the gallery
G allery the
Volume 39, Issue 1 Fall 2024
Editors
Editors-in-Chief
Shawna Alston
Paige Foltz
Art Editor
Logan Mischke
Poetry Editors
Ash Pyle
Lauren Mullaney
Prose Editor Sydney Shoulders
Publicity Editor
Lulu Gri n
ank you so much to everyone who made this a fantastic semester, including the following, who helped assemble the magazine!
Irene Straw Julia Peavey
Cover Art
Moss Garden
Rob Hochstetter
seethefullworkonpage30
Contents
Loss
My Mother in a Case Study of Pomegranates
Sinking Island
Gregory Alan
Meeting of the Minds
On cleanliness
Seated Model
End of Similies
Two Sonnets of Faith e Fall of Sister Beatrice
Father Tom Baptises Me in the Community Pool
Ginseng
Patron of the Year
Stop It. You’re Hungry.
I Wish to Be a Baby
Breakfast at Eva’s
In Love with the Moon he does not stay the night
Composed on a Park Bench
Las Señoritas
A Companion’s Elegy
Fossil Records
Moss Garden Birds
Intimacy
Bedsheets & Pillow oughts
Rental Car in the Drop-O Line
Views from the Well-Worn Sofa
In hindsight you were right
Celestial Hell Lullaby
e Lute
Arachne
Congruency
Self Portrait
Need for Warmth
Soft Secrets
Sun-yellow Plastic
A place I once was Changeling
alright, Sailor nally
e Labyrinth Poem
Morning After
Glimmering Potential
Contributors’ Notes
Editors’ Note
Grant Yoon
Brianna Edwards
Rob Hochstetter
Kendall Gould
Gray Rzeszot
Julia Peavey
Anna Longley
Grant Yoon
C.S. Danto
Crystal Wang
André Adams
Shawna Alston
Patton Nelson
Elena Murphy
Crystal Wang
Charlotte Daum
Lucy Loudon
Elizabeth Walker
Neil Dongre
Charlotte Daum
Jacob Brown
Sam Snyder
Rob Hochstetter
Neil Dongre
Kendall Gould
Eden Leavey
Mary Rice
C.S. Danto
Greyson Fisher
Rebecca Graber
Anna Dimaiuta
Srinidhi Lakshminarayanan
Kendall Pade
Elizabeth Walker
Anna Longley
Rebecca Graber
Lauren Mullaney
Shawna Alston
Andrew Meyer
Kendall Pade
Meghan Shelley
Elizabeth Walker
Anna Dimaiuta
André Adams
Lauren Mullaney
Loss
Loss is a wordless river, cavernous forest halls that stretch forward and close back. You stayed with me until I let you go, and then I knew there was no more, could not be— no more lies nor chance to make a void that death could fall before.
We measured out our lives silently, counting on the presence as on ngers, assured and grateful then. e lights that we called stars, thought xed, blink on the fabric of our love that you have dropped under forever, back.
“Your signs meet me daily”—how do we carry the dead in our mannerisms with grace? I hear you when I speak through yawning. I feel you when I hold my arm.
You cannot go from me except in that you have. I do not know what to wait for. I start telling you again.
— Grant Yoon
My Mother in a Case Study of Pomegranates
my mother would once in a full moon make me pomegranates she would cut down the middle with one smooth incision right down the line that was the easiest part then began the picking she would pick each individual pomegranate from its concave its hollow hive gently nudge it out of every corner and crevice then let them fall lling into a wide glass bowl
pomegranates make a mess but not when my mother made them for me she was gentle and patient not a single drop of blood spilt
the pomegranate won’t bleed if it is ready to open up when handled correctly, there is no mess the pomegranate lets you in and the seeds fall out
i wish my mother was this gentle i wish my mother had been this gentle with me
— Brianna Edwards
Sinking Island
Rob Hochstetter 35 mm lm
Gregory Alan
Please don’t murder my dresses, I’ve been too lost inside my body’s lace to fend for real nakedness. It rained and I went skinless into each drop I felt it dripping down, down my insides a slow untying of lines that falls into a silky puddle.
And I know I’m no ocean, just a few heart strings cast over mirrored water, kissing the shes with my feet to the sky, the tears fall when I’m upside down, the truest blue swims all around.
en the water stills but the winds start to push and it rains, and I’ve got no bait and the empty storm settles in my chest. I pull back and turn around, the end like the beginning like the middle I’m always turning around.
And from a distance I see again the lake and the sky mirroring and my colors in the horizon converging and my skin mending and my words forming dresses. It always comes back to being human.
— Kendall Gould
Meeting of the Minds
In the future we’ll have built time machines. And somewhere, sometime, there’s a great meeting of the minds. I’m standing there, waiting
they’ll bring her out and she’ll wear jeans she’s worn holes into and everything about her will be soft. Everything about her suggests giving in to the simplest touch that presses just a little too hard.
