Frontier Mosaic 2016 by Frontier Mosaic

ISSUE 2: 2016

Frontier Mosaic is Oklahoma State University's premier student-run literary magazine. We are a patchwork of the best undergraduate fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Cover Art: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Untitledâ&#x20AC;? by Audrey Gleason

205 Morrill Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma www.frontiermosaic.com

Frontier ISSUE 2: 2016

STAFf Managing Editor — Katy Sanderlin Assistant Managing Editor — Jordan Thomas Fiction Coordinator

— Amanda Hays

Nonfiction Coordinator — Megan Adams Poetry Coordinator — Kristen Valenski Visual Art Coordinator — Matthew D. French

Editorial Staff Ashton Patton

Emma Shore

Lauren Crow

Brianne Grothe

Isabella Goulden

Lexi Gillson

Chloé Zellner

Jenny Ancik

Lincoln Shallenburger

Cody Zornes

Kate Dunham

Megan Mitchell

Colleen Maher

Kate Phillips

Molly Ross

Emily Hughes

Kenzie Shreve

Morgan Strawn

Hannah Shannon

Kyle Hesser

Taylor Wauhob

Table of contents Talitha Cumi -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 Portrait ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 Concealed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8

An Uninvited Mourner ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Mucho Take It Easy or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Floor ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Turkey Shooting-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Aloha, Oregon ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Untitled -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Matthew 6-28-33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Luke 12 (Berries) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Future ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 California ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Oklahoma ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 Self-Portrait -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 Mountain Triptych ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 52 Unforgivable ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54 The Top Floor ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 Memories of Edinburgh --------------------------------------------------------------------- 59 Killing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 Calico ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63 The Hollow --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65

Kory Kennedy

Talitha Cumi My sister speaks in silver leaves and sunsets. Her words form like clouds over the ocean. When we were young, I would fall asleep as she spoke so she would fold her words up and tear them into bits of gold and sprinkle them into my hands. Her bedroom was a field of giant teal flowers. She would disappear in her forest for weeks. When she came back she would sing galaxies to me. At night, we sat amongst her stars and smiled. She spoke in riddles to the rest of the world. My parents forced her to communicate in copper and nickel so that they could understand. During the summer, we slept beneath the universe on the trampoline. I ran my fingers through her hair as she slept and pressed my dream-stained hand against the pages of my notebook. Those nights she slept like an ice age. In the winter, we grew old and shared stories over cups of coffee. Her warm breath spoke ghosts into the air and they danced for us. Everything danced for us, and we held everything close and danced too.

Kory Kennedy

Portrait She was born in a garden scraped from the spaces between ribs and dust. Her body was more canvas than skin with the hues of a sunset swirling together like a watercolor painting. She held herself together like linen sheets drying on a clothesline. At age eight she traded her vocal cords for guitar strings and words for harmonies. Brown hair ran down her back like words on a book spine. She referred to her scars by the page number on which they occurred. I stayed with her for a week once. She made coffee every morning so early that the sun rose ahead of schedule to watch her through the window. She played classical records as we ate and spoke of California and Colorado. The smell from the kitchen and the sounds of the music met in the air above our heads and kissed. We sat on her beach of a couch and dipped our feet in the ocean of sunlight splashing in from behind us onto the wood floors. That is how I remember her.

Matthew 6-28-33 7

Maggie Rogers

Rachelle Gardner

Concealed I The lump in her chest felt like the time she swallowed a vitamin wrong and it was lodged in her chest for two days. Behind her eyes sat a pot of water on the stove and the piercing screams in her mind meant the water was heated and ready to be poured down her cheeks. Every part of her body simultaneously clenched. Her hands turned into one of those claw machines she gave up on after age 11. Tense and cold with fingers spread wide, but unable to grasp anything that she reached for. She wanted to yell so she could get it out of her system, but every time she opened her mouth nothing but a heavy yawn roared from her polished nude lips, her body and mind so exhausted that they condensed her to silent screams. She lied down. Sleep and when you

wake up you’ll forget why you were upset. Sleep and when you wake up you’ll have forgotten the words that hurt you. Sleep and when you wake up you’ll forget the pain that makes your chest hollow, not because you’re stone but because your once rhythmically beating heart has

turned into a muffled murmur and you wonder if this is what a bear feels during hibernation in the winter, so cold and so isolated. II Lists were constantly spinning through her mind. Gas bill, electric bill,

cable bill, rent. Toothpaste, coffee creamer, bananas, soap. Study, chapter seven, book report, quiz. Always rotating through her mind like the blades of a ceiling fan. Round and round at a constant pace that will never slow down until someone hits the switch. 8

III Does caring for your appearance make you superficial? What’s more feminine – reading cosmetic reviews or reading crockpot recipes? Why is someone who puts no effort into the face they show the world considered more of a role model than the woman who wants to put her

best face forward? Is it a sin to make self-improvements to the face that God created for her specifically? Is it wrong to conceal the dark circles resting under her sunken eyes to appear more awake? Studies suggest that attractive people are more likely to get hired.

IV She hated the idea of coffee shops. She doesn’t drink coffee to sit in a room full of strangers and aesthetically pleasing but fake brick walls to create a certain ambiance that gave coffee an obnoxious and

pretentious stigma. Her coffee came from one of her two coffee pots. One made a single serving at a time while the other made four. She knew the imaginary line that marked when to stop pouring the coffee into each of her mugs to leave enough room for the creamer to create

her perfect blend. Baristas didn’t get it. Her mom put Pepsi in her baby bottles so she was caffeine dependent before she had a full set of teeth. Two jobs, 6 classes, 2 teams, a year long internship and a new puppy in the family. Her options in life are sleep, success and social life but she can only choose two. She lost what it meant to go to bed. She took naps when she could and some happened to be at night. V “If you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t half ass it.” 9

VI They sat in between three green walls and a sliding glass door concealed by a pale blue curtain from the inside of the room. She’d never seen an anxiety attack before. Was bringing her boyfriend to the ER too overbearing? He hadn’t said much since they arrived and she didn’t dare let a single syllable leave her lips. He knew what he had done was wrong and she knew he was humiliated. Three o’clock on a Sunday morning. They both had an 8am class. The doctors pressed the needle through the veins bulging on the top of his hand she wanted desperately to reach for as she watched him resist the urge to ball a fist. 3 energy drinks, two servings of creatine and a Vyvanse he bought off his roommate. “I need an A on my exam. I have to

stay on the dean’s list to keep my honors scholarship. I can’t afford a B on this exam.” His complaints turned into a song on repeat and she couldn’t help him find the pause button. VII She never could make traveling decisions. Never ask her who she wants to ride with because whoever she picks will be wrong. She will sit in the backseat staring out the window watching the other car follow, analyzing every turn they make and keeping an eye on them praying to God that

both cars make it safely. What if something happened to them and she were in this car instead? What if something happens to them and she could’ve been the one to stop it? She cried every day for years when her mom left to and from work. She knew she had to drive through downtown Dallas, a highway that was on the news for an accident every day. Her dad was always falling asleep at the wheel. Her friends knew not to tease her and drive like a maniac.

