary of it being there, nothing new about the position it sat in, no new Joker-like grin that showed its yellowed and decaying teeth. It was just another normal day for me.

I reached for the coffee pot as I kept my eyes trained on it, and it kept its large golden eyes trained on me. Its face was unmoving, but its eyes followed my hand tothe pot, as I grabbed it and walked across the kitchen to the cabinet where I have four clean mugs, three of them white with a red interior, and the fourth, a Rangers mug that I had bought at a game a few years earlier. I reached for one of the white ones and poured the coffee, both watching the slowly warming cup in my hand and the demon that sat across the way. We did this every morning. I’d been working up the nerve to maybe say something to it, but honestly, I was scared it might say something back. What would I do if I asked it, “How are you this fine morning?” and it responds, “Great!” or, “Terrible,” or just cusses at me? Or would it say anything at all? This morning, as I put the coffee pot back on the warmer, I reached over, and both absentmindedly and very consciously, patted its head. The hardened greasy hair touched my hand, the horns kept it from getting any closer, and I felt and heard a small purr.

I retracted my hand and moved on with the rest of my morning routine, pretending as if it hadn’t happened. But I thought about what happen later. It didn’t bite my hand, it almost reacted positively to it. I think tomorrow will be the day that I decide to ask it how it is doing. As I walked out the door I said to an empty house, “Goodbye!” and closed the door before I heard no response.

Adaptation

Jennifer Lagier

“IamthechildIeverwas,IamthemanImeanttobe.IamtrulyFortune’scookie.” ~MarkLangton

I am a flatland, peach ranch refugee, relocated to curved, peninsula dunes, restored missions, commercial fishing boats, sea lion laden piers, oceanic lagoons.

Back in Escalon, I raised sweet corn, tomatoes, melons, and squash. On Marina shores, brisk wind wilts roses, snaps fragile foxgloves. Weather is cold, water rationed.

Acreage is expensive, unattainable, tiny houses packed cheek to jowl. Twisted cypress cling to jagged coastline. Pets snarl at raccoons and deer.

Each day, I revel in rafts of sleeping otters, somersaulting dolphins, wise-cracking gulls. Transplanted roots sink deep, keep me stable. Friendships, poetry blossom; this is my home.

Odalis

Odalis Guillen

Butchered pronunciations serve as a reminder of my foreign identity

My name does not roll off of the Caucasian tongue

Instead, the consonants and vowels take complicated routes, Wrong turns

Young and Twenty

Judith Skillman

*Content Warning

I should have taken up my mother’s offer.

“Should we see Dr. Brew?” she had asked upon learning the news. Dr. Brew was her OB/Gyn. My mother is liberal. A PhD, a superwoman, a magnificent role model, despite the fact that I had some issues with her rather dispassionate mothering style. But I was twenty. I wanted to do things my way. Her doctor didn’t appeal to me.

“No, Mom. I’ll take care of it.”

My boyfriend at the time drove me. It could have been his baby, or it could have been another’s. I did not know who the father was. It could have been man A or man B. I was twenty, and didn’t want to have a baby while a junior in college. Nor did I want to raise a child alone and sacrifice college. And I certainly didn’t want to give up the chance of having a full life, one with a career and family.

What did I know? Not a whole lot, but in my gut there was a voice that repeated over and over during that infinitely slow three weeks between learning I was pregnant, and deciding to get an abortion: You can’t do this. You are not sure who the father is.

At Planned Parenthood, I filled out the paperwork and sat in a room with other women who would also be getting abortions. There were maybe ten of us. They explained in detail what would happen. Then the person who led the presentation offered each one of us a valium. I was in what would be a twenty year-long anti-pill phase. I refused. It turned out, however, that once I was on the table and my cervix was being dilated, the pain was excruciating.

It gets worse. I have a heart-shaped uterus. The doctor doing the machine-facilitated suck-out of the fetus—that is, the baby in utero—had to scrape everything with a knife. I had a D&C, dilation and curettage, a procedure no one should be awake for—

To his credit, the doctor saved my life. There would have been an infection had he not gotten every little bit of baby and placenta out of my womb. He tried to explain this in what seemed a Spanish accent. I was in too much pain to listen. I recall a woman—perhaps she acted as the nurse at Planned Parenthood—held my hand. She reminded me of an auntie with her unreserved sympathy for what was happening in that moment. I held on to her hand tightly. I still carry a lot of warmth for her caring presence.

Then it was done, and she began to help me up; I almost passed out. She put some smelling salts under my nose, and that brought me around. I recall being taken to another room, the recovery area. There all of us, young girls who had had abortions, were given drinks and crackers. We rested in padded chairs. But I felt shaken up and didn’t share in what seemed to be a collective sense of relief.

My mother recently told me she never knew what had happened after I was returned home by the boyfriend who is my husband now. I remember stifling tears upon entering my original family’s house. I just wanted to get into bed and be alone. I was not prepared for the hormonal plummet. No one mentioned it at the clinic.

Pregnancy creates hormones that make you feel immortal, happy, and quite simply, very good. To suddenly not be pregnant anymore, well, I was plunged into a very deep depression. I cried for days. I wanted to die.

At the time, I blamed myself for all of it: getting pregnant, having an abortion, having a heart-shaped uterus, and not knowing about the abnormality beforehand. I blamed myself for all of the suffering. There are so many side effects that remain taboo. The side effects of having an abortion remain removed from the locus of the simple human need for understanding and attunement. It is forbidden to even mention, much less, discuss them.

“Dilation and curettage refers to the dilation of the cervix and surgical removal of part of the lining of the uterus and/or contents of the uterus by scraping and scooping.”

~Wikipedia

This is another tragedy. Because for a woman, there is not only the emotional and psychological difficulty of making such an excruciating decision. The woman who has chosen not to bear a child, has before her the task of healing. Offering herself forgiveness. And, in my case (I can’t speak for others), of dealing with a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Some two years later I returned to the University of Maryland clinic, where they’d told me I was pregnant. I was pregnant again. They seemed to remember. Someone, perhaps the person who delivered the results of the test (this was before home pregnancy tests; many years have elapsed) was worried about how I would take the news. I was thrilled. Because I was married and wanted a baby. I had no idea what having a child meant in the big picture, but I’d had a dose of those pregnancy hormones.

Nine months later, my husband and I had our first child. A daughter proclaimed, “the most beautiful infant I’ve ever seen,” by Dr. Sweet, the doctor who delivered her. She is the most beautiful daughter in the world, and forty-four years later, remains so.

Beauty Shop window, France

Photograph

Cast Iron

Kathy Pon a formidable vessel, weighty, no-nonsense, like Nonna Bianca.

Sustains family through Depression’s darkest days. Renders epicurean dishes from a humble garden.

Elemental: onions & garlic, fresh basil sautéed in olive oil, primary tones of a culinary canvas. Aroma of love sizzles, penetrating every membrane of her household.

Upon this base she prepares victuals for pennies: Sizzling servings of zucchini frittata, parmesan polenta heaped in creamy gold, glorious home-grown tomatoes like red jewels puréed over pasta.

She radiates heat, sears a sense of obligation into each child. Family, then God. Reputation the only path to heaven.

Braises old and new countries’ ways, hardened by years, unbroken. A wizened utensil, essential to feeding this family.

Stews up solutions for every occasion: Job loss, fathers who never return, babies out of wedlock.

How a skillet so durable nourishes memory of her mettle.

Nurturing

Peipei Li

Acrylic,plastic,sand,goldleaf,stretchsilk,polyester

Three Years

Peter Henrich

I traversed three years in hope of discovering you.

My chest longed day after day to cross paths with a friend such as you.

Eventually our paths did cross...

Now you sit at my left side.