She’ll smile and there will be a gleam of metal caps on teeth that have long fallen from my mouth. I’ll smile back because those manners I was taught that young never really left.
Like a warp in the metal, you can try and beat it out. But sometimes the wrinkle just stays and turns your lips into a at polite smile.
You’ll curse yourself for it, when people leave you bent out of shape and all you can do is bow your head and avert your eyes.
When you curse yourself, you’re cursing your mother’s shoulders you inherited with the deadweight already there alongside your father’s tone that he must’ve dropped because it’s always been jagged and begging to snag onto something soft.
We will sit and she will tell me about power rangers. She will tell me about her plans. She will tell me how she wants a dog. She will tell me all these things I know, and I will listen like her words could change the course of a life already lived, picking cat hair o my jeans.
I will peel the skin o apple slices for her, smear only peanut butter on her sandwiches, and i will watch her play on the blue gameboy that used to be her brother’s.
His words to her have been few and she cannot fathom how they share anything more than blood. i look at him now, knowing we share so much but handle it all so di erently.
I resent him for being so easy to love. I resent myself for not being so easy to love. I love him for not resenting me.
She waves goodbye and she will grip at the hand of whoever leads her, because she doesn’t trust her own legs.
It won’t be till her joints are crumbling that she will feel more sure of her walk.
She doesn’t understand what this is. She is confused, she does not know who I am.
Because while I recognized the me I’ve already been, she cannot recognize this me that she will become.
She asks if she did well.
She will never stop asking that.
— Gray Rzeszot
On cleanliness
Soap, slipping between your ngers like a dream you’ve long since forgotten —— about the bleach left on the counter, the way his eyes looked like soap when you opened the door. He promised to dress you, to wash you, to hold you, to buttress your grey-lather hands in his until fusion.
Suds, running down your wrists when he told you —— about his shiny planet of no sinks, just wellsprings with waxen sides and in nite caverns where he held you like a womb. Beneath a dirty dishwater sky, he entered the doorway as if it were matrimony.
Sit, he’s telling you to —— ignore the bleach pooling beneath his shoes, the years of cleanliness in his eyes. e soap on your hands washes nothing.
— Julia Peavey
Hard Ground Etching with Aquatint
Anna Longley Seated Model
End of Similes
I walk around like I’m loved, Like I smell like the frst boy I kissed; I want Like sea mist fogs a glass, Ambient and clean.
I relearn love like I’m young, Like old scars are drawn on; I long Like the moon’s divots grasp form, Fresh and bold in the dark.
I soften—like hearts know How all things gold must go, and Watch them depart like skies glow At goodbye.
I age as love fades Like I’ve forever a home, while something in me dies. The—betrayed belief cries, “Oh God, what have you done?”
I walk around alone. The ocean looks at me. It says, What but the unknown Can an ingrate show Love so warm, so enclosed? Nothing.
— Grant Yoon
Two Sonnets of Faith
I. Barrie’s Ferryman
When stopping on my path to Neverland the silken stars a-twinkl’ng in mine eye entrusted me with secrets of the sky that I must give the other boys my hand and whisper to them what the stars have planned for stars once wished upon from heaven high protect the wishing boys until they die, but once the reaper of their souls arrives the stars cannot defend their weary wards from that which lies beyond this earthly realm so Peter Pan takes hands with once-lost lives ere lost ones e’en let slip their mother’s chords— the ship of souls has Peter at the helm.
II. A Hagiography in Heresy
The ship of souls has Peter at the helm— upon him weighs Begotten One’s command to lead the Church of Him, His yonder realm and Peter be ordained by Heaven’s hand. O venerated Saint forever lives in canon he is humble piety the frst of Roman bishops gives all his life to save his diocese. The legacy of Christ he bore with grace and in Jehovah’s name did Peter die and none can question faith that dies for faith when death in faith gives way to endless sky.
While he ordained by Christ must be devout, what human heart by wont can help but doubt?
— C.S. Danto
The Fall of Sister Beatrice
I o ered three Hail Marys to absolve me the sin of my life in yours.
And three more echoed in these holy halls, for every joke, every smile every cradle of comfort you took from the nape of my neck
I begged for forgiveness as I plead you run from here — from Portugal, from my namesake: from the saint of Silva; take your freedom.
But, Despite it all… it’s all I could do to fall on my knees: reverence, when nding you again and standing by your side and the uttering from those lips ‘what you are is beautiful’
So as the vatican falls and dearest Mary does too, and I am chased from my home, I o ered gratitude and ‘thanks be to God’ that you stayed and stayed and stayed
And I o er them again and again as I watch the angel’s stolen halo glow and golden shines across our sheets while she lay in my bed.