They’d all made the mistake before and had to pull over to calm her down and to reassure her that everything was fine. Anytime someone drove, she made them call the second they arrived to their destination. Her boyfriend would drive home after an argument and no matter how

mad she was she always had to call to make sure he had made it home safely. Her grandma and sister once got stuck in a flash flood. Her grandmother’s ’98 Corvette barely hovered the ground. Rocks were sliding down the Arbuckle Mountains and all she could do was stay on

the phone with her sister with a numbing pain in her ear from holding back sobs. VIII When she sat down wearing shorts, she knew everyone was looking at

her thighs. How the cellulite was on display, almost begging for anyone’s attention. She was so hungry but she had already met her calorie intake, so she decided to sip on water. How did Ashley’s legs look like uncooked hot dogs? So tone, smooth and thin. Was she taking

Adderall? She had heard it makes you lose your appetite. Her hair wasn’t long enough. She bought biotin, B12, and had pinned 14 hair masks recipes guaranteed to make your hair grow longer and stronger. Her makeup drawer was overflowing and had moved to three

large mounds on the floor. She looked at her teeth, disgusted because she hadn’t whitened them once all week. Her skin tone was uneven and she tried everything to lighten the dark circles under her eyes. Her eyebrows had a horrible lack of definition and were close to resembling

Anne Frank’s classic but unflattering look. She always had to adjust her pants when she sat down to hide “the pooch.” She thought of nothing but her thighs jiggling as she walked.

IX His superstitions are enough to make her rip out her hair. But she knocks on wood anyway. She can’t sleep unless the tags on the blanket are at the foot of the bed and the pillows are spread out in order from largest to smallest. But he waits to shut off the light until she’s adjusted. It’s been three years. Without him, she’s simply not whole. Checking on her between classes to make sure she had lunch. Pouring the creamer into the lipstick stained mug. Waking up next to her after she slept to forget.

Casey Gilbert

An Uninvited Mourner Thank God I didn't have to eulogize that sonofabitch. As I sat in the musty pews at Red Acres Baptist Church, watching

plump old women and stoic young men alternating between blowing their noses and staring solemnly at the corpse in his casket, I kept asking myself what brought me to this place. I'm not especially religious, and the strong floral odors that come with funerals really put me off. Seriously, that gaudy pink and yellow wreath at the end of the coffin just about knocked me out when I walked past it. The stiff was even worse, because he looked less like the asshole I once knew and more like a sculpture of Orson Welles that was rejected by Madame Tussaud’s because it had melted a little bit. Pretty gnarly, for a man who was only forty two. But asking myself why I was in this house of the holy was an exercise in crazy, because I already knew what brought me here. The nebbish-y guy who actually did deliver the eulogy spelled it out pretty

nicely. “Today, we are here to celebrate the life of Jimmy Lee Densmore. A wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful friend, and generous heart who was beloved by all who knew him.”

I was here because every single word of that statement was a heinous crock of bullshit, and somehow, I still felt bad that he was dead. He was dead, and nobody else here had a clue who I was. For all they knew, I was just some girl he knew from somewhere. I felt bad that I was 13

more than that. I felt bad for all those stolen nights at America's Best Value Inn especially. Not exactly a romantic getaway, that place. But for our purposes, it was perfect. I remember all too well the knowing looks the front desk clerk used to give us, the faint buzzing sound from the heater in whatever room we got assigned to, the stench of cheap marijuana wafting in every now and again since it was the fanciest place south of the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman's Club. A distinguished fortysomething

with a neatly trimmed beard and a supervisor's job at a fast food chain doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would take a chubby geek like me for cheap thrills on a cheap queen sized mattress. Then again, even guys with supervisor's jobs like girls with hot librarian glasses; those

gargantuan lenses are the one thing that could make a face like mine look decent. The best times were the ones when he washed my hair after a particularly rough go-around on the starchy linen sheets. I loved the feeling of his fingers in my hair, and the fact that he always brought a bottle of Suave from home so that we didn't have to use the cheap travel size shampoos that are always on the edge of the bathtub. Does anybody actually like those things? Sometimes, I wonder if his wife uses that Suave too. I don't like talking about her, of course. But I felt bad for her, too. Based on the pictures on his Facebook, she was a homely woman, and I totally understood why he always called her his â&#x20AC;&#x153;little pigletâ&#x20AC;?. How could somebody frown that much in every single photograph? Even when she was on vacation at Myrtle Beach, her lips were curled into the kind of

scowl that's usually only reserved for obnoxious teenagers throwing rolls of Charmin at your house on Halloween. And how could anyone wear that much makeup? Nobody in their late twenties who doesn't have crow's feet and whose lips are that plump should look that much like a 14

member of K.I.S.S. Still, she had the one thing I never could have – his children, and I'd be a right awful person if I didn't feel at least a little bit bad for those children. Sometimes at night, I used to lie awake and wonder what their family dinners were like, and if they read bedtime stories each night and went to PTA meetings and kissed under the mistletoe at Christmas. I've never had anyone kiss me under mistletoe before, and Jimmy always promised me that one day, I'd get his kisses. He promised me that he didn't truly love her and said that she was a lazy

stupid slag and that on July 28th at 10 a.m., his divorce was going to be finalized and we wouldn't have to hide in a place that cost sixty bucks a night anymore. On July 28th, his car was still in the driveway at 10 a.m. On July 29th,

I asked him about it by way of a very angry voice mail. On July 30th, he lamented that he couldn't go through with it because he could not pay the outrageous fees his lawyer was charging, and how could a guy who makes fifteen bucks an hour afford such a thing? “I can help you out. I have eight hundred dollars set aside from my grandma. You can always pay me back later.” “No, baby. I can't take your money. I'll just have to wait 'till some other time. Fucking lawyers. They're so hungry for cash that they don't care about the people who go to them.” I felt so bad for him getting stiffed by the lawyer that I insisted once again that he take the money, and he did. It would be awhile before I found out that he used that money to buy his wife a diamond ring and a spa day. Since her Facebook posts indicated that he could only afford to

buy her drugstore cosmetics every week before that occasion, I guess fifteen bucks an hour really wasn't enough to afford life's necessities. But that's not important. What's important is that he wasn't “wonderful” as a husband, or a father, or a friend. And he certainly wasn't generous. 15

And now, I was going to tell the woman he'd lied to for the past four years all about our relationship. Because I was a complete bastard. And so was he. I'd thought of telling her about our relationship too many times to count. Every time I saw her post pictures of her new cosmetics kits from Walgreens or of their family night at Applebee’s, every cell in my body wanted to show up at their doorstep and reveal to her what kind of liar he was. That urge passed pretty quickly once I remembered that he

owned a gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it. Don’t you dare contact me at home, baby, he’d say. He was a damn good shot, and apparently, so was she. What a generous guy, indeed. If he was generous, he might admit that there must be something

really special about his wife. As I watched the skinny dork continue to prattle on about just what a fantastic human being Jimmy Densmore was, I looked to my left at Lybra Densmore and wished to God I could be in the wooden box instead of her husband. She was hardly a “little piglet” today, and had clearly laid off the bonbons in her distress over Jimmy kicking the bucket. In fact, I quite envied the way that black velvet looked on her hips. She looked as though she had died a little herself. Honestly, looking at her in person for the first time, I had to admit that she had a really nice complexion. A nice, rosy complexion, and the kind of pretty curls I wished I could have. I frowned slightly and turned my gaze back to the podium at the end of the altar. Strange how much I knew about this woman, and how precious little she knew about me. Sometimes, I wondered if she ever suspected a thing about her husband’s

mysterious disappearances on weeknights. I wondered if she even cared, which made me want to tell her the truth that much more. Thanks to her Facebook, I knew that she and I were the same age, and that she and Jimmy had been married for seven years. I knew that she used to attend 16

Brookhaven College and majored in food science before she met Jimmy. I knew that she dropped out when she got pregnant with his child. And I knew that she posted often about wanting to go back and finish her degree, but was perhaps too distracted by the loveliness of the new Maybelline eye shadow that her amazing husband got her at the drugstore to take the steps she needed to make it happen. But that’s just what she posted about herself on the Internet; could I really trust the rose-tinted version of her story that she chose to share with the world at

large on Facebook? All I could definitively say about Lybra Densmore was that she never smiled in photographs, apparently hated doing housework, and made Jimmy feel oh so put upon because how dare she expect help around the house when he had work all day and she didn’t?