Conversation ebbs and flows among those at the table.

My secret thoughts of another friend, one lost to me, fill the stormy

horizon of my awareness.

Your finger pokes my shoulder, a first-ever physical attempt to ensure my

attention.

I remain fixed upon you as you speak. Curious am I about this touch from you.

Conversation drifts towards those on your left then across the table.

My secret sorrow over my lost friend aches in my chest with each breath. Your attention returns to me.

A most unexpected and peculiar event occurs.

You rest your palm and fingers on my shoulder.

My secret thoughts melt and my secret sorrow withers.

Your touch is all I hear as you look towards me and say what you have to

say.

Then you double down.

Your hand continues to rest on my shoulder as you turn to speak with

another.

Remnants of stormy thoughts and aching sorrow fade as if a dream

forgotten upon awakening.

My soul calms and my body, too.

...Traverse three years?

I would traverse three lifetimes and more in hope of discovering you.

Smothered Cigarette

Kelli Lage

Jean’s gravestone reads 1944-2014. At a time, she didn’t think she’d make it long past stumbling home from the bar, drenched in smoke, propping up her husband. After working in factories and grocery stores, she thought it was too late for dreams. That changed in winter of ‘95. Frost swole with news of a granddaughter. Booze bled down the sink, and she choked out cigarettes. Vices be damned, her lungs wouldn’t give out before she saw her granddaughter grow up. She’d share joy in made-up holidays, all celebrations ending in cake. My grandmother loved me for eighteen years.

Last Call

Jennifer Lagier

Scarred cypress limbs undulate like silver pythons, slithering from pit viper roots to Medusa’s crown, snaking towards the sky along scaly bark.

Maimed trees overlook rising ocean. Surf gnaws adobe bluff, reveals shellfish fossils, buried Esselen grinding stones.

Contemporary artifacts disfigure beach sand: cigarette butts, plastic shopping bags, styrofoam coffee cups, tangles of fishing line, flip flops.

Wind and tide scatter Trojan Horse, dead carp, deformed waterfowl, strangled lagoon. We have had our last warning.

Alessandro, Three Months Old, Madrid

Donna Pucciani

Some day, Alessandro, your mama will tell you stories of the great plague that attacked the earth the year you were born. Millions of people died around the world, so many that there was no place for the bodies, kept frozen in trucks meant for pizza.

Oh, my! Old people died because they were frail and getting ready to die anyway, though not yet! After that, mamas got sick, and their children were struck down on their way to school.

But you, Alessandro, were safe in the cradle of your daddy’s arm, or nestled at your mama’s breast, making little baby noises, burping obediently when patted on the back.

You slept soundly, dreaming of snow in Spain, or crossing an ocean to see your grandma who lives in the desert and your tia on the shores of Lake Michigan among the skyscrapers.

Don’t worry, Alessandro. It will finish, not suddenly, but drifting like waves on the sea in Alicante, out towards the sky, then in again. Angels will protect you, little one. They will come to you in the form of an injection.

Soon you will be old enough for the shot. Bite your lip, don’t cry. You will wear short pants, ready for school, having gone from baby to boy. At the doctor’s office, your brow will knit, like an old man’s. An ancient sage in a boyish body, you will think not of death but only how to say “hurt” in two languages. A needle and some serum will save you from plague but not from pain.

Pregnancy

Peipei Li

Acrylic, sand of three different thicknesses, gold leaf

On the Day You Gave Me Goosebumps

Frank William Finney

Mule teams arrived at Sully’s Market.

Baskets brimmed with tempting fruit.

A gaggle of villagers waddled by,

the ganders honking from their carts.

You were mastering the mystery, poking peaches, squeezing plums.

Our hands met twice in a crate of melons.

and your smile set my gooseflesh

off for the clouds.

Epiphany III: At the Pearly Threshold

James B. Nicola

*Content Warning

But I only voted for the guy who summoned the lynch mob. I didn’t summon the lynch mob myself. So why won’t You let me in?

Sure, five were killed, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t summon the lynch mob. It’s on them, isn’t it?

OK, and him.

Yes, I understand what Thou Shalt Not means, but— Oh.

Yes, I hear you.

Caught on a technicality. Not on a technicality?

Yes, I suppose in my heart and mind—

All right, I confess, in my heart and mind—

I guess I’m beginning to see.

Is that why they call it Epiphany?

So what now?

I mean, how do I make up for it?

Can’t I make up for it?

I’d do anything to make up for it, if I could just have a little more time. What, talk to people?

Write a poem?

So that maybe more might see?

And ah, that is what You mean by Epiphany!

Memory Loss

Lauro Palomba

They wheelchaired her out punctually enough, wizened in a multi-colored smock, like the next item on the auction block though he was that Sunday morning’s lone bidder. They opened the sun umbrella over them and departed. Her house sold, its phone number expunged— two affable avenues for decades leading to welcome and hospitality, now dead-ended—there she sat, by appointment. The virus restrictions relaxed; he’d finally been allowed to see her.

He identified himself, via his father, her late brother. Her face stood by. Contrary to the facility’s rules, he briefly lowered his mask. She smiled, childlike at his game of peek-a-boo rather than from recognition.

In cap, sunglasses, and mask, he felt decked out more for combat than companionship and removed the two that were permitted. Through the mask, he placed his lips on her hollowed cheek. The outdoor supervisor, a student, fixated on his mobile phone, distracted from the need to intervene.

“Hello,” she said to a taciturn fellow resident, stepping out to no visitors, and proceeding to the gazebo. She looked lively, her facial expressions changing, and aware of movement around her: a nearby woman noisily eating chips, attended by her daughter; three family members making a fuss over another.

His simple questions set her off. Chatty and soft-spoken as always, she started to narrate an epic whose words he knew but forming a language he did not. She’d salvaged the chuckles from her lucid days and these too she interspersed into the tale she was relating.

His attention pretended to understand it all.

But the passing traffic beyond their enclosure paved over her quieter phrasing, and someone dialing up the music from the apartments next door made most of the rest inaudible.

The last time he’d visited the core of her message, stripped of much

of its meaning, had emerged in strands. Like the mass of seasoned pork, she’d once hand-cranked through the meat grinder and encased into tangy sausages she later donated to eager relatives.

Only months earlier, she could still receive. Haphazardly. She recalled her parents’ names though not her son-in-laws’. He purposely mistook her upcoming birthday. She corrected it to October with the exact date. Then she’d also smiled, as if wise to his game.

“Hello,” she broke off, to greet a woman being brought out, stiff and horizontal, to waiting children, and when she returned her gaze to him she couldn’t tell he was listening mainly to his own voice.

Under her dusting of hair the archives of his aunt, an immigrant like himself, were being sectioned off. Floor by floor. Aisle by aisle. File by file. Sealing her knowledge of their native village. Taping shut his ancestry; a village settled a thousand years before, swelling and then contracting into the modern world. He’d been soaking it up as a child when he left and now could only dip into it as a tourist.

His aunt, his father, and uncle—his mother born and raised in a nearby valley—used to gush its contents, inherited and lived. They loved words the way carpenters loved wood and, like wood, planed them to build and sometimes batter, in contention and in accord. Enriching a treasury of the village’s characters, incidents, rituals, rumors, scandals, and myths, vitalizing the anatomy of a place, without which progeny are little better than plants. She, the closest survivor, could call up, on request or on her own, the rigid mores and who’d flouted them. The vendettas and the outcomes, extraordinary acts of kindness or cruelty, arrogance and humility, shameful acts and secrets long covered up. She retained knowledge of people’s connections, through blood or behavior, that were invisible to latecomers. In short, she was a manual on how the human soil had been tilled, the soil of the village’s story, the soil from which they had all sprouted.