— Crystal Wang
Father Tom Baptises Me in the Community Pool
André Adams Crayon on Paper
Ginseng
stout and empty and stealing from my neighbor. i am hungry and gluttonous and ashamed of the crimes of my past.
chipped by indecency. theft as second nature there is never enough tea. open at the top for the spoils of man and stuck in a cycle of receiving and receiving and bled dry. i must have more of you.
short and stout. here lies the handle and here the empty spout.
— Shawna Alston
Patron of the Year
Tell me how my organs taste while you eat me from inside.
Bit by bit – I’m one to savor Bite by bite – I’m still alive
Is it everything you’ve dreamed? I know I must be quite divine. it’s the same esh you once hated but an acquired taste grown over time.
Gone is our nightly rendezvous –no longer once in a blue moon. suddenly you’ve returned near thrice a day to properly sit and dine.
My prized customer tell me have I ripened on the vine? have I grown into your liking? has my fear fattened over time?
Why am I your chosen meal? merely a person bleeding from trying. there’s only so much time ‘til I’m licked-clean bones sat in a pile.
— Patton Nelson
Stop It. You’re Hungry.
e alluring gleam of technological advancement shines from across the room. You lick your lips, your stomach rumbling in hunger. But you stop yourself, turning your eyes back on your signi cant other. Your gaze turns to their lips, moving endlessly in the formation of words. Dull, purposeless words that you can hardly bring yourself to listen to.
ough, you’re not really listening at all. For some reason you think you are. eir tongue continues to wag, and your eyes dart back to the silver glimmer. Your partner waves a hand in front of your face. Apparently, they had asked you a question. ey ask if you heard them. You nod your head yes. ey then ask if you can believe it. You shake your head “no,” staring at the black ink somehow smudged on their forehead.
It looks to be in the shape one of those sickly sweet hotdogs you had sworn o years ago. Or maybe it looks like a fake-tasting, rubbery Mickey Mouse pancake like the ones you had as a kid. ey were oddly di cult to chew, making your jaw sore by the time you nished your typical three. Your signi cant other rubs the spot on their face you’ve been staring at for a solid ten seconds. ey ask you if something is there, you tell them ere isn’t, not wishing for them to stop your hungry reminiscence.
e smear of black now looks like a sub. You could have a sub right now, if your partner would shut up— I mean, stop talking. e crispy lettuce, juicy tomatoes, and acidic pickles haunt your mind. You start salivating uncontrollably as you continue to picture the ingredients and their taste:
Several layers of salty turkey, just a little bit of tart mustard, a smidgen of smooth, clean mayo, and a single slice of sharp salami…
e quick, piercing sound of your signi cant other snapping their Fingers hits your ears and pulls you out of your imagination.
You’re in trouble now.
ey ask if you’ve been listening to a word they’ve said.
You nod your head. eir hand quickly slaps you across the face. It burns, stinging worse than sharp cheddar. Oh, you forgot about cheese on your imaginary sub.
You hardly pay any mind to your partner as they storm to your bedroom, hurriedly packing their bags.
You suddenly realize they’re not talking to you anymore and move to the fridge with purpose. You pull out all your favorite sandwich toppings and place them on a soft, white roll, a pillow-y cushion of doughy goodness. You lovingly spread on your condiments and, like an artist, lay out the slices of meat and cheese and vegetables in a neat stack. e front door slams, but you pay no attention as you slide the rst bite into your all-too-empty mouth. You bite down, the crunch and squelch of the sandwich innards greeting your ears and ringing in the near silence. is is what you have been waiting for.
You swallow the sub in four more large pieces and pour yourself a tall glass of ice cold water. You down it in four gulps and only then do you think to look for your signi cant other. But they’ve already left. So, you pop some popcorn and sit down with it. en, while you get high o the fumes of synthetic butter, you watch a movie.
— Elena Murphy
I Wish to Be a Baby
Time does this mysterious thing where it likes to play — games and tricks and mischief and pranks — and it seems to think itself quite funny.
It makes the young small and soft with dimples on their heads, and not a thought in their small soft brains, needing a hand that’s not theirs. It makes them grow and grow until they’re grown, no longer small and soft but big and hard, with thinking and understanding and knowing.
But Time does a mysterious thing where it plays a game, a trick, catches us in its mischief and a prank that Time thinks is funny.