Surely, taking care of two kids and keeping up the house couldn’t possibly be as hard as making sure the fryers were clean after hours or that the pizza-faced high school kid who worked weekends remembered to restock the ketchup. What was it about her that made him stay with her, anyway? If I could only talk to her, if I could only find out what was so special about her…. “Baby, what’s wrong?” “Nothing. It’s just been an incredibly long day at work.” Amazing that he bought that line. Here I was, about to cry myself into a stupor in that nicotine-tinged pillow at America’s Best Value Inn, and I somehow managed to convince him that I was well enough to keep my clothes off. It was like if the general public actually bought it when President Nixon declared himself “not a crook”. I was a much bigger

crook than Nixon ever was – I was stealing another woman’s husband and getting away with it. I had a bit more difficulty holding myself together when he was finished making me scream. “One day, the world will be ours, baby. It’ll be Jimmy and Lybra’s 17

place.” At that point, the waterworks were running like Usain Bolt. He tried to apologize, but that wasn’t quite enough. He washed my hair again. That wasn’t quite enough. He promised to take me to the botanical gardens. That couldn’t have been further from enough. He shook me hard and slapped me across the face. “What more do you want from me? I said I was sorry, baby! You’ve got to know it by now. I would do anything for you. I’m so used to saying

that name. It doesn’t mean I love that little piglet. It’s just a name.” Lybra. What kind of name is that, anyway? It's like that zodiac sign, only stupid. The fact that her birthday is in February makes it even stupider. I’m the one who’s an actual Libra.

His apology was just barely enough, and so with that, he left me for the night, because why put up with more theatrics from me when he had to go back to Jimmy and Lybra’s place? I wished I had the guts to leave. Then again, what other guy out there would be interested in a pudgy goofball like me? Lybra may have been a “little piglet,” but she had a place in his life. Why else would I remember her birthday, or her Facebook information? Why do I remember a thing at all about her? Well, it's hard not to. She’s the reason I started wearing makeup. When I was a kid, putting on lipstick made me feel like I should be getting a call from Ringling Bros. any day. Now, with only a couple of years left in my twenties, I could only think of how much eye shadow she wore in all her pictures, and how if I could only master this whole “femininity” thing the way she had,

maybe I could be a wife and not a mistress. Mistress really is a dirty word, isn’t it? I’ll never forget one particularly rough night at our usual haunt, when Jimmy was putting his socks back on after our shower, looking over at him with more than a little sadness at having to confront 18

that word. “If I am called your “mistress,” what do I call you?” “Baby, don’t say that,” he said. “Mistress really is a dirty word.” “It’s what I am.” “Ridiculous. You’re the woman of my dreams. Stop calling yourself that.” One argument in which chairs were slammed into the wall later, and I agreed to never call myself that again. I was the woman of his dreams,

and he was totally going to pay me back for that pesky lawyer, even though he totally wasn’t. After I gave Jimmy that eight hundred bucks, disaster struck, and I lost my job at Dairy Queen. I know being tired and oversleeping is an

excuse so old and lame that it needs to be euthanized, but I’m sticking to it. After all, when I had spent the night before crying myself to sleep over cheap beer and Doritos, I had the right to sleep in just a little bit, I think. Why shouldn’t I cry? I was stuck in a nowhere job, in a nowhere town, and in love with a guy who would never think I was good enough. To be fair, he was a good supervisor, because anybody would have been fired for not bothering to call in, though I don’t think anybody else would have done unspeakable things with the boss in the supply closet after closing time. I begged and pleaded with him to reimburse me just a smidge since I didn’t really have anywhere else to go after this whole debacle, but he was so far in a hole financially since his food stamps got taken away that he just couldn't get it to me right now and oh, please forgive me baby. “Can you pay me back when you get your tax return in February?”

“Sorry baby, but I have to pay off the loan I took out last February, for the little piglet's birthday. Dumb bitch. I spend so much money on her and she repays me by sitting around the house and watching Real Housewives all day. Have you seen that show? God, it's the stupidest 19

thing on television. I'm gonna blow up the damn TV if I have to sit through another second of that crap.” I had to admit that he was right about that, but also wondered why he spent so much money on her if he was totally divorcing her like he said he was. Still, once I got a new job at Walmart, I was so excited to be able to pay my bills again that I sort of let it slide. I had Chef Boyardee on the table, a working air conditioner, and a really nice fellow named Mike training me at work. Why shouldn’t I let it slide? At least, I let it slide

until his car broke down two weeks later and he totally couldn't afford to fix his radiator. “I only have fifty bucks left until Friday, but I'll give you forty if you really need it.”

“You are a doll, baby. I'll pay you back as soon as I can, really I will.” He never paid me that forty back. Once the dorky guy was done talking about Jimmy, some fat woman in a navy blue dress that resembled a Hefty bag walked down the aisle toward his box and started belting out “Amazing Grace” while the organ sounded from some mythical place behind me. I had to admit, my eyes were more than a little damp by this point. I knew that his family knew nothing of me or of the money he had stiffed me, and in their eyes, he really was the awesome guy that Buddy Holly had been talking about. But Buddy Holly had known Jimmy since kindergarten and rode bikes with him and played pranks on the gym teacher with him after the homecoming dance and gone streaking by the lake in the early hours of morning. I had only known him for the past four years, ever since he was

just a fry cook who flirted with me over French fries and grease stains and cracked jokes about all the weirdos who came in at closing time. He never wore a wedding band to work, and it was not until we had already done things that went against company policy on the counter after hours 20

that I was aware of Lybra's existence. And we had never shared any great tender moments together, save for the time that he took me to the Japanese flower gardens and watched the bright orange koi shuddering across their special pond. I couldn't help but laugh when he tried in vain

to catch one of the butterflies while we were walking down the cobblestone path, past the bamboo. It was a moment more suited for Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal than for people like us. Too bad it didn't last, and I had to pay for our dinner that night

because he was broke again. My twenty-ninth birthday was not long after that. I was starting to get a little nauseated, and my ankles were swelling and I needed pickles and ice cream like no other, so it was the party of a lifetime for little old me. My biological clock was damn near broken up until this point, so the knowledge that I would no longer have to listen to it tick filled me with optimism I never realized could exist. I was overjoyed about the changes I was going through, but couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy’s two boys. Would they have the chance to meet their little brother or sister? What about Lybra? Would she shoot me for this? Jimmy clearly thought about these questions too, since in spite of not being able to pay for anything else in our relationship, he conveniently was able to pay what it cost to take me to the dilapidated clinic lo-

cated on the part of Sixth Avenue where street walkers and meth heads barely dissuade people from going into the Pho Rocious Vietnamese restaurant on the corner. As the organ music swelled, my fists clenched so tight that I hoped for a moment that this entire thing was just some crazy

nightmare. I had lost more than I ever knew I could lose. I still can’t bring myself to talk openly about the dreadful noises and the baby that might have been. I still can’t believe it even happened to

me. I still have nightmares about a child who looks like Jimmy looking sullen and asking me why, and I don't want to cry ten times harder in telling this story than I did while Susan Boyle up there was singing about how precious that grace appeared the hour she first believed. I’m not sure what made me believe, but I think it may have been Jimmy’s threatening to shoot me if I let something as small as an embryo keep us from being together. I didn’t really take it seriously at the time – I mean, it’s not like he ever hit me or anything. Mostly, he just screamed in

my face a lot and held me down on my armchair and said that if he really wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit, he’d just stay home and listen to his little piglet nagging him about Junior’s grades or troubles with Eric’s teacher.