Until her mind had begun its solo journey, she could still be counted on to update who lived where, the deaths, marriages, and births of the village diaspora. She was the hub by which news continued to radiate to him.

So much left unexplored through reminiscence or inquiry. She the last custodian he might consult when memory welled random snatches that he needed her to verify or anecdotes whose details, like falling plaster, required her restoration. Now her rare volumes were piecemeal and permanently falling under lock and key. Or worse, for the flame still in her eyes put him in mind of a great library burning down, its irreplaceable scrolls forever forfeited. Either way, her loss migrates to his. “Two minutes,” the student gently notified. The half-hour already expired.

Just as this September morning had failed to replicate July’s heat, their session had unfolded less dispiritingly than he’d feared. The fountain pumps had rusted but there might be more of her gabby monologues before she fastened the shutters wholly on bygone times. Perhaps they could hold hands at their next meeting and imply, by touch rather than thoughts, how far they’d traveled together.

The student hovered.

He replaced the cap and sunglasses on his head and kissed her again, his mask poor armor against the sadness of frailty.

Falling in Love is like Losing a Dog

Selah Randolph

I have done it—let my heart off the tight leash of fear— and now it bounds after you when you leave dragging my mind behind it. I have begun to look into your eyes and now I smile like a fool in traffic, in line at the grocery store, in the rain.

Gynecomastia

Adam J. Galanski *Content Warning

I wake up and look in the mirror. My chest is swollen out like a pair of breasts. My nipples enlarged and widened. Sensitive to the touch. Tender. Sore, when I cup them with my hands. They protrude awkwardly from my slender body. The torso with taut skin and exposed bumps of ribs. The six-pack abs at age 13, from hours a day of running and exercising in school and afterwards in the park. I feel that I am becoming a woman. It is a horrifying thought. And I know that I cannot tell anyone.

I remember in fourth grade, sitting at my desk and catching my classmate, James, laughing at a joke the teacher made. James is cute when he laughs. I had thought to myself. Then I shook my head. At St. Ida’s, Father Marcus told us about how love and attraction was meant strictly for a man and a woman. Sister Joan told us that thoughts in our head that disobeyed God’s law were sins, too. Even intrusive ones. Even if we didn’t take any physical action. I closed my eyes and prayed to God for forgiveness. I told myself over and over that what I thought was wrong. So much that I missed the meaning of the lesson and fumbled over my words when called upon, causing James to laugh again, and myself to cringe. I don’t want to go to Hell. ***

Am I really becoming a woman? When my parents are out playing tennis, I log into their desktop and google pornography, playing with myself below my boxer shorts. The women in these movies’ bodies are mature and fully curvaceous. My swollen breasts don’t look quite like that. And the men in these movies’ dicks are extended thick and bulging with veins. My body is somewhere in a space between two genders. It is hard to feel much of anything but anxiety.

The women in the porn seem to be having a better time than the *Body image, violence, homophobia, transphobia

men. At least they are moaning more. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to sexually be a woman. I could be a lesbian. I could put on makeup, grow out my hair, and do my best to look the part. But I feel like that would be lying to myself. My head is too clouded to reach an orgasm. My breasts are growing more bulbous and somehow even more tender. ***

At night my mother and I watch the movie Ghost Ship from the comfort of our living room’s L-shaped leather couch. I am lying with my head across her lap as she strokes my eyebrows with her fingers. She does this every night before we go to bed. It soothes me, and helps relieve some of my dread for the coming Monday back to school.

A scene comes on where one of the passengers, who is really a ghost of the past, takes out her breasts to seduce the main character while singing a song. I examine them while I can, comparing them to mine, before my mother covers my eyes with her palm.

“Jesus!” she says, “You don’t need to be seeing this stuff at your age.”

She rubs her hands up my boney rib cage, her fingers reaching up almost to my nipples.

“I’ll let you know when it’s over. Hey—what’s this?” She asks, feeling her fingers over the hard tissue and rounded flesh above my nipples through my t-shirt, triggering my gunshot heart.

“Ma, that’s my rib cage...” I say, trying not to cry.

“Oh...” she removes her palm from my eyes. The scene is over. I am trying not to let my body shake. ***

When I brush my teeth that night, I lock the bathroom door and take off my shirt. I cup myself. Squeeze them. Maybe it will be okay to be a woman... I think. I tuck my penis between my thighs and imagine a new body before I am so disgusted with myself that I scowl. ***

In gym class the next day, all the boys are changing into their workout clothes.

“Look at those man-tits!” a kid named Oscar exclaims. All the boys start laughing. I cup my breasts red with embarrassment.

“You look like a fucking tranny!” he shouts to more laughter.

With a strange impulse, I grab Oscar by the neck and slam his head back into one of the lockers. The kids around us cheer for blood and cackle. His hands and feet flail as I slam him by the throat again. When I let him go, he falls to the ground. Does this make me a man? I ask myself. But it doesn’t. Because I am crying like a little girl. ***

After school, I am watching a behind-the-music documentary on VH1. Marylin Manson is donning a full face of makeup and a feminine haircut. “Robert Smith taught me that it is okay for men to wear makeup,” he says. Maybe there is someone out there who will accept my distorted body.

“Fucking freak!” my father yells and points at the TV screen from the kitchen. His face is red with anger. ***

We are on our leather couch watching Animal Planet before bed. I have the body of a female hyena. Maybe I can have the strength of one too. My mother’s fingers on my eyebrows makes me feel at peace. If I am to be a woman, at least I can be a woman like her.

“I love you, mom,” I say.

“I love you too sweetie.”

And though there is love, and trust, I still feel like I cannot tell her. ***

I wake up one morning months later. My breasts are gone. The soreness is over. Just puffy areolas. If I am not to be a woman, then what am I? This all had to mean something. But throughout all of life, I have been too confused to understand.

Delia Cristina Sandoval

My marrow, engorged by years of sediment breaks through the first layer—the crust—my skin—my mother’s skin: Delia. We have been together for so long.

I once prodded at her belly button and she fed me with her bones I leeched took her calcium I took her time,

My teenage scene: remote control flying through the air, grazes her temple. She finds this unforgettable. Not a lot goes on between her scalp and time. Her layers have not grown the way mine has outside the confines of this planet, this mammoth, uncontrollable thing we call Modesto.

She buries her hands in the sand. She traces the phantom cord between us. I know it’s a phantom. But I tell her it’s a garden.

Madam and Eve

Liliana Figueroa-Larios

Digital media 5x7

Moonstone Beach

Andrea Wagner

Little pebble, I met millions of you at my feet.

My eyes grew wide with green, green serpentine and caramel chunks that glow.

Sunlight pooled inside of you, and you, and you, and you, and...

You I’d like to keep. I scoop you up into my palm.

But there are so many! So many, many, under my knees, my hands. I haven’t even moved.

How can I move, and not panic, seeing a million more?

I’m stepping on them,

I’m stepping on them,

Dad, you’re stepping on the stones, please, I

I can’t collect them, I’ll forget this quartz one, and these ones have stripes, and I just saw red jasper, maybe—I think I did—it was right here, under, here, here, right?

“Hey, have you found your pretty treasures?”

I look at the fistful I managed.

“Yeah. Thanks for stopping the car.”

The Passing Breeze

David A. Cohen

Larry lays there, his arms lovingly caressing the waist of Jeanne, who was no longer breathing beside him. Now, at this moment, he could only think of Jeanne and their life together. a life that had ended moments before as Jeanne had decided to die in her own bed, Larry at her side.

Jeanne, who never complained, and never whined about her illness, was the essence of a contented person; grateful for what life had given her and the time she had.

Jeanne had wanted to be cremated. Larry was reluctant, but Jeanne had laughed about it in an attempt to diffuse the tension. “Put me in a matchbox and bury me in the park,” she would say. “Like a parakeet.”