For now that I am grown, I think I have less of an idea, now, than I had before. I think I have less understanding and less knowing than in my youth
I have grown and grown until I am considered grown: the ripe old age of grown, but I wish to be small and soft. I wish to have dimples on my head and not a thought
In my brain, I need a hand that isn’t mine and let it cradle me in knowing unknowing for being grown, I think too much and understand nothing
— Crystal Wang
Breakfast at Eva’s Charlotte Daum Gouache and Colored Pencil on Paper
In Love with the Moon
Words slip through my ngers like sand stuck in an hourglass cage, as your cinnamon perfume hangs in the air. I look
up at the wisteria wallpapered walls and the mirror held by the gnarled knuckles of its frame, and words slip through my ngers
as I pray to a god that I hope is listening. I rub my cheek the skin the color of wrinkled ripened prunes inching with the touch, the sickening smell of your cinnamon perfume, and
the murmur of movement from the opposite room. I think of the waxing and waning of a lunar love, but the words slip through my ngers
as I grab my ivory clutch from the counter and stand beside our bed, brushing loose hair from your sleeping eyes your cinnamon perfume clinging to my cashmere sweater
My heart bleeds an inky goodbye, as I sign my name at the bottom of the letter I place by your head unsaid words fall with bitter tears through my ngers as only your perfume lingers.
— Lucy Loudon
he does not stay the night
the evening s. the afternoon su. the winter sun, fading. leaving lonesome, a guest sho. shoo-ed out before dark . the darkn
the darkness, waiting, shuttered, barred, from the roo. the sitting room the hair, let down, clothes, shelled open, ring left up. upon the mantle, bodies an. and movement.
the trai.train, roaring its arrival, the yellow, grime-ridden station. the nch, against the wind, clasping the branch. the sigh of the marigolds in the window-box.
the tea trees, cry. crying, crouching below. he does he does not sta
— Elizabeth Walker
Composed On A Park Bench
On a quiet bench where night arrives to the strays –I beckon to you, “sit with me.” sit with me by a quiet bench
Where night arrives in its iron-velvet grip & sits in quiet lurid stillness blanketing the sleepy green
Watching the shapeless, smokeless leaves of grass bend in the nighttime breeze before oating up to heaven
Releasing the softest smells into the path of birds and bones and smaller, older things. Even the vultures weep tonight.
So let the dead rest with me. So sit yourself sit with me, my heart, on a quiet bench in a park at night in no certain place together.
Darkness curls around us while the wild things out in the park skip stones with their unhands.
— Neil Dongre
Las Señoritas
Charlotte Daum
Gouache and Colored Pencil on Paper
A Companion’s Elegy
Together in the wild western sands, When work was scarce back in those blazing years, We traveled ‘round to nd our promised land, And all we got were jeers and rotten beers Cuz no one likes a tenderfooted pair.
But even though the world betrayed our kind, ere’s not a single person anywhere With whom I’d rather have a life entwined. Our simple minds and hearts became like one. I swear I never found a greater pain an straying from your side. But on the run We had our love in snow and sun and rain.
Today I buried you and write this rhyme For you—the greatest horse in all of time.
— Jacob Brown
Fossil Records
by Sam Snyder
Kristen was packing her bag while smoking a cigarette. e ash uttered down onto her clothes rst and then the top of the suitcase after she had closed it. e hotel was dingy and the smoke detector had a bag taped over it. e LG was tuned to C-SPAN and the little gures on the screen looked alien. e carpet was a brownish-orange, almost like rust and the walls were like the wooden siding of some house in Florida. e curtains matched the carpet’s color and the chandelier hanging over the queen-sized bed had faded opaque light xtures. It had six arms and one of the light bulbs was out.
Outside the room, Francis was bundled in a lumberjack’s coat. He had a full beard that was pushed against his chest from sleeping. He didn’t smoke but he held a cigarette because he had quit a year ago and holding one but not smoking it still satis ed some urge within him. He leaned on the rail and the weather was cold and the cars passed on the freeway with zooms. eir headlights reminded Francis of eyes and from this distance they looked like little bright-eyed ants rushing o to some discarded food. He pulled his hat down over the tops of his ears which were now bright red. e second story of the motel–where his and Kristen’s room was–was covered in little packets of snow and the sky looked like the late morning may bring more snow. Some plastic coke bottles lay discarded some feet away, embedded in a snow pile like ancient bones. Francis remembered that out of all of humanity’s creations, our plastics would probably be on earth the longest. eir car was below warming up, its lights o but the exhaust was emitting upwards and Francis could smell it and this added to the illusion that he was smoking a cigarette. Kristen came out from the room and locked it behind her. She threw her cigarette over the railing and down into the snow. “Let’s go.” She handed Francis his luggage who nodded curtly.
“I was thinking,” Francis said.
“What about?” Kristen led the way down the stairs.
“Do you think we’ll leave something leftover after we’re all gone besides the plastics?”
“What do you mean?” She turned at the base of the stairs, walking towards the car.
“I mean humans.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“Like, will we leave something left after we’re all dead. Will the world have something left from us?”
“Fossil records, I suppose.”
“But someone will need to record those records. Who will do it?”
“Maybe the Great Apes.”
“Um.”
“Maybe not.”