“You’re not like that, baby. Quit being like that, or you’ll have real reasons to cry.” He wasn’t wrong. I had plenty of reasons to cry today, as the finest singer ever rejected from American Idol warbled along. I wanted so badly

to just bolt, to forget Jimmy altogether and keep the secrets to myself. But how could I? This was my last chance to confess what I had done, my last chance to make his wife aware of my pain. Just looking at her, that last chance didn’t seem to matter anymore, because she looked like she had more than enough pain of her own. I lost it when I looked over at Lybra hugging Jimmy's oldest boy at that moment, because I wished I could have a son or daughter to cry with me too. She may have been a “little piglet” in the eyes of that dead sonofabitch, but right then and there, I was a little piglet too. I was a little piglet who continued eating the slop even when it became apparent that I was headed for the slaughter. When I met someone else and seriously thought of leaving, I was next in line for the chopping block. I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you that working at Dairy Queen was just amazing and 22

the most fun job I could ever have taken on. After all, rude customers, bathrooms more toxic than Chernobyl, and getting to go home every night reeking of steak fingers and shame is not exactly the American dream, unless you are the sort of person who needs melatonin

supplements to fall asleep. So, maybe it was destiny that Jimmy fired me over a day spent under my comforter, and I wound up going to a slightly more dignified place to make my money. It had to have been destined somehow, right? It’s not every day that somebody with slightly crooked

bicuspids laughs hysterically at all the stupid shit I say, or cares about me doing well at my job. I think I could get used to that sort of thing. In light of that, I think it’s understandable that me and Mike Swafford went on a date. When he told me that a mutual friend heard

that Jimmy spent my birthday wining and dining his wife at The Dorsia while I was lying in bed feeling sick after losing my would-be son or daughter, I wanted the date like a zoologist wants panda bears to bone each other. I still didn't dump Jimmy, but I did decide that this was the sweetest and easiest revenge in the history of sentient life. I took Mike out for dinner and we had a wonderful time and a lot of laughs, but I felt conflicted about the whole enterprise. His pressed suit looked nice and the gap between his teeth was really cute, but he still wasn't Jimmy, and Jimmy was going to kill me if he knew I was here. Besides, Mike Swafford didn’t play the guitar like Jimmy did. Jimmy's guitar. Maybe that's the one thing that kept me holding on. Whenever he would play me “Summer Breeze” or “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” it's like we were in another world. I had never known anyone

before who liked the same old school songs that I liked, much less someone who could play them while we sang together. Right behind the Suave shampoo, I'd say those were our best times together at America's Best Value Inn. I wanted him ten times more when I heard him sing about 23

how the time to hesitate was through, no time to wallow in the mire. I thought of that as I nibbled my mostly warm quiche lorraine, and felt a twinge nervous about looking into the gorgeous blue eyes of Mike Swafford. But then, even if Mike was no guitarist, he was certainly an awesome artist. He knew about all the great paintings in the Louvre, and with all the all the weird blues and greens and oranges in his own paintings, he had clearly studied what made them great while he was at the Art Institute. Jimmy was self-taught on his guitar, though. I respect a

man who's self-taught. Then again, I also respect a man who ends our date with a romantic stroll through Sandy Lake park and a discussion of Impressionist art before giving me a single kiss. Somehow, that one kiss turned me on

infinitely more than any secret moment of hair pulling and neck biting at America's Best Value Inn ever had. Which is why I asked Mike if we could do this again sooner rather than later, because I figured he'd probably be pretty awesome at hair pulling and neck biting too. Maybe Mike being the type of guy who wasn't self-taught was also part of why Jimmy hated Mike so much, or maybe it was just sheer jealousy. Either way, when he barged into my apartment the next morning and shoved me on the couch and screamed at me and called me a “filthy fucking whore” and said I didn't care about his feelings, I instantly felt regret for betraying him by having dinner with my nice, single coworker. I promised I wouldn't do that again, and once again, he threatened to shoot me if I did. “I’m not saying I’m gonna use this. I’m just saying, baby, it’s bad to

give me reasons. Nobody needs reasons.” Up until that moment, I had never actually seen the gun he told me he owned. It was a pretty amazing one, I gotta say, and its silver barrel seemed pretty solid, pressed against my temple. I wasn’t sure whether to 24

look at it in awe, or whether to fall out of the chair in sheer terror. I wondered if he’d ever done a thing like this to Lybra. She looked like a Raggedy Ann doll, collapsed in Junior’s arms, so I doubt she would have handled being a potential front page news story any differently than I did. I slid just a little closer to her on the bench, so close to telling her, and yet so far.... “Why? Why? I can’t go on…. why….” she sobbed. I bit my lip and turned back to the fat lady.

I'm not sure if it's poetic justice that the car wreck that claimed his life occurred three days after our fight over Mike Swafford, but whatever. At least in death, he was unarmed. Almost literally, actually. The frat boy who T-boned him was too drunk to notice that the speed limit was not, in

fact, seventy miles an hour, so I do have to give some credit to the makeup artists at the funeral home for managing to make Jimmy look more like a dummy and less like a horror movie prop. Since Jimmy was obsessed with the Nightmare on Elm Street series, I think leaving him in that state and having a closed casket service might have been more fitting. But that’s just me. As the song ended and we all filed past Jimmy Densmore one last time, Lybra collapsed in tears on her husband's shiny mahogany resting place. She was no little piglet. She was a scared child without a teddy bear, a flower without a watering can. Instinctively, I ran up to her and embraced her. She felt much softer and smelled much better than I could ever have imagined. I was shocked at how many gray hairs were in her head because nobody who's a month shy of thirty should have that many

gray hairs. Her face was like a squished fruit from crying so hard, but somehow that face was still beautiful. That face had such gratitude in that moment that I wished more than ever that I could be lying in the casket instead. I was the one who deserved it. 25

“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Poor, sweet lady, I am so sorry. Forgive me.” Her eyes were such a stunning shade of blue that they looked amazing when she cried. How could he have possibly thought this woman was anything but beautiful? As I studied her crumpled features, I realized to my dismay that before she met Jimmy, she must have been supermodel quality. “It's OK. Thank you. I needed it. I can't take this. First Mama, now Jimmy. I'm lost. I'm so lost. My boys....”

