EDITORS NOTE We have sacrificed sleep so that you can’t sleep, wondering what the things presented here mean. A poem should haunt you, so that after you’ve drank a cup of hot tea, downed NyQuil, and taken a shower, it sticks in your mind, pulsing. Picture a girl in a darkened restaurant, or a broken man with haunting eyes. Feel the snip of craft scissors, or the hum of a wasp in a web. From the taste of a crimson popsicle to the sudden ceasing of eastern rain, I hope this journal stays with you, so that when you’re fifty years old, mowing the lawn or driving a kid to school, you remember the lost kid on the cover, holding onto a torch, and want to dig through your college belongings, searching for this journal.
Lillie Salazar 2020
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CONTENT POETRY 07 To Dance With All One’s Might | Clark Hubbard 09 Late Afternoon In Nanning, China | Joel Holland
PROSE 03 An Unfinished Ballad | Elizabeth Caldwell
ART 06 Untitled | Kyle Wright 08 Storms on the Horizon | Alison James 12 Lifted Up | Carolyn White
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AN UNFINISHED BALLAD wake up and walk to my kitchen one s Saturday morning. No one is around, s and I wonder where my mom is. All is quiet. The sun is at my favorite point in the sky. The rays fall through the windows at a perfect angle, illuminating the ivory on the piano keys and skidding off of the glass pitcher filled with water and sliced lemon. I stare out the window to take it all in when something catches my eye on my front porch, about five feet from the window.
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A baby wasp is trapped in a spiderweb. Not the center of the web, but just one strand of it. The wasp is going insane too, spinning around. It tries to fly, but I think one of its little legs is stuck, and it’s struggling to get out of this web. I hate wasps. When I was little, I didn’t believe they existed before The Fall. I still don’t. So when I see this smaller-thanaverage wasp stuck in a web, I am almost excited. “Yeah,” I think. “Serves you right. One of your cousins stung me last week, and I can still see the welt.” That’s when my eyes follow the one shiny strand of the web up to the top where the
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Written By
Elizabeth Caldwell
maker of the web perches. She sits, barely visible in the daylight as her almost transparent body blends in with the web. A chill runs up my spine as I watch her stalk her prey. I wonder if the wasp sees her too, but by his adamant attempts at escape, I assume he does. For some reason this makes my stomach churn. This baby wasp was merely out and about one morning and all of the sudden, he’s trapped. He tries to fly, but he can’t, he’s stuck. He writhes in frustration and turns in terror, using every bit of stamina he has in his little wings to try to escape. He looks up. He sees his future killer, patiently waiting for him to run out of endurance, so she can restrain him and eat him alive. He knows this, that’s why he continues to struggle. Over and over he tries to fly, but the more he struggles the more he is stuck. The adolescent insect wonders if his parents will realize he is gone most of the morning and if they will ever find him, or if he will be a late-night snack for the spider and never be seen again. The spider sits, the wasp struggles, and here I sit, with the power to intervene and end it all.
Yet I don’t. I’d be messing with the balance of things. What if that wasp is destined to die? What if it grows up, stings a man in the neck, and the man dies because he is allergic to wasps? And what if that man would have been the father of the next great American inventor who would have constructed the first eco-friendly plastic or found the cure to the common cold? My mere interference could create a distortion in the fabric of future generations, and I can’t let that happen. I’m not in the business of playing God, anyway. I think about what would happen if I went out and freed the wasp (I’d probably get stung) and killed the spider. Or if I just killed the wasp and saved him from his inevitable misery. Or if I just had a tiny bow and arrow and was able to shoot the wasp and help out the spider. Fifteen minutes pass, and I’m still hunched over, elbows on the counter, watching the battle transpire. The spider moves in. The wasp continues to struggle. She lunges, she lands on top of the wasp. The wasp buzzes so fast I can’t see his wings, but he doesn’t escape. He’s spinning and spinning, the spider’s legs move feverishly around him. I keep waiting for the wasp to stop moving. She would surely trap his wings. He doesn’t
stop. He’s still moving, she’s still working. The wasp stings her. She slows down, but she keeps fighting. He messes up her work, she holds him down. He tries to sting, she dodges. She spins him around, using all eight legs to restrain and wrap him. I see the web forming around the wasp, and I think, “This is it. He’s a goner from here.” I hate wasps. I swear I hate wasps. But I don't know that I want to sit here and watch its death play out. Feels a bit like I’m an onlooker of a shark attack that just pulled out my camera. The spider backs up for a bit, no doubt taking a breather. The wasp wriggles furiously, but he isn’t going anywhere. She retreats up the web, catching her breath. The wasp uses all of his might to try to fly. I start to admire him. He really isn’t giving up. What courage, what strength. In the face of his killer, he fights. Tied down and trapped, he refuses to be an easy breakfast (I mean dinner). The spider moves in again, and I watch another battle. Spin. Wrap. Sting. Retreat. This process happens at least five more times, and my elbows start to get tired, but I’m far too invested in this fight to just walk away, despite the fact I have no idea whose side I am on. Thirty minutes.
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Finally, here it is. This has got to be the end. The spider has rested, the wasp has waited, both planning their attacks and defenses for the final round. The spider gets a running start down her web and charges for the wasp. The wasp waits, confidently, conserving every bit of energy for his last battle. I mentally pay him my respects and apologize for not intervening for the last half hour. There is surely no way he can make it out of this; although, part of me hopes I am wrong. I know full well that he will most likely grow up to sting me, but he is a warrior, and I admire him for it in these last moments. Just as the spider lands on him, my phone rings. Startled by the sound, I whip around and scan the surrounding countertops for my phone. I don’t see it anywhere. Why would I get a phone call at 8:30—I mean, 9:03—in the morning? Whoever it is will have to wait. I have to watch the end. The ringing stops, and I turn back around to look out the window. Wait, not this window. It was this window.