“Yeah.”
“The Octopi.”
“Maybe our machines–the thinking machines–could do it?”
“Maybe, but aren’t they also another thing we’ll leave behind after we’re gone?”
“Well, yes, but I got to thinking about the fossil records and who would record them.”
Kristen popped the trunk of the car. She tossed her bag in. She held the door open and Francis also tossed his bag in. She closed it.
“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” Francis said.
Kristen considered. “Yes, I guess it doesn’t.”
Francis went in and checked them out. The clerk was rubbing her eyes and commented on them checking out early.
Francis smiled and said in one breath: “The earlier the better what with the weather.”
The clerk chuckled. He left after buying a coke from the vending machine. Kristen was in the driver’s seat and Francis got in the passenger’s and they drove away. It began to snow.
“I forgot to remove the bag from the smoke detector,” Kristen said.
Moss Garden mm flm
Rob Hochstetter
Birds
My voice sings soft sounds sweet like Arabica easy
Soothing words. Dripping deep down and white sheets, warm sleep bringing.
Dreams are no mere wish blue like a ure seas la y
Lapping waves. Spilling smooth shores With water drops, sand-streams tilling.
y bed is at touches still like a ships hum
Willing slumber. Steering still down into wonderland, with simple dreams.
Where you are like a bird Crooning cries sharp sounds
Loving what it loves. With me, alone at home nestled close.
y body is wildwalking after noon, time spent performing
Just with you. Your voice smooth sounds, soft C-chords, child singing.
Passion pouring, piano playing into seafoam and hot chocolate.
— Neil Dongre
Intimacy
Nothing ts but my skin. is room is haunted. A quiet calm but altered. I feel my syncopated breathing and stomach moving. Eyes closed and dark dim pupils take over the room And vocals.
e chair sits alone, the oor holds me crisscrossed and me in my arms, head down. Limp hands murk over the surface of me and closer to the sun they rest on my atmosphere. Why keep things formal ? I’ve been walking around with one sock o for days and my limbs fall when I let them covered in the heavy sunlight of my own hand that can’t get through my mesosphere.
— Kendall Gould
Bedsheets & Pillow Thoughts
And your bare chest rises and falls, a steady snore, calming beat of heavy breath I play rhythm on this abdomen, running along smooth muscle hills with my ngers Between bedsheets & pillow thoughts are the warm acres of you / me / skin I could kiss
In this hazy meadow of esh and nail is the mouth of the river and tender lover’s kiss
Your scent ascends from your skin to reach my lips, my tongue, my longing breath
Stroked by touch of rough ngertips along my scalp, tangled hair in your ngers
I pray to never see the day / you run out of body to trace with those battered ngers
For Oh, the song that plays when you hold my lips in your kiss
With notes of orange juice and birthday cake leftovers on your breath
Hot breath and ngers on skin / conducting a symphony kiss
— Eden Leavey
Rental Car in the Drop-Off Line
Each pine tree smells like Tallahassee streets, pink roller skates on tennis courts and a leather seat of my dad’s red Toyota. I miss my packed lunches in school drop-o lines with sandwiches and carrots in Ziplocs. e rental car’s parked on the side of the road and I don’t want you to go.
Bricks grow roots here for eternity, but I am brand new; old and young with loud starts and still endings. ere’s a long wait in the drop-o line and we’re speeding in time.
Virginia heat feels heavier than imagination’s tongue can taste and Target’s aisles can only hold so much. Half and half, plastic bags, stale air: who breathed here before me?
Splatters on the windshield in the front seat cradle pried and pickled moments from my driveway. Only boiled tears can tell this distance. Pink roller skates wheel without the wall. I am lonely today, but not yesterday. e threshold of the curb is a reaching cli , fog’s ngers cling to the tires of this rental car. Can I hold my packed lunch a little while longer? School mornings aren’t nal until the line moves down. I don’t want you to go but I can close the door so that it clicks.
— Mary Rice
Views from the Well-Worn Sofa
His slender fngers gently grip the sturdy pen, taking quick, deft strokes, the sinews in his hand and wrist twitch almost feverishly—at odds with his lithe hold on his instrument.
very other moment or so, the young man looks up from his work to study my fgure, tracing my curves and hard edges alike with warm, discerning eyes, seeking only the most beautiful of things.
The supple artist’s ga e lands upon me soft but unrelenting on my sated nude form, my face tinged with vulnerability and powdered with an ious e citement, the ruddy blush of a new beginning.
His touch, delicate yet powerful, demonstrates the care and dedication with which this artist selects his muses, and I lu uriate in the sanctuary of certainty this young man has crafted for me.
I lay, elegant and androgynous, atop a well-worn sofa, belonging to a grandmother or grandfather, weathered by years and countless lovers posed for each other in all their purest unfltered, undiluted beauty
The view from the well-worn sofa will surely fade, but this man—this artist before me has preserved, for now, the beautiful thing draped, elegant and androgynous, atop this well-worn sofa.