My shoulder was wet with her tears, and my cheeks were wet with my own. At this precise moment, I could have given Jimmy Densmore the same eulogy that Buddy Holly did. “They have a wonderful mother. Jimmy was so blessed to have you.”

She finally lifted her head up and dried her eyes with her emerald green handkerchief. She clearly had character. I'd never seen a handkerchief that color before. “Thank you. I was the blessed one. How did you know my Jimmy?” “We worked together. He was a wonderful boss, he really was.” I wasn't lying. “I'm glad he had such a good team at the Dairy Queen.” She wiped away a few more tears. I couldn't help but smile at this, and had to tell her in return that I was glad that he had such a good mother for his two boys. If she ever needed a friend, I was here. She at long last collected herself when I said this, and said that I could stop by and visit anytime because dear God, did she miss having friends. She said she'd not really had any friends

since she had been married. I wondered how that was even possible, though I had to admit that I hadn't really been overloaded with friends since I'd known her husband either. As I glanced at her mascara stained cheeks, I saw for the first time what looked like a bruise on the side of 26

her face, concealed with special care and Cover Girl. I wanted so badly to ask, but I knew that in all likelihood, it wouldn’t mean anything. I watched his two boys shuffling around at her feet and sighed. Thank God they had a good mother. Thank God she really didn’t know who I was, or I might be dead too. Looking at her now, I felt a strange sense of relief. Jimmy was dead, and so was my dirty little secret. She asked my name as we walked out of the Red Acres Baptist

Church and prepared for the procession down the gravel road towards the old cemetery hiding behind the oak trees. “Samantha. Samantha Prouty.” “I'm glad I met you, Samantha. Come on boys, we have to get in the

car. Eric, don't touch that.” Eric didn't stop touching the crushed Pepsi can in the parking lot, and her words didn't stop touching my soul. I decided I could not handle the burial, so I turned left at the end of the road .

Skyler Osburn

Mucho Take It Easy or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Floor “Are you kidding me?”

“Skyler, you made us pay for that.” “I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.” “That’s the last time you choose, dude. The last time.” But it wasn’t. And, alright, I mean—wait—hold on for just a second.

Let me just Scorsese this shit real quick, and maybe I can convince you that my cinematic preferences aren’t simply mechanisms meant to end all of my friendships. … So, I was there 45 minutes early, apparently to admire just how much effort it must take to guarantee that absolutely no one so much as kicks a wet mop across the butter/cheese/coke laminated floor. Perhaps management hopes that trying to walk across the floor’s unholy, allAmerican adhesive will prove so taxing to those attempting to leave that they’ll simply turn around and buy another ticket, probably to Grown Ups 6 or Paul W.S. Anderson 15: Arbitrary Subtitle. Both in 4D with Smell-OVision. I’m sure they could just bottle and spray the floor’s fat-and-sugar

froth for the accompanying odors ‘cause it’s not like anybody’s busy mopping it or anything. But anyway, dwelling on that just reminds me that my room is PigPen’s Barbie Dreamhouse and that Punch-Drunk Love exists and that I still 28

would really like to give Event Horizon a shot, so I just return to glaring at my watch. 35 minutes later, my friends— Okay, actually, no, I need to address this first: why in the hell do people

insist on bitching about the problems caused by their own nonexistent time-management skills? They show up without a ticket mere moments before the set starting time—or even, I gasp and shudder to imagine, halfway through the previews, an event I refuse to consider as anything

other than the result of some severe internal brain hemorrhaging that leaves its victim in pain, greatly wary, and in search of medicinal cinematic extravagance— expecting adjacent seating for their spouse, their five children, and their eldest child’s two children, but lo and behold, the theater’s packed because we’re seven sequels deep into this series, an actor from the original show might have a surprise five-minute cameo, and word on the street is that this one’s got an extra boob or two in it. Cue the earful that some poor 16-year-old clerk gets from the fat pater familias because of a problem that is actually so not a problem at all that I can’t even put it into words because, try my damndest, I just don’t have it in me to be that much of a self-concerned asshole. But alright, whatever, because no one besides a film student (or a film student’s shanghaied friends) is going to see this French-Canadian, postmodern reworking of the fatalistic lyricism of the poetic realists of the early twentieth century anyway. My ticket might as well be a collector’s item, hung up next to the entrance sign that says “Starplex, Guaranteeing You the Most Disgusting Movie Theater Floors in the Lower

Mid-West, or Half Your Money Back. Maybe.” Regardless of the nonexistent audience, I have to be there a half hour early at the latest. There’s just an empty feeling that comes with rushing into the theater, a sort of impatient refusal to acknowledge the 29

importance of the movie-going experience. You deal with the lines; you pick your perfect seat; you wait and enjoy the anticipation; you admire the unique art of movie trailer perfection; and once the picture actually begins, you’re already many acts deep into a ritual for only the

cinematographically smitten. Wait, did I say before that I wasn’t a selfconcerned asshole? Maybe forget about that bit. Because once my first friend arrives, I find that I’m thinking a great deal more about myself and my choice for the evening than I ever would’ve expected.

But hey, screw that, they said I could choose, and I’m not going to just ignore an Essential Viewing tag from The Dissolve, may it rest in everlasting peace. The first arriving friend, one of my closest, is the most likely to derive some form of entertainment or intrigue from the night’s avant-garde screening. Most of his favorite film list is composed of suggestions I may or may not have force-fed him. The dude may have a bit of an overwhelming adoration for A Walk to Remember but fuck it, I mean, I love Heaven’s Gate, and the two of us can watch Nacho Libre together any day of the week and spend the week’s remainder talking about being the greatest fighters who ever leeeiiived, and he’s got his heart in the right place when it comes to Tarantino and the Coens and television’s new Golden Age. He politely refused an offer to watch Inland Empire (after I

showed him Eraserhead) instead of impolitely elbowing my nards, so I gotta give credit where credit is due. His girlfriend accompanies him, and her cinematic tastes range somewhere between straight-to-DVD films—about cheerleaders learning

the meaning of friendship or contemporary country romances so painstakingly schmaltzy that they’d make Nicholas Sparks drown himself like a chicken in the rain—and those YouTube videos where a Siamese sees its reflection for the first time and decides to torpedo the wall 30

headfirst. Her relationship with my friend, meanwhile, ranges somewhere between Lady and the Tramp lovingly sharing spaghetti in an alley, and Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner murdering the hell out of each other in DeVito’s The War of the Roses. And I have to make myself

promise that I won’t go full God Bless America on them if they start stirring a shitstorm during this Palme D’Or nominee. The next two to arrive are another young couple, half sweet and kind, half bombastic and competitive, wholly averse to any piece of

entertainment that doesn’t involve Hugh Jackman or Russel Crowe shouting exactly how they feel about things in front of decidedly gaudy sets or entirely unrealistic explosions. I can’t really give much thought to what their reactions might be, because they’re pretty much guaranteed to despise anything that isn’t a Hunger Games prequel at this point. Two more couples show up—politely ignore the romantic pattern that my single ass is breaking here, s'il vous plaît—one in love with war films, from the excellence of Full Metal Jacket to the almost-absurd forgetfulness of Act of Valor, the other hating most forms of entertainment that involve leaving the living room unless, that is, they involve some sort of loud and blinding adaptation of a popular anime. And alright, I mean, I love Cowboy Bebop as much as the next guy, but c’mon. There’s only so much endless screaming and posturing and