Larry thought of how they first met, a dance of returned phone calls after a blind date. He knew right away. She wasn’t certain. She told him how he had won her over with gentle humor, usually directed at himself. When someone asked him if he ever played sports as a young man, he would hold his 5’3” stature erect and reply, “I played center on the High School basketball team.” “You’re so handsome,” Jeanne would say after he had made a self-deprecating joke. Larry knew that his face, scarred from a childhood accident, was not that of a handsome man. He loved her all the more for believing such a fiction.

They spent their honeymoon at her beloved ocean swimming, sunning, and riding the waves. At the Jersey shore, each day, Jeanne would insist on buying a vanilla orange cone for herself and a vanilla chocolate one for Larry, so that she could argue their relative merits. Watching with laughter and love as the melting ice cream decorated

their clothes. They would return each summer to relive their special moments together.

Larry gently, but only momentarily, let go of his lover to put an album on the old record player they had bought together at a flea market. He chose their favorite piece: Romance by Shostakovich. This was their song. As the violin lovingly repeated the refrain of the lyrical music, its bittersweet melody now enveloping Larry, he stared at Jeanne. He imagined the music caressing her still body like warm ocean waves washing her greying hair. Larry thought back to when they had first heard the piece on their first date at a concert in New York. They had laughed about the overpriced Italian dinner they had eaten in a restaurant across the street from the concert hall. They did not laugh at the music they heard that night. Larry recalled leaning over and gently kissing Jeanne on the cheek as tears fell from her eyes. The music, melodic and beautiful, he fell in love with Jeanne at that moment.

Larry did not want to honor Jeanne’s wish to be cremated. He imagined his friend enveloped by flame, burnt into dust as if their love had never existed.

A rush of air arrived at the window, and a gusty hot summer wind burst through into the bedroom throwing papers about. Knickknacks, even a perfume bottle flew off a dresser as waves of air surged through the room, leaving a scent of love exiting as it had entered. A photo remained of them sitting atop a small table showing them on their Honeymoon at an ocean resort, both of them smiling like teenagers appearing forty years younger than their actual age. Larry breathed in the perfume, the same scent she wore that night at the concert. He felt the presence of Jeanne in that summer breeze.

The thought of the wind, the perfume, and the air sweetened with love, had swept over him. Surely this was no coincidence. The cremation did not mean having to lose her. He would spread her

ashes over the ocean she loved so much and celebrate their love with an ice cream cone.

Larry smiled. Of course, it was Jeanne. The music had ended. The Romance had not.

My Best Friend’s Mother Paints Her Nails

Yvonne Higgins Leach

Uninvited, I interrupt her rare moment of quiet. Her long narrow body dents the lounge chair cushion under the porch canopy. Hard to believe I am alone with her. No other children darting around or another meal to make.

A lovely creamy red, her toes dry in the wash of lucid summer air.

I have known her all my life, and my adoration grows as I become my preteen body. I know nothing of where she came from. Refined, she slides the file into her leather manicure set. With shoulder blades like tiny bird bones above her blouse, she blows softly her deep-red fingernails. Swells with the scent of her perfume waft my way. Instead of sending me home, she drenches me in the generosity of conversation, pulls my hands close, and asks me to pick a color.

Dad’s Playlist

Lisa Braxton

Twistin’ The Night Away

Sam Cooke

02:42

I watch you blow the dust off the record player needle on the Hi-Fi stereo system and lower the arm onto the album as it spins around. My excitement builds as I hear a crackling sound coming from the speakers high up on the walls on opposite sides of the family room.

At 2 years old I am eye level with your knees. You reach your hand down to me and say, “May I have this dance?” I tuck my tiny hand in your giant one and stand on your feet as you lead me, rocking back and forth to Sam Cooke’s voice bouncing off the walls.

The Christmas Song 03:31

Nat “King” Cole

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m tucked in waiting for Santa and the reindeer to land on the roof. It’s late at night, the company has left, mom has gone to bed and you are in the basement drinking eggnog and playing “The Christmas Song”. I press my eyes shut and listen to the words, thinking I’ll forget about how excited I am and go to sleep, the night will go fast and Santa will come down the chimney, leave my presents and drink eggnog with you.

Auld Lang Syne

Guy Lombardo

02:39

It’s New Year’s Day and I crane my neck to look up at the living room ceiling. It’s covered in balloons in different colors. At three-anda-half I’m still little enough for you to pick me up. You hand me a thumb tack, tell me to be careful with it, and put me on your shoulders. We go to each balloon. I aim just right and they go Pop!

Pop! Pop! Last night, I couldn’t sleep for all the people and laughter and music from the party you and mom had. The last song I remember hearing was that song that was played at midnight.

I’ll Be Around 03:13

The Spinners

You like to whistle while you work, especially when a song comes on the urban contemporary radio station you have, the stereo tuned to at the high-fashion men’s clothing store you and mom opened recently. You whistle to “I’ll Be Around” and customers bop to the beat. I help ring up sales, take inventory, dust, and vacuum. Not a bad way for a teenager to pick up a few dollars to spend at the mall with her friends.

Let’s Stay Together

Al Green

03:21

You’re at the wheel, mom’s in the passenger seat and we kids, Sylvia and me, are in the back. It’s another road trip “down South” to see the relatives for the annual homecoming at your church, St. Mary Baptist in Lowesville, Virginia on the first weekend in August. Throughout the ride from Connecticut to Virginia you and mom relive the indignities you faced growing up under Jim Crow laws, an instant history lesson for Sylvia and me. At moments, Mom’s voice catches in her throat as she gets emotional. You turn on the 8-track tape player and Al Green starts his ballad, a needed break from the intensity of your reminiscences.

What the World Needs Now is Love 03:06

Dionne Warwick

Nearly all of my friends wanted to be debutantes and even though I didn’t know what a debutante was, I wanted to be one too. Mom had to explain it to me. It’s all about us 17- and 18-year-olds making our debut into society. Mom told me that you didn’t really want to be bothered with it, but because I wanted to be a “Deb,” you agreed to it. We had weekly practice sessions with a choreographer to learn how

to waltz. It’s the night of the cotillion. We’re halfway through our father/daughter dance and I’m worried that you’ll forget to twirl me at the right moment. I take a deep breath. You do in fact, forget to twirl me. But I cue you and all goes smoothly.

What’s Going On

Marvin Gaye

03:53

You spend Sunday afternoons in the basement of our home with the stereo on listening to “What’s Going On.” The song’s lyrics touch on racism, drug abuse, poverty, and the Vietnam War. This is your “alone time.” No one interrupts you during these moments. I can’t help but wonder if you’re thinking about what’s going on in your own life. The clothing store has been broken into many times, sometimes by people you hired to work there. The once bustling, relatively safe working-class neighborhood has become a haven for drug dealers and addicts. Your customer base is shrinking.

Pachelbel’s Canon in D

Johann Pachelbel

06:12

You and I are standing at the French doors of the mansion that I’ve rented for my wedding. You’re as spiffy as ever in your tuxedo. I’m in a full-length ivory gown, lovely for a “mature” bride of 52. As my pianist and cellist begin performing Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the doors open. All the guests are standing, the accompaniment is so overwhelming that I feel momentarily dizzy. You escort me down the aisle and as you are giving me away, I realize that you have forgotten to kiss me on the cheek. I say repeatedly louder each time, “Kiss me on the cheek, Daddy,” which you eventually do. The guests laugh. You and I laugh. My photographer captures the awkward moment, which becomes one of my favorite photos from my wedding.