— C.S. Danto
In hindsight you were right
by Greyson Fisher
And I couldn’t help to make you cry, curl in my arms little bird I ust wish to hold you.
Forgive me for my trespasses father.
It was in the late morning, an early sunrise kind of night, standing beneath the A bus stop after visiting an apartment that I reali ed it was the sel essness of life that gave it away.
I knew nothing from her. Not her parents, her siblings, what made her smile. What little broken nglish translated was her name, I was hot, she was in love, I was here for a short time. Her apartment a sporadic mess of video game controllers and discarded blankets. She pursued over empty beer cans and became frustrated when every liquor store in town was closed. She liked the color green and her name was Tuya, short for ongolian Tuyakhvv. There was a huge butter y tattoo on her back, a breathing ower on her path, her hand on her wrist. She hated seagulls and became mute when it was my turn to leave. She could smell the bullshit from my phony call to “a friend” and I tussled her hair before leaving. It was in all simple things, as unique as one could make it. It was a forgotten se , a discarded three minutes, it was nothing. And now I spend my early Saturday morning scribbling in my notes app to pay for it. It was nothing, a chancing irt at best, a WhatsApp contact eroded into the depths of our lives. I miss when se meant anything. I stare at the christening dawn and wish to tap my little bird on the shoulder. I almost feel a strange sense of melancholy.
I feel my soul e foliated, a lifting bree e upon a smokestack I e hale. I am free. I ust kinda wished to take a second and stare at the rising sun, dark blue turned spotted white and pink, I oated here on the curb beneath the A bus stop. The passing of ta is and garbage trucks a metaphor of life passing, my bus the path I chose to wait for.
I will drop to my knees praying when it arrives. I ust wish to go home.
Celestial Hell
Rebecca Graber Collage
Lullaby
I often dream of impending death. My somnolent mind chokes out a ballad of orderly destruction, the patterns pacing grooves into my oorboards like letters unfolding, my name engraved like runes among others in that long list, that tapestry weaved from the wretched bent on capsizing the wrinkling esh of mind that calls itself a soul–her voice screams out (what happens when we die?) while she swallows the cruel reality of pain-soaked unknowing. I wake up to the answer.
— Anna Dimaiuta
The Lute
Plucked is the fate of the mighty lute, suddenly so passive in its possession, willing only when acted upon, made both of wood and the aged, rotting carcass of sound.
Pillage my feeble sensibility! Prick the strings on my belly, feel the soundings of animal esh. Pluck my highest fret the meager eyelash, tender and slow it falls on your palm. encased in wetness, it plasters like mache to your groomed skin.
Envelop me, sing to me of crimson and creation – I am your creation. Caress my neck, massage the nodes goad me with fne banter, watch how that makes me more profane, bold. Show me o to your father, let him see what you’ve made of me.
Pluck my lowest string, and consuming is my tremble. But then there is silence, and then there is just song.
— Srinidhi Lakshminarayanan
Arachne
y deft fngers weave my soul, each thread a word ready to be strung into me as a whole. Fingers ying, I turned into someone they couldn’t tear their eyes from, a rainbow of colors, beyond compare. Greatest gift the gods bestow.
Beside me, divine of the olive. in your craft our hubris shown. Us humans, what we are of is nothing to your divine throne.
My opus done, I bare my heart, threads weave stories untold. From your prayer it is apart, exposed, your venomous hold.
My deft legs weave my soul, every knot of silk string my due to my life you bitterly stole. My new portrait turned into a lovely trap I slowly prepare, a spiraling web of my woe. Waiting, invisible in the air, greatest curse the gods bestow.
— Kendall Pade
Congruency
Only drops of humidity dissolving like olivine, letting bonds collapse and reform. Or light, moving within me, two mirrors opposed, infnity re ected until atoms vibrate, frantic.
Oh, just the clear-cut vulnerability of each moment’s crippling sameness, or the worship of lingering grief— the uphill battle against everything known.
Is what?
Averting the gaze while it sits untouched, kissing the neck instead of the mouth
Don’t look at me.
— Elizabeth Walker
Self-Portrait
Anna Longley Wood Cut
Rebecca Graber Need for Warmth Photography
Soft Secrets
it all Seemed Simple in the yellow light
the low Sun the Streetlights my bedside lamp cascades over my edges dulled to the touch
maybe i can allow another Season to pass
as long as i have Some yellow light
— Lauren Mullaney
Sun-yellow Plastic
the enemy of my enemy is a jealous son of bitch who scoops love out of my bones by the mouthful.
the enemy of my enemy is envious of everything the two of us have fought so hard for. i am envious of how easy it was for her to abandon me.
silver and cold and sterile and not good enough. the enemy of my enemy used to be my friend
and now i am too busy trying to redesign the insides of my body for her.
i am but a simple lover. and my lover has chosen my friend.