monologuing—so many demonic ninjas and fairy sprites and undercooked love triangles—that a sane man can take. But, anyway, no more couples; the last two friends are girls, one of whose tastes in cinema is confusingly broad, not too easy to get a grip

on. She loves Orange is the New Black and Blue Valentine, both worthy candidates, but her primary fascination is the filmography of Tim Burton. So, you know, she’s one of my best friends, but sometimes it’s hard to look her in the eye. At least her favorite of his is Corpse Bride. The 31

final friend, the other girl—I know next to nothing about her preferred films. But maybe I will soon enough. Let’s just say that at this point, I had already payed for her ticket. All of these people, standing by the concession, blow up my phone

at exactly the same time, wondering where I am. Oh, did I mention that I already grabbed a seat? Because— That’s. How. Smart. People. Do. Things. Why sit out front, stuck to the floor, when I could ensure that I’ll

actually be able to see the film? I don’t plan on watching it like I’m staring upward into the eyes of an evil dentist, and I also don’t own a pair of military-grade binoculars, so the center of the theater it is. I may not be able to save seats for every single person (though I do have my jacket in the seat next to me for a certain someone), but like I said before, no one in Enid, Oklahoma is coming to see Sous les lumières du Québec, so what’s the problem? I guess people just have to keep up appearances. They all make their way in to sit, and I make sure to move my jacket. Facing the screen, from left to right, it goes Otaku Town, the warmongers, the Corpse Bride, her, me, Esqueleto and his soon-to-be axe-murderer, and the Les Misérables back-up cast. The film begins.

…

Shades of dreamt desire slip amongst one another beneath the suggestive swirls of Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. Forest green gives way to

emerald unto viridian before the creeping of wintry cobalt; from which deep indigo swells and then sinks into a whisper of lilac; a sudden surge of violet relents, making way for a hearthside mulberry, the parent of an innocent magenta; and at last, a brilliant gold, the beginning and the end 32

of us all. I’m trying to scratch out every color, each change of shade, but it becomes increasingly difficult to feel the pen in my hands over the en-

croaching embarrassment that is undeniably of my own making. I’m certain that I’m surrounded on both sides by sagging smiles and sinking postures. I wonder if they can sense my clenched lower intestine.

Anna paints and wonders, Corinne simply tries to exist, and they both catch themselves eyeing their reflections in the lake under a tender summer evening sun. Commence meetings in bookstores, coffee shops— conversations that can’t help but become stories half-told, half-urged by eyes dancing, glimmering. Chairs that inch closer, shoulders that lean and lure. The camerawork pulls you into this burgeoning love. The sighs, whispers, and God-I-hope-those-aren’t-snores of my friends pull me back into my half-broken theater seat. The winds of passion, of adoration, meet the immovable steel of fear—fear of oppression, of rejection, of the end. Whispers in the dark give

way to screams in an otherwise silent home. Pictures frames thrown, windows broken, along with promises and futures. At this point, I realize that, in terms of color palette and set design,

we’re moving backward through the colors of the overture. I like that as a unique way to set up the meeting places that can come to define a relationship in one’s memory. What I don’t like is the feeling that my friends are eyeing me with the utmost contempt, daring me to offer a 33

positive opinion on what might be the worst 100 minutes they’ve ever had to put with for a friend. Weeks become months without a word, and the winter wind is harsh.

But all is not lost. It’s hard to stay away when the dreams are so vivid. Let the difference be discounted as two become one under a canopy of newfound peace.

As Corinne and Anna embrace in a new setting, a bright and comfortable wood, everything fades from green to white, another touch I’ve always found effective, more so than the always chosen fade to black at least. I’ve just seen a film that is touching, visually extravagant, but finally less than the sum of its (admittedly gorgeous) parts. I wonder what my friends saw up on the silver screen. My entrails, perhaps? The credits roll. Cue the houselights. Half of my friends move with a speed that speaks of desperation for escape, the other half desperately will their numbed skeletons into motion. I am the last out of the theater door, and before it swings shut, I am accosted. “Are you serious?”

“Skyler, you made us pay for that.” “I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.” “You do not get to choose again, dude. That is the last time.” And I would’ve deserved as much; I would’ve deserved to brave the

flypaper floors and the tangled concession lines and the seats that tilt too far forward and the late-and-loud audience members and the endless waiting for an absent satisfaction, alone. Because I know better than anyone, that the best of films can be for everyone. But I chose one for 34

for myself. Alone. My time management and my pure cinematic taste and my anal note-taking paid off in the form of a group of cranky friends wondering what in the hell kind of nonsense they just let into their lives. And it was all for a film that honestly, truthfully, frankly . . . escapes

from my memory second by second. But what are friends for if not forgiveness? What does the entertainment industry promise, with its bright lights and boundless reveries, if not another day ahead?

Why not follow a film that falters, with one that shines? … I turn now to the words of Ignacio, our immortal priest and luchador: Mucho take it easy. I’m still there a half hour early, and that’s not likely to change. But I’m not greedily hogging a whole theater row with only my jacket as a placeholder. I’m not thinking about my friends’ tastes, judging them. I’m concerning myself with what it means to love the movies and looking at all of the upcoming release posters while I wait. Satires and romantic comedies. Psychological thrillers, body horrors, ghost stories. Political dramas and biopics. Westerns. Crime epics. A million lifetimes in one multiplex. A million choices to make.

Tonight we see a film for everyone. A never-ending car chase, an ode to female independence and unspoken teamwork. A film for right and now and for the ages. They’re going to love it. I wait without worry. This is the right choice, and maybe those

floors aren’t as dirty as I thought. My friends come, and we smile and laugh and take our seats together. The film begins.

Kristen Valenski

Turkey Shooting You frisk the bird’s feathers, working between the partridge’s plumes with practiced ease your knuckles bony and large. Knots of bleached flesh, skin, tufts of feathers, flood the tiled floor, littering around your stained work boots. The bench is wet with turkey blood, your palms moistened with pink and water. You work each wing, stripping it of its autumn colors. I watch the season fall to the floor around your workbench. I ask about the gobble, what you do with itGullet. It’s a gullet. You pinch the shriveled pouch of skin and wriggle it between your fingers over the stripped turkey. If you could pluck every feather and work into my skin, I would let you. We talk about church and God, we went together last Sunday. You wore that soft plaid blue button up, a pressed pair of jeans and boots. You picked me up in your truck and I couldn’t talk about anything. My gullet wasn’t grinding. If I had a farm the stables would be warm with Chester horses, Arabians, Maples, lit lanterns swinging low with bushels of hay. Your barn was dark, empty. The gate shuddered open against a blast of wind, someone forgot to lock it. You push the doors open, dragging the carcass, tossing it onto a nearby bench beside dank crates.

I noticed how your eyes were soft like your shirt, as you began to slap the turkeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flesh and soften its body, the imprints of your palms and fingers streaked like the purple plumes on a mallard ducks undercoat, brushstrokes of undercurrents wading into murky ponds edged with frost. They bat their webbed feet back and forth in freezing water mixing the slush, waiting for distant echoes of thunder, for a silenced gullet and for the nearing end. Fall to come, turkey shooting.