Unforgettable

Nat “King” Cole

02:32

Mom has passed away and you announce that you want to sing “Unforgettable” at her funeral. Because of your hearing loss,

Parkinson’s disease, and dementia, I don’t think you’ll be able to do it. But each day leading up to the funeral, you read over the lyrics and practice. At the funeral, the pastor calls you to come forward. You struggle to stand up with your cane. Everyone there shouts, “take your time, take your time.” You slowly get to the podium and sing the first verse. You are cheered. It is one of the most memorable moments of the funeral.

Twistin’ The Night Away

Sam Cooke

02:42

We’ve just returned to your room after having lunch in the dining room on the memory care floor of the assisted living center you’ve been staying at since Mom died last year. The aides have told me about your habits; going back to bed, putting your sheet over your face, and taking a nap. After I fold up your walker, you do lie back down, but since I am visiting you stay awake and leave the flat sheet tucked neatly around the mattress. I surprise you by turning on my portable speaker and playing “Twistin’ the Night Away.” I extend my hand to you and ask, “May I have this dance?” as you asked me more than 55 years earlier. You shake your head and politely say, “I won’t be able to do that today.” I take your hands and swing them back and forth to the beat. Pretty soon you are swinging my hands back and forth and I don’t have to make any effort. It’s been years since I’ve seen you smile so broadly.

I’ll Fly Away

Alison Krauss

04:04

I’m at the front of the church gazing at you one last time before they close the casket. You look serene and I am glad. I worried about you every single day. I never knew when I would get a call from the aides that you’d fallen again. Sometimes I’d get a call from you telling me that you missed Mom. You could hardly speak, you were crying so hard. Other times in your confusion you’d call me sounding out of breath and say that you were hungry, that you weren’t being fed. I’d find out later that because of your dementia you didn’t remember that you’d eaten.

You lived long enough to celebrate your 90th birthday surrounded by family and friends. You went downhill dramatically after the guests left. I’m pleased with the choices that Sylvia and I made for your “homegoing” suit. We chose to have you dressed in one of your favorites, your deep blue pinstripe suit with the silk pocket-handkerchief, and bold, striped tie. I felt jubilant when I found your Rotary Club lapel pin on your nightstand and had the mortuary place it on your lapel. You loved being a Rotarian and so did I. After you sponsored me, we’d attend Rotary meetings together.

I requested that one of the church choir soloists sing “I’ll Fly Away” as she did for Mom’s funeral. I couldn’t help but wonder if you knew I was there as you flew away. I feel blessed that I got to spend your last days in the hospital room with you, got to kiss you on the forehead each night and tell you what a great dad you were and that I loved you, that I got to listen to the spaces between each of your breaths until you had no more.

Taps

The U.S. Army

03:03

At the cemetery, an Army rifle squad fired a gun salute and a bugler played taps. As the shells from the gun salute were placed in my palm, I thought of your service stateside during the Korean War era before you married Mom. Those two years had a profound effect on how you helped Mom raise me, requiring order and discipline, sprinkled with humor and fun. I clasped those shells in my hand and watched as the U.S. flag was meticulously folded and tucked. Then placed it on my lap. I am honored by your service to our country and honored to be your daughter.

Sometimes when I’m turning the dial on my car radio or tune into the music piped in at the supermarket or a coffee shop, I’ll hear one of the songs on your playlist. I’ll take a breath and steel myself so that I won’t become weepy in public. I’ll think about the memories attached to the song. Usually, I’ll smile.

Keep Off

Jason Montgomery

Digitally Altered Mixed Media Collage

The Orphan Jacob Moniz

My roommate tells me he’s the nearest thing to an orphan I’ll ever meet.

I can’t help myself and respond: “Except for an actual orphan.” He’s quiet. He adjusts his glasses and smiles too widely, betraying a glint of panic. Or maybe shame? “Right, right.” This descriptor is his crutch, his way of easing people towards the admission of an uncomfortable truth.

I know this, but his use of the word “orphan” has inspired something cruel in me. It feels unearned and disrespectful. I lift my glass as a distraction while I think of what to say. It’s nearly empty. My roommate eyes the glass, watches me struggle for its meager offerings of gin, the gin he poured, still smiling. I’m irritated with myself for draining it so quickly. I set the glass back down and ask: “What makes you like an orphan?”

He senses an opportunity, a way to redirect our course of conversation. “My grandparents raised me. That’s why my taste in stuff is sort of... dated.”

He’s mentioned this before. My roommate’s tastes reflect an older generation, with a preference for writers like Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, and Phillip K. Dick. Reverberating through the house, I’ve heard the voices of Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, Bessie Smith, and Big Bill Broonzy singing through the walls.

I ask him: “Are you close?”

“Yeah. They’re like my parents.” This fails to answer my question to a satisfying conclusion. I allow my eyes to wander to keep them from rolling and take notice of the abnormal way the lamp

ensconced above the table casts light against our salmon-colored walls. The room takes on a flesh-like quality, bare and uncomfortably warm. I wish we’d done more to decorate the walls and conceal a bit of said flesh, but that always felt like too great an effort for a place that doesn’t feel like home.

My roommate pulls a cigarette from a pack left on the table. “Want a smoke?” He extends the pack my way, but I say “No” and shake my head.

I expect him to excuse himself to smoke outside, but he doesn’t. It’s flattering at first. It makes me feel interesting, his desire to continue our conversation. Then, a cloud of smoke surrounds us, the smell of nicotine catches in my nostrils, and I consider his behavior rude.

“My dad smokes,” I say. His eyebrows raise on an inhale. “My not smoking is kind of an act of rebellion.”

My roommate doesn’t laugh, but smirks and says on the exhale: “Good for you.”

“Thanks.” I pause, weighing my words, mapping the possible routes our conversation might go. “My dad and I, we don’t speak.”

I wait for comments or queries, an attempt to find some common ground—they don’t come. When I’ve made that comment in the past, it’s invited a playful, sometimes cruel curiosity into the conflict with my family. I thought that he might recognize the set-up, that he might investigate further, but he moves on to other topics.

My roommate tells me about his job as a political journalist and how the practicality of his work conflicts with his passion for writing fiction. I think of asking if I can read his writing, particularly his sci-fi. Except, I’ve told him about my writing and he’s never asked to read it, so I show disinterest instead.

My roommate and I have lived together for nine months. We’ve shared niceties over cigarettes and gin, both belonging to him, but I still regard him as a stranger. I hold my breath a moment as he

exhales more smoke in my direction. When the air has cleared, I blurt out: “Being an orphan’s not so bad.”

My roommate doesn’t probe. He smirks, raises his eyebrows again, and says: “I guess I wouldn’t know.”

When he’s finished smoking, my roommate stands and opens a window to air out the room, signaling the end of our social interaction. I take our glasses and deposit them in the sink. As I do, my roommate follows and turns in the direction of his room. He doesn’t say goodnight, he doesn’t say anything, so I stay silent too. Later, I play music in our living room. Something modern, with an irregular rhythm and indecipherable lyrics. My roommate enters to retrieve his reading glasses from the table and I ask him: “Was I too loud?”

“No,” he tells me. “I didn’t hear you at all.”

Cries in the Night

Dylan Rosenow

In God’s critical eye and Satan’s malicious tempt, the lovers begin to cry. For the night acts a sunrise.

Craving | they bite into the apple. She prepares to sacrifice her innocence conscious of the grand consequence, in the face of sin and the name of love.

A devilish grin birthed behind his mask. For he bartered knowing lies and earned forthright malice for the taste of the innocent.

Tears soak the sheets while the pillowcase is stained with regret. For she was blindsided by his smile, a new one she would never forget.

He howls into the night, engulfed in his prey; his teeth dripping ecstasy as blood wilts beneath.

Closing his eyes, darkness overcomes light, as her crying and his cries linger in the night.