— Shawna Alston
A place I once was by Andrew Meyer
carrots, fennel, onions, … carrots, fennel, onions, … beef!
I talk to myself sometimes. It makes me feel important. People probably pass me and think wow he has so much going on in his mind it’s like he can’t keep it contained.
I’ve been feeling important recently. I’m not sure what it means to be important, I’m sure I’m not, I’m sure there’s important stu I don’t even notice. But I feel important these days. I wear suits, my friends wear suits, and I have routines. Sunday is beef day.
I go to the butcher counter.
Out of my left eye I see Pablo. He used to live in my old apartment building. I wonder if he’s still living there. He was wearing this shitty oversized purple shirt. He used to wear this all the time. I would catch him at like 2am in the hallway walking around in it and some boxers putting his trash in the chute. I remember those scenes so vividly. Maybe they’re important.
He looked up and nodded at me.
I used to hoop with him in the winter sometimes. He elbowed me on a rebound once, I remember the iron taste of blood in my dry mouth, and my snot drooping down in the cold. Our games got so intense sometimes, like for a moment we thought we were in MSG, under the lights; like we were kids, imagining ourselves as players, except the players were fully our age this time.
I hope he still lives in that apartment, same with Alia and Mr. and Mrs. Kirchheimer. ey were people who used to know me, that I knew. Seeing them in their day to day. For a moment in time we shared life, going through the motions together, in a way. at must be worth something. I hope Alia made it out of that shithole.
“Next.”
“Yea can I get a pound of beef shank and some oxtail?”
G
Changeling
e morning she was born the world held bated breath It knew not what she would bring only that when she left the Mockingbirds would mourn
e child, with feet numbed by the hibernal snow found smiling sweetly in the wood in eyes, with ice below their surface, a light thrummed her parents loved her, or did what they could, for how do you love what is of the wood more than of you. Her vow and her sin, in the roar of the guttural wind a contract to return to belong only to snowdrifts and although she might yearn for a chance to rescind
for warm blood in her veins and bright eyes lled with love eyes as just eyes, nothing below, wishes can’t take her above and free her of rs’ chains for now, the world can view the cursed child’s brief time the mockingbirds can feel her breath hold her, until the chime of spring sings her last due
— Kendall Pade
alright, Sailor
soaking wet with a ection and burned at the edges, on my knees in front of you, “when have i ever lied to you?”
you kiss me up and down, swear out my name like a sailor, you tell me you love her, both of us scared to know i still love him, too, you know
pragmatic hand around my throat, ask me again, tears in your eyes, who would i tell?
my forever a nity for you, the alchemy of your breaths, how laying balmy and ragged against my chest, you cried
we can never forgive ourselves and there is no more power in apology
illicit with the only person who i can not shake, the wry fable of your hands tight on my thighs, asking me to promise,
tell you i don’t hate you, well alright, Sailor
— Meghan Shelley
oodgates open, nally. 12:14, hand feeling on the aky brick, pouring into stability, e acement, something holding— i’m crying.
the restless pull of the night, rattrapper, darling and forming soft, mineral-studded clay into thimbles for grasping. he’s leaving coconut on my lips, no longer walking me to the door— and i’m scraping innards to deposit melancholy and hold silent my misgivings, making myself into a void to be lled. my calves screaming circus up the solitude stairs. i trip and fall and it all comes out. acid rain and soil. terracotta up my nose and mouth. gore on the front step. oh god. thimbles, thimbles, thimbles.
— Elizabeth Walker
The Labyrinth Problem
(rhythmically, like a nursery rhyme)
ere’s a rat in my room. An insistent persistent gray scat in my room.
She claws at my walls, she scatters my pens, she rustles among paper stacks and bookends. I let her in–just a while–a foolish remark, She’s stayed long past her welcome, long after dark.
She’s chewed holes in my curtains, she’s followed me out, she’s sat in on my classes, what a smart little mouse. My friends all adore her, such a darling little thing! is better stop soon, or its end I will bring.
No one’s questioned this rat coming out of the blue–my clothes are all her’s now, my family too. Always just out of reach, always one step ahead, I think this rat may be better o dead.
My plan was complete, rid that rat from my life, I’ll attack while she’s sleeping, threaten with a knife. I snuck up to her silently, caught her in my grip, Yet she laughed at me softly, let out a pip:
How clever are you, to be staging this coup, I’ve escaped from my cage–why haven’t you?
— Anna Dimaiuta
Morning After Andre Adams Crayon on Paper
Glimmering Potential
bathe me in sunlight and let me breathe the words that mend
I will settle for a sparkling river and a song as long as the wash takes a little from me so I can be lled again
— Lauren Mullaney
Andrew Meyer is a Chemistry student, who enjoys doing other things too.