Matthew 6-28-33 37

Maggie Rogers

Kristen Valenski

Aloha, Oregon I. My mother bought the house on 32nd street because a psychic told her to. A vision of a window spattered with mountains of gold and flints of red. I do not remember this house, even when we drove past the thin leaning wood fence twitching like an irritated tail. The house I grew up in, they said. A small white shack distant relative of a cottage hidden behind a ghost pasture, fields of speckled grey Arabians and Chestnuts grazing on marigolds and dry grass.

II. There was a crack house in our neighborhood, down the road, they say. Did you know? No, I didn’t know. The families grew tired of dealers taking shady business to their neighborhood. Parents took turns guarding the condemned building, armed with rifles, hot cocoa from their wives, badges of children’s stickers pinned onto their gun slings. The pink house round the bend a woman your mom’s age lived in, had a three year old kid. He was playing with Hot Wheels in his room when his mother was raped in the living room. Never caught the guy.

III. Aloha, there is no place like you. No pastoral setting hidden among bleak blankets Of deciduous trees, spinal needles quivering At the tremble of early Oregon rain. The white shack near the pasture fence, thin metal strung between rotten poles, brushed against rolling mountains of wildflowers, a bucket of oats and a knotted bracelet of babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath, a white sanctuary coveted in crowns of daisies. Marigolds.

Matthew 6-28-33 39

Maggie Rogers

Audrey Gleason

Untitled

1 42

Maggie Rogers

1. Matthew 6-28-33

2. Luke 12 (Berries)

Moriah Hengst

1.Oklahoma 2.Future 3.California

1 45

2 46

3 48

Emma Shore

Self-Portrait

Liz Dueck

Mountain Triptych 53

Ayrianna Swanson

Unforgivable I’ve never had a kid, but once before, I was pregnant. It was quite dark in that place where I was, enclosed between sheet rock safe walls and plain wooden structures that doubly served as convenient storage and junk warehouses. I tried to make my mind think about a million things at once, like those salty, clean-cut golden delights that I somehow had not managed to eat earlier, or how the sun was peeking through the backyard tree around sundown and the wind was making the shadows dance

around all funny-like, but unfortunately, just one thought took precedence. I used to make a mental list of all the reasons why that epitomizing thought could have never been a reality: nothing really happened, these types of pills have side effects, and I’m probably finally

hitting that last stint of puberty, but after having recited the list like a sinner in church reciting the Lord’s prayer, I moved my hand slowly down my abdomen and pushed down on the lowest part. I kept it there, then came the tears.

I would even tell myself while laughing that it must be an ulcer, or perhaps even a stomach bug. ‘Constant dull abdominal pain’, I typed vigorously into the Google search bar. Over five million hits resulted. I

opened each link starting from the top, desperately searching for any hope to solidify my theories. My eyes moved about the screen, back and forth at record speeds, decoding the words. I came across a link that read, “Ten Facts Mothers-to-be Should Know”. Mother? Never before then, 54

did such an entitled address send aches and chills over my whole existence. I had remembered when my mom and I were riding in the car, we’d had this same conversation before, so I proceeded to watch the cars turn into swift blurs that I had imagined the bullets of paintball guns would look like in slow motion. She’d said, “You’re too smart to get complacent and make the wrong decisions. I won’t be anyone’s grandma this young, and not anytime soon.” I had turned away from the nonsense scenery to look at her face. I felt the seriousness of her words through

her eyes and I saw the fear of what she thought could happen if I’d chosen not to heed her wisdom. I’d made a silent promise to never let her face that fear. I kept reading the article title over and over again, thinking that maybe it would mean something different to me, then I had to

keep reminding myself that this article couldn’t actually have any relevance to me. I was a stellar student, all A’s, no nonsense. I didn’t fool around with people who didn’t have any real goals and I

really

didn’t

talk to anyone who didn’t have an overly extensive vocabulary. Too many of those kids were too busy trying to conform to the latest trendy shit and I just didn’t have time for it.

Each day, I began to move a little more sluggishly than the day before. Pulsating uncomfortableness of sorts would emerge in different parts of my body. I completely neglected eating, I just couldn’t. My appetite was lost, carried away into a sea of mystery and it seemed as if I never had one. This is one hell of a stomach bug. At times when I was home alone, I

would try a sip of bleach to kill off all that bad bacteria or maybe even a few punches to beat the crap out those hell-causing pests. My mom would occasionally ask how I was doing and tried to make me eat crackers. She offered to make me doctor’s appointments, but I refused them, 55

remembering the article titles about mothers and my stomach would cringe, almost as if such tension were second nature. I thought about confessing myself even though nothing happened but when I tried to think about the situation in a critical aspect, my mind would retreat to a

black hole. In the black hole, all I could think of was what a disgusting filth I was, a disappointment, a stereotype, and above all things a supercilious bitch for thinking I was an exception to nature’s nondiscriminatory wrath. Then, I would think of my mom and how the

love I received from her was the only real love I would ever get. Silly me.

I passed out one day. I literally slapped the concrete with my backside; I guess just to say hello because the only thing I remember before then was that the pain in my stomach felt like my small intestines were being ironed out by an iron that wasn’t quite hot enough to do the job. When I woke, I saw my mom, sitting there across from me with no real facial expression. We were in a pediatric hospital and I was laying on one of those stiff beds that had a long sheet of light blue paper towel covering it. A few blood samples and urine tests later, the nurse asked my mom to step out for a moment. A part of me knew what was coming, but none of me was mentally or emotionally prepared for it, but I couldn’t even think

about myself. I only thought of my mother. I thought of her tears, the knots in her stomach, the weight of her body feeling a bit too heavy because her whole life was off-kilter now. I was supposed to be her apple but now I’m just some half-eaten piece of moldy fruit that didn’t make it

into the garbage. When the nurse told me I was pregnant, my last morsel of sanity was drowned by tears. My mother came back in the room, but I couldn’t look at her. She sat at the edge of the bed and grabbed my hand. Her touch sent another flood of tears and she squeezed my hand tighter 56

and spoke with a calmness that I’d never heard before, “So, what are we going to do now?”. I raised my eyes to her, a beautiful hero in an imaginary red cape slashing all my demons before they could grab me. I would never know exactly what she felt or what she thought, but I knew that

she loved me and that I absolutely loved her with everything within me.

Eric Smith

The Top Floor My father was torn August asunder, and they didn’t want me to watch when they harvested his organs. But the nurses had told me what to expect. That the bed stretched infinitely in both directions with a ribcage crack exploding outward. The top floor would hold its breath, and listen to the mute voice struggle as the last bits of air escaped through his throat and I sympathized. The organs were ripe, plucked oranges and their gloves covered in juice. He was stroked out leaving in boxes. Except his liver, blistered --half-human-the pus too greenish-yellow except maybe to scrape for oil streaks to paint a blade of broken grass. And my brother crying “we can’t afford to bury him!” Oh God, We can’t afford to bury him.

Eric Smith

Memories of Edinburgh A town that wanders, with signs that penetrate the far off gaze scoped through dark feathered fog. No one knew there was a desert or how it constantly would change or why snow fell in wisps of sunken crystal, as prisms refracting the invisible asylum where three crows perched-A missing town far off memory that forgot the fields nearby were grey and gold and granules of autumn sand sifted between centipedes. Their legs, a deck of cards, isometric spindles, shuffled across empty bottles of wine. Every thought twists the atmosphere An unstable place ever changing with each recollection, acting out a small footprint, or a stain nestled in overgrowth where birds watch the horizon splash 59

in solar blacklash as red dusk light laps the sky searching for an absent sun that devours orange clouds. My breath, here a wisp ghost, transmutes and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember this place very well anymore Or how the bindweed presses the decay.