A face appears on Half Dome, the moon, and even on Mars, a luminescent bird glows green through the aurora borealis, a rock formation creates a man’s silhouette,

a dog stares from the wood grain on a closet door.

We see a monster in the bark of a tree, the shape of a woman inside half an orange, a cross in the evening stars, find Jesus in a slice of bread.

Jack of All Trades

Courtney Andrade

I’m the Jack of all trades

And the master of none.

I remembered the first time I’d heard this phrase complete. I don’t remember the book

Or the day of the week. But it struck me so quickly. An unfortunate thought

That this could describe me.

As much as I fought

To suppress the idea

That I’d never aspire

I’d be spinning my tire

Never to climb any higher. Sometimes I feel I will never have won

I’m the jack of all trades

And the master of none.

I’m the jack of all trades

And the master of none.

I never make friends

Or go have any fun.

I love my family

All my three of my boys. We play with the neighbors

And make way too much noise.

I want to give them

All they could ever deserve

But I’m afraid to step up

I don’t have the nerve.

There’s a fear that consumes me

It eats me inside.

It drives me to tears

It’s all of my fears

That when they have aged

And pressed on in years.

One thought will continue to ring in their ears,

“My mom, she was great, She was second to none,

But if I’m being honest,

When all’s said and done; She was a jack of all trades

And the master of none.”

The jack of all trades

But the master of none.

I’ve read all the books

Annotated each one. With interests that range

From the solemn, to fun, My need to spread knowledge Has driven my soul, To study mathematics, To share what I know. I love to help others

To follow their passion, Although I’m left behind To buy and sell fashion. One day when each woman Has surpassed her desires And she thinks back to me

Stuck behind stoking fires. She’ll reminisces with her partner And flatly recall

I was the master of no trades

But the jack of all.

I’m the jack of all trades

And I’m happy with that, I’m well read and thoughtful I know historical facts.

Up on current events

I’ve never gone to college

I’m desperately working To further my knowledge

With this amateur post

With pity you’ll make fun, At the jack of all trades

And the master of none.

I’m the jack of all trades

And the master of none.

I’m good for my wit

If you tolerate puns

I provide for my family

I fill all their needs

But I’m afraid when I’m buried

And my epitaph reads

She’s the Jack of all trades

And the master of none.

The Last Of Us

Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann

8 episodes

The HBO Max series The Last of Us is an adaptation of the popular video game series of the same name that follows Joel (played by Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey) during their journey across the remains of America after a fungal infection has caused a global wide pandemic killing millions and collapsing society. The series was adapted by Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame and Neil Druckmann a writer of the original video game. Combining Mazin’s showrunning brilliance and Druckmann’s knowledge of the original game The Last of Us pulled off what may be one of the best game-to-television adaptations in recent memory. The show became an overnight success amassing viewership numbers that rivaled HBO’s latest hit The House of Dragon and recently the series was greenlit for a second season.

The Last of Us had a nine-episode season an example of HBO’s recent interest in straying from their ten-episode season standard. This was a bold choice considering the show had almost two full episodes dedicated to the back stories of characters that were dead by the end of their respective episodes. The series may have benefited from one more episode as the last two episodes certainly could have used more time, displaying a flaw in HBO’s strategy. Despite the tight pacing, the show’s earlier character-focused episodes display what led to the show becoming a cultural touchstone of 2023. Episode three may be considered one of the better episodes of television to air in 2023 and is sure to become a longstanding part of LGBTQ+ television history. The episode focuses on the character of Bill (played by Nick Offerman) and his unlikely relationship with idealist Frank (played by Murray Bartlett). Offerman’s portrayal of Bill is particularly riveting. Throughout the episode, Bill goes from a survivalist walled off from the world both physically and emotionally to a man so in love he is willing to die for the man he loves. Despite the sad ending, it was ultimately one of the most hopeful episodes of the season capturing the human need for love and

companionship.

The season was packed with breakout performances managing to give both well-known stars and fresh faces a moment to shine. For example, Nico Parker’s stint as Sarah was just as impactful as the performance by veteran actress Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen.

Another standout performance was Lamar Johnson as Henry a man on the run with his brother Sam played by the young talent Keivonn Montreal Woodard. Additionally, Storm Reid’s Riley was a particularly poignant performance sure to be remembered by audiences for years to come. While the guest performances were certainly a highlight of the series, they of course were eclipsed by the brilliance of Pascal and Ramsey’s gripping portrayals of Joel and Ellie.

Despite being a post-apocalyptic show The Last of Us is much more focused on the humanity of the characters than action or horror. While HBO certainly spared no expense when creating the fungi-infected creatures that caused many to question their love for mushrooms, the series’ best episodes see the horrifying creatures as mere background pieces. Despite the horrific creatures and action-pack sequences the most gripping aspects of the show lie in Joel and Ellie’s respective struggles to let the other in. Pascal delivers one of his strongest performances to date as the grief-stricken and rage-filled Joel who begrudgingly takes on the job to transport Ellie for a rebel group. As the series goes on, Pascal brilliantly captures Joel’s struggle with his growing paternal affection for Ellie. Ramsey meets Pascal with a career-making performance as Ellie an orphan tasked with carrying the burden of being a possible savior for all humanity. Ramsey captures all of the rage, humor, and fear that made Ellie such a compelling character in the video game. While both Pascal and Ramsey are phenomenal, the magic of the show lies in watching them on screen together. By the final episode, the tension does not lie in Joel’s gunfight or the rug-pulling twist instead, the relationship between Joel and Ellie is the main point of concern.

With two stars as leads, a plethora of guest stars, and an HBO-sized budget behind it The Last of Us is certain to continue to be a powerhouse. Undoubtedly, the series will be on HBO’s rotation following in the footsteps of groundbreaking shows such as Game of Thrones and Succession. While it may be a while before the next season of The Last of Us airs it is clear that the show will remain a cultural mainstay for years to come.

Autumn Andersen

California State University, Stanislaus

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

John Francis Dayley & Jonathon Goldstein

Paramount Pictures

2 hours & 14 minutes

Dungeons

& Dragons:

Honor

Among Thieves directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathon Goldstein follows a ragtag team of adventurers as they go on a quest to defeat the evil red wizard. The film begins with two characters, Edgin and Holga (Chris Pine & Michelle Rodriguez), imprisoned after a heist gone south, making an appeal to be released. They recount the events leading up to their imprisonment in an attempt to curry favor with those on the board. Edgin’s story details the events that led to his wife’s death, and subsequent life of thievery.

After years of this, one final quest to get an ancient relic that will bring one person back to life. He uses this as his one last job to get his wife back, which of course, goes terribly wrong.

After their escape from prison, Edgin, a bard, and Holga, a barbarian, make their way back to Edgin’s daughter, whom they had left behind to go on the heist a year prior. After betrayals and near death experiences, the two are stuck in a position to figure out a new way to get his daughter back. They add more adventurers to their team in order to successfully save their daughter and retrieve the relic. Simon, a half elf sorcerer, and Doric, a tiefling druid, join the team for various reasons, as is common in most D&D campaigns.

The film details perfectly what players might run into in a typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign, from spells like fog cloud, to asking a corpse too many questions. I found myself laughing at aspects that I had done myself while playing the game, but also found those without that experience were able to laugh as well. The film is full of inside jokes and lore that fans of the game can enjoy, but are not detrimental to those who have not played. It does well to cater to both audiences allowing everyone to enjoy their experience at whatever stage of knowledge of the game they have. There was just enough detail to allow for players to feel

excited to see aspects of the game, and for non players to enjoy a very well written fantasy comedy.

