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Dear Reader, Hello. Welcome. Welcome back, if you’ve been here before. If not, and you’ve accidentally stumbled here from some wayward place in the tomb of the internet, I hope you don’t feel lost for too much longer. Stay awhile. I write this from my balcony at 3am, the Witching Hour. The sky is black and bursting with thick, swollen clouds that have darkened and bloated from hours of building rain. Arcs of lightning dance between them, crackling the sky in jolts of electricity that make the trees shiver. I feel its power in the taste of burnt orange on the tip of my tongue and the sizzle of static on the hair of my arms. The pressure swells, then droops. The air feels alive, humming under pops and snaps of hot light, smelling of sweat and singed rain, clinging to the sidewalk and damp, lonely alleyways. Together we wait, flushed from the thrill and lust that comes with knowing you can be struck at any moment. Summer is almost over. But the storm is still coming. This issue of Foolish is jarring, illuminating, breathtaking. The past few months seemed to slip by quietly, but it was time that we spent wandering, circling, wondering, hoping. Some of us traveled to distant places. Others found their way back, wherever “back” may be, because there were more things to be discovered. We hope that you discover some of those things in the pages of this issue alongside the haunting voices of our incredible contributors, who chose to reveal parts of themselves that were bursting with all the power and fury and hurt and beauty of a summer storm. To them, we say thank you; your words, art, and photography stunned us from the beginning. And as always, thank you for sharing your gifts with us. Rain has started to fall, now. There’s no thunder, but I know it must be out there, somewhere, because the lighting is as strong and magnificent as ever. I hope that Foolish 10.5 ignites you the same way it did us, reader. Enjoy. Always yours,
Madeleine
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Editor in Chief
Editors Madeleine Ackerburg
Editor in Chief
Cailin Hall
Creative Director
M Clark
Managing Editor
John McAtee Bobi Knox Molly Erickson Chloe Tharp
Treasurer Photo Editor Design Editor Design Assistant
Ebbie Benson
Writing Editor
Aspen Taylor
Writing Editor
Marriah Talbott-Malone Writing Editor Gretchen Lenth
Web Editor 3
Contents ode to summer or descent to a standstill
6
untitled
6
i almost killed something
8
Midnight Train
9
Which Way Now
10
Oh? Buni ☺☻
12
Looking Down
13
Jesus, Etc.
14
Space Age
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self regulation
18
Lost in Time
19
bloodstream
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untitled
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Limbo of an Open Wound
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untitled
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contributors Bobi Knox
6, 12, 13
Alexis Folkers Jacob Lietz Georgia Sampson Noah Mitchell Mary Grevas
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10, 19
Emily Greenlund
18
Amanda Pendley 20, 23
6
Olivia Smith
24-27
14
Shalini Jasti
8
9 16
Sophia Charpentier
22
Fools Magazine is generously funded by the Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing, The School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Undergraduate Student Government. the ideas and opinions expressed in this magazine are not representative of the University of Iowa
a thank you to our sponsors 5
ode to summer
by Jacob Lietz
untitled by Bobi Knox
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I’ve always hated the summer with its heat and sweat and smell and long drives in hot cars with the windows down, welcoming the wind to curl my hair in ways that cover my face or nose and this might be the only good thing about summer because the less I’m seen the better and inspiration never comes when my mind is distracted on how I smell while heat and sweat trill down my back and sides till they fill a tub I’d prefer not to be in and I’ve read lots of books during the summer whose messages I’d forget by the winter’s due and I’ve also forgotten the names of new friends as I google how to get better at remembering and how to get people to be your friend and how to get more likable and how to get a tub to drain and how to get inspiration when you’ve been looking at the same ceiling for a year and a half with so much contempt that
or descent
to a standstill
you’d prefer the whole room burn down than accept the obvious and the summer scares me while I listen to the radio and hear songs that sound happy but really depict my descent to a standstill and at least I’m reminded to drink more water so my skin doesn’t peel as much after I’ve scrubbed the bumps away and all I have are bruises and irritation and I’ve lost family to the summer and then I lost a friend four months later which made it feel like summer all over again and maybe I lost myself then too and that was the summer that lasted all year and made me think that the White Witch was onto something by never letting Christmas come, just the bitter cold of October and November which were also part of the summer when I had to worry about how I smelled in a tight suit while I tried not to cry lying in the same room under the same ceiling imagining how the flames would dance around the fan before kissing my toes and taking my hair away, so I would never have to worry about hiding again, and as the fire spreads and consumes with its loving nature and all merciful hatred I’d have the thought that maybe the summer would never end and I’d be stuck in the room forever.