Colleen Maher

Killing The night was cool, and the man was glad for the heavy canvas shirt he’d put on before coming to do his work. The cicadas had gone silent,

and the crickets, whose hushed laments rose around the man, mourned their absence. The stars were so bright here, and the man was usually happy to have work to do if he just could be under them. Mirroring the path of the Milky Way, he kept his feet in the rut treaded by so many hooves, kicking away the dead heads of thistles that had fallen across the cow path. The moon was full, and he didn’t need a flashlight. He found her in a persimmon thicket. The persimmons had ripened and begun to fall to the ground, giving off a heavy, sweet scent. The old

girl lay on her side. The calf, a still, damp bundle of bones and hair, lay beside her, and the almost mother nosed it half-heartedly. It didn’t stir. The man unslung the rifle from his shoulder, fished a pair of gold bullets from his left breast pocket. The cow noticed him for the first time and lowed, her legs spasming as she struggled to stand. She’s old, on her tenth calf already. He fit a bullet into place. He’d done this before. His hands had no reason to shake. The calf was out of season, and late besides. The man squeezed the trigger. The cow began to bawl, eyes spinning in her head even as blood ran across the ridges of her skull. The man readied himself, squeezed the trigger again. Still the animal moaned, thrashing in the leaf litter, crushing her expired offspring. The crickets had gone silent.

The man bit his lip, turned away. He considered leaving her there, letting her lose her life alone. Instead, he removed another bullet from his pocket. The gold bullets were gone; this one was silver. The man pressed the barrel of the rifle to the cowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neck, angled toward her tenacious brain. The crack resounded across the pasture; in the distance a pack of coyotes took up the call, their high-pitched yips echoing eerily. The cow let out one low, choked bleat and let her head fall onto hard earth. The man began to walk home, back down the cow path. The snow-on-the-mountain and horse nettles silvered in the moonlight. The crickets began their symphony once more, and were followed by the thrum of the hundreds of frogs who made their home in the creeks and

ponds and mud holes, and by the solitary mockingbird that sang from the bois dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; arc bramble, running through its list of imitations and starting again. The man paused in the pasture, the rifle in one callused hand. The bottom of his boots were caked with mud made from blood

and the flesh of rotted persimmons. The stars above him watered heaven with their tears, but all he watered with his were the primroses.

Charlie Mohn

Calico I saw you in tea leaves red and naked against the burning sky. We are a melting phantasm of what could be. We are a silly thought. Brilliant sunspots splashed over autumn leaves. The seasons changed without us knowing, bell tones eaten like little rainbow candies. We fell apart like an old clock, I kept your shirt of cats and butterflies and I remember the Christmas lights that mimic tiny spiral galaxies, little ghost lights in your eyes. A sapphire glow, the cold haunt just before it snows. Just like, the cross that hangs above your bed. I met you again. This year you are a figment of a design. Elemental. Time is a Reaper, I would pay to you, oh harvester of kings. A gumball machine for a mouth, you came to me alone. Awash with calico colored hair, candy skull eyes. We are the firmament. Fantastical and alien, a candy store to charm families. Alcoholic, narcotic. Time is kind and colorful, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it? 63

I see you in tea leaves red and naked against the burning sky. We are a melting phantasm of what could not be.

Charlie Mohn

The Hollow I Shape in August Eyes

Mr. Prophet steps center stage christmas lights at his back, he preaches and preaches a beast born lust for a godless race. The crowd is entranced and alive, Be calm my animalsâ&#x20AC;Ś He is tattooed with the mark of the beast no, beat. Gotchaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; covered take two steps and stand up everyone can dance just not to the tune of a proxy religion again and again. Over and under take a turn and let the lights blow start up the projector a simulation of the strange circus tents and pet projects, is this how the world will end? Observe, take a minute and bathe in galaxy light.

Mr. Prophet leaves stage right. He is shot moments after, A false shepherd for the devil left for radioactive decay and rust

a crunch against cold concrete. Broken windows; glass rain. “Let me tell you a story. One before the leaves fell from the bone trees.

II -My Brother’s StoryLovely is the world. Solemn and vivid against summer giants of a darker color a machine built by the devil himself. Clang and tick a Clockwork Cleric, running just like the Prophet. You know, the one who smelled of stardust; genderless and sublime. Of course, this story could be a lie one buried so deep that even the strongest can’t uncover the truth. For one so young, your eyes still have color, you’re not like them. Who? The cleric, the prophet, Those who lead others astray a higher providence behind locked gates. Drink and drink some more who knows maybe one day this tune will change and you’ll grow up. A titan among men.

Fall back and sleep. Ignore the vile amber of the sky melting melting, a horrendous machination of man and you’ll be just your own.

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Maggie Rogers

Ash stained red Extinction as colored leaves cleansed by atomic blue. the saints expiration chimes in a tune to the nuclear jazz.â&#x20AC;? III -TickI can count to three, but so can they, who? Everyone else. Tell a story, a cold one, one that kills freezes and might even burn. I have old dreams; they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak. Locked away. One might even have a key. An abstract, an opening. The grand design, With a blueprint, the finite world might become clear. Upside down and all around Run, run faster then. Stop. Tell yourself it will be okay, your eyes can lie when they want. Existence is driven by the individual. Your world, my world, could be a vast expanse apart. Side by side not afraid to be alone.

All of this is laughable, just a solid barrier. Lock the door and build the wall in your mind try not to talk about life, just ignore the purposeful contempt of self and youth. Imagine yourself, a singular point a blip, a period in the story. Now, count to three.

One

Two Three .

“Somewhere in the starry night, a being is born, youthful and blind. wings not yet fit for flight, every breath a season, every movement a calamity.”

IIV -The Concrete ExpanseMiles above, down below through the endless Infinite city, carving into the blue. Broken pipes, smell the paint, lead, hints of mustard gas. A kaleidoscope of windows. An abstract of you. I can cheat, lie, even steal Break, change, kill, please. stop me. I’ve grown too much. Seen too little. A blurred shape of the man in my head. Too much sleep, not enough caffeine. All I’ve got for cash, a crumpled two dollar bill. I exist as the neon night shift. I will capture you alive, watch you struggle in Lucy’s fire. Some call me a reaper; still others call me human, a knight who stole gods lucid dead eyes. A flawed gradient of indigo. I’m talking about the sky right? Paint those opalescent eyes. A love letter to you, the ones who still walk the earth, the ones clouded in night. A life bound and broken, I am the judge; my will a city, an endless giant that looms into the sky. I was born of gods

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Maggie Rogers

The first child bound to the human world, a colossus disguised in the shadow of buildings. This story is done. Out of ink. The hounds of heaven come to consume. A mechanical titan to combat god.

Ash stained red. Sapphire eyes. A creature born of calamity. Dies, dies, dead. Gone.

contributors Fiction Casey Gilbert Colleen Maher

Nonfiction Rachelle Gardner Skyler Osburn

Ayrianna Swanson

Poetry Kory Kennedy

Kristen Valenski Eric Smith Charlie Mohn

Visual Art Emma Shore Audrey Gleason

Liz Dueck Moriah Hengst Maggie Rogers

To our readers: thank you.

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