The cast was also very well done in my opinion, and they all played their characters beautifully. A particular favorite was Rege-Jean Page’s performance of Xenk, the paladin. Though Page had a more minor role in the film compared to the rest, he captured the characteristics of a paladin well. As someone who has played a paladin before, I thought he did a great job of capturing the essence of what it means to be a paladin in the games. Very charismatic, and someone who will jump in to help others, but also not willing to compromise values. Every actor played their character exactly the way one would see in the game, but this was a personal favorite of mine.

If you love the fantasy genre, and want to see something with lots of comedy, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the perfect film for you. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll see a cameo of Bradley Cooper. Running at two hours and fourteen minutes, it’s long enough to get lots of story, while not being too much to be overwhelming. All in all it was a great experience, and I would recommend seeing it if you have the chance.

Brittany Groves California State University, Stanislaus

Girl of My Dreams (Deluxe)(2022)

FLETCHER

The deluxe edition of FLETCHER’s Girl of My Dreams album was released on November 18th, 2022 and consists of 17 songs lasting a total of 49 minutes and 12 seconds. Her official debut album contains a pop sound with a combination of electronic and instrumental backings that work to provide a catchy relatable hook to draw listeners in while filled with emotion that keeps them listening. The track list includes the songs “20 Something,” “I Think I’m Growing?” “Girl Of My Dreams,” “Healing,” “Suckerpunch,” “Birthday Girl,” “Better Version,” “Sting,” “Becky’s So Hot,” “Conversations,” “Guess We Lied...” “Serial Heartbreaker,” Holiday,” “Her Body Is Bible,” “I Love You Bitch,” “For Cari,” and “Better Version (feat. Kelsea Ballerini)”.

The album consists of a range of songs from slower to more upbeat that give it a nice pace of playability for different times. The experiences articulated in her music are also easy to connect to for listeners even as they get more targeted to her personal sense such as “For Cari,” expanding past that.

The opening track being set as “20 Something” sets a tone for the album providing an experiential insight that allows you to sink into the lyrics and really feel like you’re at a certain stage.

FLETCHER’s music has always had a knack for expressing stages of relationships as well, and songs such as “Sting,” “Better Version” and “Guess We Lied...” continue that trend. They articulate sensations from attachments and memories that remain in the aftermath of a relationship, to the hurt from the personal changes you might wish you could have brought to a previous one. The back and forth of “Better Version” about what two parties put into a relationship that has ended resonates strongly in lines such as “And I fixed your heart but mine still hurts / And now some other version is gonna get the better version of you,” closing with the reverse “And you fixed my heart but the thing that hurts / and now some other person is gonna get the better version of

me”. That feeling of knowing what happened in one relationship is going to change you for the next, but that those shifts and improvements came after something that you had to move on from to change articulates a story that many people go through that I think can easily draw one into her sound.

In a more upbeat sense, the songs “Suckerpunch,” “Becky’s So Hot,” and “Her Body is Bible” provide her style of more hyped-up songs, that still tell their own story. There is a sexuality to her music that I appreciate.

Along with that, is the interspersion of songs like “Healing,” “I Think I’m Growing,” “Conversations,” “Holiday,” “I Love, You Bitch,” and “For Cari,” that feel increasingly personal and connect the listener to her along with her sound. They feel like she is talking to herself in a way that opens up that personal window that music so often gives you access to. The various songs also place several meanings to the title Girl of My Dreams told even more strongly through the title track.

The albums flow is easy to listen to all the way through, in stages, or on shuffle, operating as a work listeners can jump into at any stage. Her vocals and style mesh together in a complete way, and fans of this style of music are likely to be fans of this album. FLETCHER’s work definitely feels like it speaks particularly to a certain age range, but it also does not feel exclusive in that same sense. I would personally recommend this album.

Essence Saunders California State University, Stanislaus

Woman with a Fan: On María Blanchard.

Poems by Diane Kendig. Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-951651-85-5

$14.95

Woman with a Fan is poet Diane Kendig’s historical inquiry and personal journey into the life and career of turnof-the-century Spanish painter María Blanchard. Although Blanchard worked in Paris among the modernists, she was little celebrated in her lifetime, nearly forgotten after her death, and only recently rediscovered. Her quintessential Cubist painting, Woman with a Fan, is now prominently displayed in Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum, “a floor above Picasso, next to Rivera,/ where we see her work large as theirs for the first time.”

In the sixteen poems and three essays that comprise Woman with a Fan: On María Blanchard, Kendig meditates on Blanchard’s art, life, and character and explores other points of connection between herself and her subject. In Blanchard’s short lifetime (1881-1932), marked by poverty and ill health, she produced representational and abstract works of great poignancy. She was born in Santander, Spain, in the same year as Picasso, and she suffered from a congenital birth deformity: “a kyphosis, which is to say, a double deviation of the vertebral column with posterior and lateral curvature... with a prominent humpback.” Like her New England contemporary, the great neglected writer Katharine Butler Hathaway, who had a similar deformity, she developed a hypersensitive awareness of others. Like Hathaway, too, she was rejected romantically because of her appearance, and, like her, she channeled her unfulfilled yearnings into her powerful art. Blanchard’s painting, “The Ice Cream Cart,” features a debonair young man, walking away from the gaily decorated cart with his ice cream prize, while a tiny girl, appearing almost as a baby, strains in vain on tiptoe to reach the cart, her dress billowing over her back and her cane discarded on the ground, forever condemned to frustration.

In Kendig’s poem commemorating the painting, “The Ice Cream Cart,” she relates how, at first glance, she missed the figure of the straining girl, focusing instead on the satisfied boy. Not until her “friend, a nurse, said, ‘Look at the girl behind the cart,’” did she notice Blanchard’s depiction of herself as a child, “barely able to stretch/to hold the ledge of the cart.” Short in stature herself, Kendig identified with Blanchard’s physical frustrations:

...I remember that reach to the shelf that held suckers at the bank, to the bookshelf where the librarian waved for me to get books for myself though I was not tall enough to.

Kendig also identifies with Blanchard’s attachment to her only sister. “In the depths of her penury, she bought back her painting Two Sisters from a collector because she felt the collector could not appreciate what it meant to her, sister of two sisters as she was.”

There are poems about Blanchard’s individual paintings and her complicated connections to Picasso and Diego Rivera. Both notorious womanizers, Picasso and Rivera rejected Blanchard as a sexual partner because of her hunchback, yet Picasso admired her enough to attend her funeral, and Rivera, though he shared a studio in Paris with her, was unable to pressure her to wait on him, like Lupe, Frida, and the other women in his life.

In her poem, “The Communicant,” Kendig places Blanchard’s self-portrait as an adult wearing a girl’s first communion dress within the genre of First Communion portraits and the historical context of Spanish art, comparing it to Velázquez’s seminal painting, Las Meninas. Blanchard painted The Communicant, Kendig tells us, after her grant money ran out, and she “had to leave Paris/and settle with her mother on Goya Street in Madrid.” Blanchard’s relationship with her mother was troubled. Now we know that “fetal injuries are rare in cases of falls..[and] her deformity appears to be more suggestive of osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease.” Yet Blanchard’s mother was blamed for her daughter’s congenital deformity: “María’s disability came from her mother’s fall from a horse.” As a result, her mother was “cold and distant...María’s mother felt the shame and guilt of creating an imperfect child...caus[ing] an insurmountable rift.” It must have been unpleasant

for both women when Blanchard was forced by poverty to return to her mother’s house, yet in “The Communicant,” the subject’s expression is enigmatic.