Anna Dimaiuta is a Sophomore with a minor in Creative Writing and hopes to write children’s books in the future!
Anna Longley is a junior majoring in studio art. She loves all things cats and printmaking.
Brianna Edwards (‘27) is a laughaholic with the intent to study education. She su ers from the chronic condition of crying while laughing, in which tears are produced from her eyes the minute she laughs. She also writes every so often when she nally decides to take a break from procrastinating.
Charlotte Daum is a senior studying English and Marketing. She explores the spirit of the human and the color of the world.
C.S. Danto is a junior studying International Relations and English. ey spend a lot of time yearning, longing, pondering, and occasionally writing about it.
Eden Leavey (’24) is an English major in the Joint Degree Programme with the University of St Andrews. She seeks to tell stories through creative writing, journalism, theatre and dance.
Elena Murphy is an English major in their junior year who is deeply fascinated by the written word and every form it comes in. She is always working on something creative, whether short or long, nding inspiration in the fantastical as well as the everyday.
Gray Rzeszot is a junior who loves to create as a way to explore their own understanding of their mental health and life in general. ey especially love creating with their beloved best friend Ash and loving girlfriend Ellie.
Greyson Fisher is a junior at the college of William & Mary studying history and business. He splits his free time between classes, volleyball, ying planes, and Model UN. He has been writing since the seventh grade and is actively seeking agents to publish both non ction and ction. His goal in life is to export escapism.
Julia Peavey (‘28) is a neuroscience major. She has been claiming that she wants ‘to get back into writing’ for the past 7 years.
Kendall Pade is a junior double majoring in English and Psychology. She has always enjoyed reading poetry, and she is now learning to write it! She is so excited to be part of the Gallery publication this semester.
Lauren Mullaney is a senior studying Chemistry and English who really only needs a bit of sunlight and music to survive.
Lucy Loudon (‘26) is a Biology major and Creative Writing minor on the pre-veterinary track from Columbus, OH. Her interest in writing originally stems from her parents who have always encouraged her vast, though sometimes odd, imagination. She likes to write about vulnerable moments of the human experience while often using imagery from both nostalgia and the natural world.
Mary Rice is a senior at William & Mary majoring in English and minoring in creative writing. In addition to writing poetry and short stories, she enjoys playing her cello in the Gallery Players Chamber Ensemble and taking walks in Colonial Williamsburg. Following her graduation, she aspires to work in the publishing industry.
Meghan Shelley is a second year at William & Mary and St Andrews, majoring in English. She writes as dictated by the prophecy. She’s got a blog too, read more @ballisticonthebench on Substack.
Neil Dongre is a class of 2027 sophomore at William & Mary, and this is his rst publication in a printed student issue. He is honored to be in this issue of the Gallery. Neil became interested in writing since quarantine, which has led him to many great experiences with many great people!
Patton Nelson is a senior at William and Mary, inspired by friends to make his debut in the Gallery with his piece ‘Patron of the Year’. In an earnest attempt to embrace both the beautiful and ugly, Patton writes to forge a connection within himself and those around him.
Rob Hochstetter is a senior from Falls Church, VA, majoring in Philosophy with a minor in Music. Alongside photography, he also has a growing obsession with all things lm, painting, and books.
Shawna Alston is one of the Editors of this mag, and she is very happy to be here.
Editors’ Note
Hello friend,
We are immensely grateful that you decided to pick up a copy of The Gallery today! It is our hope that within these pages you nd something you didn’t know you were looking for. We encourage you to engage with themes and topics that are sometimes di cult or uncomfortable and to take on the challenge of understanding what might happen in someone else’s head when they create art. Gallery exists for you. Gallery exists because of you. It is student work that drives our initiative—our hope is to not only platform as many of you as possible, but to invite those of you not particularly interested in creating to bear witness. After all, what is art if not spectacle?
As we close our rst semester as Co-Editors-in-Chief, we’re reminded of our introduction to The Gallery. As bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rst year students, we had no idea the amount of work it took to foster spaces like Gallery. Now, it feels as if we have inherited a new appreciation for art spaces and artists alike. For that, we’d like to say thank you. As always, keep sending us stu ! It means the absolute world to us.
— Shawna Alston and Paige Foltz Co-Editors in Chief, e Gallery
Colophon
e Gallery Volume 39 Issue 1 was produced by the student sta at the College of William & Mary and published by Carter Printing Co. in Richmond, Virginia. Submissions are accepted anonymously through a sta vote. e magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CC and Adobe Photoshop CC. e magazine’s 54, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. e titles of all the pieces are Derivia. e text on the cover is set also in Garamond.
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