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8
Midnight Train by Noah Mitchell
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Alexis F
10
Folkers
11
Bobi Knox
Oh? Buni ☺☻ 12
L o o k i n g D o w n
13
Jesus, Etc. by Georgia Sampson
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It is between stained glass windows that I enshrine everyone I’ve Ever held as they fall on top of me, mumbling moments Of sweet confessions that I never asked to hear. When I pray, a voice tells me to sever ties With attraction. Possibly because I am drawn to Men who can’t remember my best friend’s Name even after I whispered her praises into their ears. The type of men that forget my middle initial after I Show them the tattoo that I keep tucked underneath Black and white lace.
No, those are not the men we waste our time on, my mother tells me. Still, I see them everyday And neglect to tell her. They tell me to Come by anytime I want, voices whine when I listen to them sing sweet nothings that I Whisper into hymns the next day, Praying to keep them, counting them Like beads on a rosary. I confound these men with a god that I don’t know Because every time I was asked to pray, it was for Something I did wrong. So I spoke to god stunted through Tears. A fault that I can only say was taught to me By my father, who screamed phrases that were Holier than me.
Every man I want rises on the weekend. And, before they perish on Sunday, I try to Devote myself to them. Still, they won’t let me. It’s the same. It all ends the same. Alone, I beg for them to come back and, when They don’t show for their resurrection, I ask them to tell me something divine. But I rarely hear anything Beyond how pretty I looked In the light when we met and then silence, Leaving me to ask whether they existed at all. Love, like the last missing testament, Will come if I act vigilant. My mother asks what I have been doing for the Last twenty years and I tell her About a man who I confused For Jesus in a grocery store. I thought he was gentle and kind, The way he cradled the orange in His hand made me want to kneel before him.
“You should have known, though,” she says in response. “There’s a difference between Jesus and Jesus and citrus. Your father should’ve told you that.”
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16
Space Age
Mary Grevas 17
emily greenlund
18
self regulation
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blood bloodstream by Amanda Pendley
I.
it is cut off season, highrise weather and I follow the blood as it trickles down I am not a mother. My mother is all blood and no bone. doesn’t leave room for herself to be a knife. to jab in all the wrong places she is self-conscious of her soft
slips herself under the doorways when the clock chimes yesterday/ tomorrow oozes her way to the nearest river, gutter, current, rain water. sneaks past the guards strolls her easy gait down I-35 in the dead morning makes her way across the country, to the condensation on my window, the sweat gripping the knobs of my spine and I rise awake wet my tongue, bite down, taste blood she is here in this body-stream, this self-taped white noise machine, a breathing papercut, an entry point she seeps, I inhale cradled under lamplight, a drunk twenty-something, a body of water dancing with an IV like the way she used to after surgery. too much displaced matter, this tetris body, this bag of bones, they have drained me of myself. I stare into the drain asking my mother to bring me back to life I apologize for taking me away, she shudders and pools at my feet
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stream II. the streetlights turn back on at four a.m., I take me and my now bloody shoes under them, talk to a ghost who is still alive in her hollow she stores me in her swelling, in that terrified amorphous heart that changes shape as she shifts, as I shift within it. I have soft but am not made of it my body is built like a skeleton house, bare bones for those who can bear to see her shoulders pick up weight procure a match, and burn herself down she stores her love for others in places she sometimes can’t reach in herself. I ask myself why they make women’s pockets so small. we store our sorries in our bloodstream. my teeth are sharp enough to cut deep. all of my skin has become muscle that shouldn’t have to remember where she’s been. my mother does not remember where she’s been. my mother does not remember who she’s been. she has eclipsed herself. the wane has wiped the memory clean. her body remembers me. I still feel the urge to hold her tighter. I am seedling, I am overgrowth. there is still water pooling my feet I try to soak it back up. mixed water/ mixed blood
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untitled
sophia charpentier
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I think I am sterilizing the needle my mouth and an apology slips out. to stitch up a black hole when
every time I open I think it is useless it would hurt less for pain
extracted. it would to be to enter than
I think I am done with painting over the accretion. I think I am done children, the words I keep hidden
a protective layer sheltering my storyfrom outside in fear
they will come to know the wrench of an outing. I am not an open book; laid bare to avoid the ache of being I think that this is maybe how happen, this uncovering of holeness.
I am a gaping wound lacerated accessible. most accidents I understand this,
though I am too tired to heal another wax-rip shriek.
In 2018 there was a man who fell a sculpture at the Serralves Contemporary in Portugal called “Descent into Limbo” that consisted of a small square room in the ground, which in illusion
into an art exhibit; Art Museum by Anish Kapoor with a black hole looked endless
but in actuality was only two and a half meters deep. When asked about the incident, Kapoor replied
I think I would mourn for those who have fallen I think I would have sterilized my whole self in of amending travesty, in attempts of
“What can I say? It is a shame.”
into me attempts getting them out alive.
by Amanda Pendley
limbo of an open wound 23
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Olivia Smith 27