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No. No, it was definitely this window. Wasn’t it? Where is it? Where is the wasp? Where is the spider, the web, the fight scene? Where is it all? I frantically glance around, looking for any sign of the spider or wasp, but there is nothing. No trace that any fight happened at all, not even a strand of a web blowing in the breeze. I slam my head against a cabinet, enraged that I took my eyes off of the scene for even a split second. I watched for a total of 34 minutes, and in my head, I wrote a screenplay, I’m already talking to Pixar about an upcoming short. But in less than 34 seconds, the whole thing is over, and I have no idea how it ended. I look outside one more time, just to check, but there is not a single sign of life save for a small bug—so small I can’t even tell what it is—that barely hovers around where the greatest battle of my entire yard went down. I think about erecting some sort of memorial in the name of the unknown victor. Instead, I pour a bowl of cereal.
UNTITLED Kyle Wright
2020
Mixed Media
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TO DANCE WITH ALL ONE’S MIGHT
Written By
Clark Hubbard
Standing on top of a nine-thousand-foot mountain, the world went white, and I felt my ears pop. I’ve been scared of lightning ever since. I had a friend who used to lick nine-volt batteries for fun. His sixth birthday, all he asked for (and got) were batteries, and he licked them for hours at a Chuck E. Cheese’s. I didn’t understand but then I tried to plug in a Super Nintendo and felt my bicep cramp up, a wave roll up my forearm, my fingers tighten against themselves, and a quiet humming in my sternum before I was punched across the room by an unseen, all-powerful djinn. If lightning could do that, I would run into open fields on bad days to feel that coarse pulsing in my head, hoping to be flung sideways like a marionette. I want to dance before the storm with all my might. Teach me.
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STORMS ON THE HORIZON Alison James
2020
!Oil Paint
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LATE AFTERNOON IN NANNING, CHINA
Written By
Joel Holland
I.
II.
An old man sweeps
The same sky is seen by students
Small plastic bags into his proud dust pile.
Who really have been studying.
Sentries of glass shards scale the concrete wall
Sliding down rusted rails, recycled drops find
That wraps around
Landings on tiled balconies.
The better part of an unfinished street.
Below, umbrellas from the heat stay open, Their owners navigating traffic’s blended beeping
The grey sheet darkens over the city,
To catch a ride. The 2:05 bus has just arrived.
Greeting the first rain in forty-three days. A five-year-old girl runs back
Two men start playing a game of checkers
Inside her grandfather’s apartment
Under the awning by the noodle shop.
With a small green pail of water. She is pointing
A man on his dinner break takes
To changing shades outside and is soon
His bowl to the steps and watches. He slurps
Excused from watering her family’s Sansevieria
The last of his beef broth and saves the boiled egg for last.
And three weeping figs. Behind them on the wall, the names Of two people that haven’t spoken in fourteen years, Etched in Hanzi.
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IV.
V.
On his way back from badminton practice, a
A vendor taps his foot on the curb,
twelve-year-old boy
Waiting for a customer
Passes a homeless man on the dry bridge. He’s
To decide between sugar cane and sweet corn.
not sure Why, but he’s called it the dry bridge since he was a boy. He stares at chafed elbows where limbs should be. Water drips down thinned hair. Siblings whisper past a woman rushing home In her green marigold dress. The puddles squish Beneath her loose sandals, and her Husband is expecting dinner within the hour.
Then, he throws his cigarette down at the Feet of a winding concrete wall behind him, Crowned at the top by glass. Empty sidewalks on Ying Hua Road Lead to busy streets, Komatsu cranes and aging trees Linger over both. The rain stops.
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LIFTED UP Carolyn White
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2020
Mixed Media
UNTITLED
Written By
Joshua Welsch
The perspiring popsicle dripped crimson into your nails. There were no napkins, but you didn’t mind. This too was God blessing us in our lethargy, coating us in fructose to cover our bitterness. How could one be bitter, with that cover-up draped from your shoulders like sunlight?
When we were younger, our throats produced music instead of bile. Every butterfly was an angel, each streetlamp a ghost. You do not remember any of this now. But choirs still sing when you lick syrup from your fingers.
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BIOS Liz Caldwell, junior English major, intends to graduate only to one day own a dog farm far, far away from the rest of society. Rachel Edgren is a senior nursing major from
Washington state who loves her family, coffee, and spends most of her time reading nursing textbooks late into the night.
Hannah Heckart, junior photojournalism and public relations major, couldn’t think of a clever bio, so the Torch editors wrote this one for her. Joel Holland, junior Christian studies major, loves the jews, but isn’t one, so please stop asking.
Junior political science and English double major J. Clark Hubbard decided to add a J. to his name this time around, in an effort to appear like he has his life together.
Sara Lytle, senior English major, remembers 37% of what she learned in college.
Campbell Padgett, Junior communications major, does not words good.
Despite the accusations of some, Ben Pinkley, senior Chemistry major, is not the egg man, goo goo g'joob.
Lillie Salazar is a sophomore English major who
hates Modern No. 20 font.
Jessica Vaughn is a senior English major who
hopes no one finds out about her connections to [redacted].
Joshua Welsch is a Senior English Major who writes his poems in the Necronomicon… his words have awakened… they are behind you.
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EDITORIAL STAFF Joshua Welsch Lillie Salazar Lizzie McGaw
DESIGN EDITOR Emily Drost
FACULTY SPONSOR Bobby Rogers Melinda Posey
PRINTED BY
Tennessee Industrial Printing, Inc. in Jackson, Tennessee, 2020
DESIGN STAFF Eli Creasy Giovanna DeSouza Samory Gueye
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Union University | Jackson, TN