In “Lorca’s Elegy,” Part One of her multi-section poem, “Speaking of María Blanchard,” Kendig offers a new translation of Lorca’s elegy of Blanchard. In her essay, “Afterword: Speaking of María Blanchard,” she relates how Lorca’s elegy introduced her to Blanchard and explains some of the creative decisions she made in her translation. For Kendig, Blanchard’s life offers an inspiring example of perseverance despite difficulty: “Perhaps just by being María Blanchard, she is giving...a lesson in getting the work done, despite disability and pain, despite poverty, despite gender and the lack of critical acclaim. Despite all that, an artist finally is not necessarily the one with wealth or health or fame: she is the one who creates art.”

Insights like these might seem self-evident, yet we constantly need to be reminded of them. Kendig’s Woman with a Fan: On María Blanchard is a poignant introduction to the artist and her life, as well as a living testimonial to the influence that one artist can exert on another, despite living in different eras, speaking different languages, and working in different genres.

Anne Whitehouse University Seminar Affiliation, Columbia

gulp/gasp

Serena Piccoli Moria Books

(2022)

ISBN 9798986942100

$12.95

With themes of righteous anger and a burning sense of injustice, gulp/gasp is Serena Piccoli’s latest collection of poetry that aims to touch hearts and aggravate minds. Piccoli brings into this latest poetry collection her social and political knowledge, as an Italian poet, playwright, photographer, and artistic director. Her pieces bring attention to unsaid horrors happening all around the globe, from the rape of Yazidi Kurdish women to the struggles associated with the COVID-19 lockdowns. Each section of the chapbook brings a new perspective that further highlights the sickness that is white imperialism coupled with late-stage capitalism. Piccoli gives voice to those who are forced to gulp down a daily dose of oppression and allows those who suffer to sputter and gasp breath into their tired lungs.

Piccoli organizes the chapbook into six sections: gulp, we call ourselves human, zanzibar island, amore, britannia, and gasp, and in between the gulp and gasp are moments of realization, defiance, fear, love, and heartbreak. In the first piece of gulp, “it’s honey, darling!,”

Piccoli sets the stage beautifully: “we all stand outside tongue out / to lick one drop of acid rain / and imagine it’s honey” (lines 4-6). As a collective, it is all too common for us the West to wait patiently for our turn—for our hard work to pay off, for the American Dream to come to us, finally. We accept acid rain, not just blandness but active harm, into our bloodstream, because that is all that seems attainable. We pretend all is well, that this is the time to be alive, that we have made so much progress as a socially just world—but, in truth, we have not. Piccoli burns this truth in neon lights, using simple language and effective imagery to educate the ignorant, investigate hypocrisies, and inspire rightful, long-awaited rage.

One of the more memorable pieces to me comes from the “we call

ourselves human” section; its title is “shingal.” In this piece, Piccoli provides an opportunity for those who don’t know about the kidnapping, beating, and rape of thousands of Yazidi girls and women from the Sinjar district of Iraq in 2014 to learn and to feel anger. The piece is from a Yazidi woman’s perspective as she tries to gain sanctuary on Mount Shingal. She remarks, “some humans are more humans than others / some women are less people than others” (lines 10-11). In only a handful of words, Piccoli describes the ugly truths that these women and others oppressed face continuously: people have the capacity for cruelty, and they exercise it often; some people are less human—and thus deserving of less humanity—than others.

While many pieces in the collection are sobering and enraging, there are some poems that inspire peace and hope for those who are used to the abuse of the Western world. For example, in the section “amore,” Piccoli demonstrates that the world has brightness among the pain in a number of heartwarming pieces. The poem “among ruins” is one of these pieces, dedicated to LGBT immigrants who are shunned from society. Two strong warriors fight against scrutiny and possible punishment, and while loving their lover, one says to the other, “I’m more powerful than any collapse in law that can take you / away / while on these stones / we bloom in paper” (lines 28-31). Such lines are saddening as they are encouraging: while these lovers may have to face prejudice and injustice in the world, they have their moment, together, eternalized on the page.

Piccoli closes gulp/gasp with declarations that cannot be misconstrued and demand immediate attention. In the section “gasp,” Piccoli writes more on hardships that have just happened or are still happening to people everywhere due to government response to COVID-19. “#EnglishFreeSchoolMeals in January 2021,” for instance, uses real data from UK school lunches to illustrate the meager provisions made by the UK government. In her words, “this is not poetry / this is poverty” (lines 26-27). gulp/gasp addresses disillusionment directly and makes supremely evident the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of the world; instead of dancing around perpetrators, Piccoli is clear who and what is perpetuating human pain and why. With her illuminating and enraging chapbook, Piccoli urges readers to learn, to feel, and to act.

Andrea Wagner California State University, Stanislaus

Dedication

This year’s journal is dedicated to those impacted by the continued systematic injustices including but not limited to our governments continued inaction toward gun reform and the persecution of our trans and LGBTQ community. We encourage our readers to join us in researching the greater impact to act on genuine modes of change. Some resources are momsdemandaction.org and the trevorproject.org.

Commitment to Anti-Racism

The faculty and staff of Penumbra stand in unity with communities of color,who have long been the victims of systemic racism, violence, and murder. We will not allow those assassinated by police brutality and white supremacy to be forgotten. With a heavy heart, we remember George Floyd, Auhmed Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, as well as the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Paul Andre Michels, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz. We also turn our minds to the lesser known victims, the ones who are taken away each day, but whose stories do not appear on the national news. Even though we may not know their names, their absense will be felt throughout the world. We owe these people fundamental changes in our local, state, and national governments to espouse equality for all and root out systemic racism. We are outraged by the acts of police brutality that continue to be committed against communities of color and we support the efforts of protesters to reveal and rebuke the legacies of white supremacy from our core national ideologies. Racist systems have long been present in the publishing industry and we are committed to breaking racist publishing processes and standards. We are dedicated to promoting, highlighting, and celebrating the work of Black, Latinx, Native American, Asian American, LGBTQIA+ writers and artists and all groups marginalized by systems of hate and oppression. We make this commitment today, tomorrow, and always to diversify our publications and uproot oppressive practices and ideologies that attempt to silence marginalized groups. Penumbra rejects those attempts at silencing and offers a space to amplify the voices of the oppressed.

Acknowledgements

Penumbra would like to thank Stan Prints for their exemplary work and support. Our gratitude and thanks also go to the English Department for being the foundation from which Penumbra has grown. Thank you to Dr. John Wittman (Department Chair), our former advisor, Timea Ewing and Tula Mattingly for their invaluable guidence and support of the journal. This publication would not have been possible without the hard work, dedication, and artistic vision of our Co-Editorsin-Chief, Autumn Andersen and Andrea Wagner. The Penumbra Staff would like to give a thank you to our faculty advisor Jarred White for promoting innovation and a work ethic in our staff that allowed us to bring the journal to life. We would also like to thank our graduate students, Brittany Groves and Essence Saunders, who provided invaluable assistance and guidence. We would like to extend our gratitude to those not mentioned for their continuous support throughout this entire process: thank you for helping to make Penumbra possible.

Cover Art: “Pregnancy” and “Nurturing” by Peipei Li

All rights revert to the contributors. Penumbra is indexed in the Humanities International Index. Content © 2023

Penumbra

Department of English

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Penumbra@csustan.edu

PeumbraOnline.org

Staff Favorites

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Martina Bekasha- Madam and Eve

Ree Bowman- “Beautiful”

Marc Anthony Briones- Falling in Love is Like Losing a Dog

Camryn Carpenter- Cat eye

Odalis Guillen- Madam and Eve

Tania Gutierrez Madina- Madam and Eve

Jennifer Lopez- Cat eye

Robbie Montes-Yepez- Ice Storm

Dylan Rosenow- Climbing a Date Tree

Garret Compston- Cries in the Night

Lyla Mazuelos- Climbing a Date Tree

Andrea Wagner- The Body Keeps The Score

Essence Saunders- Feral

Brittany Groves- green

Autumn Andersen- Penelope’s Joy