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Volume 36, Issue 2 Spring 2022
Editors Editor-in-Chief Julia Savoca Gibson Copy Editors Meghan Gates Lauren Mullaney Art Editor Anna Harshman Poetry Editors Eli Gnesin Shawna Alston Paige Foltz Prose Editors Lauren Wilson Jack Gillespie Digitization Editors Emma Eubank Juliana Santry Publicity Editor Jenna Massey Staff Editors Alys Goodwin Courtney Hand Emma Conkle Erin Brownlow Jade Haas
Katie Diehl Malvika Shrimali Meg Castonguay Raphael Chambers Rebecca Golden
Cover Art
Seasons in Reverse
See the complete work on page 5
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Contents Poetry Spring-Searching Call Me, Melancholy Villainelle Naive Burdenful thinking of gloucester it’s easy to die in colorado Subterranean gentle reminders Saccharine Love Letter to a Sea Slug Meter Maid Raid Snake Oil So I Say Kinsman-Redeemer Mountains I Found it in Darkness Ode to a Drunk Navy Guy City in the Sky Angkan Migrants The Caves Below Our Corpses Medusa’s Guilt hear me! Setting of the Sun, Part One Rhythms Television Heat-treated Amethyst Seasons in Reverse Sister Sprays Brother With Water Gun Sevilla Mysteries of the Human Mind Mr. Goblin The Goblin’s Galaxy The World is Your Oyster Sea of Depression Wear Your Mask Jet d’Eau Printshop cultivate flowershop Swiss Peaks Extraterrestrial Dimension maladaptive daydream
4 6 7 9 10 10 11 12 21 21 22 25 27 29 31 34 35 41 42 44 45 46 47 48 50 51 Prose 14 36 Art 5 8 13 17 18 19 20 23 24 26 28 32 33 40 43 49
Will Florentino Alyssa Copeland Malvika Shrimali Jack Gillespie Julia Savoca Gibson Lena Smith Malvika Shrimali Jack Gillespie Lace Grant Emma Wilkie Mariel Webb Angie Borkowski Matt Wright Shawna Alston Angie Borkowski Will Florentino Emma Henry JR Herman Jake Schapiro Will Florentino Catherine Storke Matt Wright Emma Eubank Malvika Shrimali Lacy McLain Julia Savoca Gibson Anna Harshman Paige Foltz Carter Helmandollar Jamie Holt Grace Cohen Grace Cohen Grace Cohen Grace Cohen JR Herman Grace Cohen Carter Helmandollar Justin Sherlock Carter Helmandollar Isabel Li Isabel Li Justin Sherlock Grace Cohen Isabel Li
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Spring-Searching Frost bites the heel now and again, the lurching huddle of beetles like foraging snow hills trundle around me holding peach vines. Will the tangled gods wrestling the horizon into being press my hand to their sides to assure me what colors they bleed? I will eat this winter, I tell myself. Under snow’s repose, snuggled like sleeping loosestrife, I know weeding will soften to pruning in the spring. The beetles return empty-handed. I begin the long, blue trek sun-ward. — Will Florentino
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Carter Helmandollar
Seasons in Reverse
Woodcut Print
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Call Me, Melancholy Did you see the sun come up this morning? I swear, I didn’t but I can feel the warm gold on my skin and I can see the dust particles in your room soar like astronauts exploring the outer limits of outest space. And the pages flip and flip again in the corner as I linger, existing on the worn carpet that sings of youth and lengthy intermission. Can you feel how fast we’re moving? and this big rock is just hurdling without commission, dragging us who knows where. A planet that dabbled in love and revelled in carnage You could tell me anything and I’d believe it That god is real mirrors are useless water is clear That purple is the only color in the world besides disaster But the sun came up this morning and the radio hummed along with Presley’s hound dogs and we made two slices of toast Call me, Melancholy Sipping on your dirty teacups Dancing in the dark Oh, this world isn’t worthy Let’s fall for a while again — Alyssa Copeland
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Villainelle there’s nobody left for me to villainize. my old friends took to leaving long ago, for something older and someone wise. may they feast on my slow demise. may they savor old wine and my ego. there’s nobody left for me to villainize. prayers be with the tired sighs that flicker like a candle in the window. something older and someone wise, i wish that were me! when i look into my own eyes and the final heartstrings fall like confetti gold, there’s nobody left for me to villainize. graveyard dirt does something to feeble disguises: a stone cold grip, it traded my childhood coat for something older and someone wise. may they never meet the flies in my brain, instead leave footprints on cemetery snow. there’s nobody left for me to villainize. i’d like to try, for once, to be something older and someone wise. — Malvika Shrimali
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Mary Duzzi Jamie Holt
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The Whisper
Ink on Paper
Sister Sprays Brother With Water Gun
Photography
Naive I try to understand your world up there I pull at your shirt sleeve I ask you questions, but you ignore me Maybe you didn’t hear I can talk louder Did you see my trick? I can do it again Did you see it this time? Did you like it? What do you like to do? I’d like to do it with you Oh, I wouldn’t get it Okay What do you want me to do? Hey, down here! What do you want me to do? And can you teach me how to do it? How can I make you like me? I just want you to like me. — Jack Gillespie
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Burdenful I want a door slammed in my face. I’m so tired of quiet partings. Apologetic smile and soft click of a lock— A closed door is still a closed door, No matter how politely it shuts. I’d rather wrath over sadness, So I don’t have to bear this gracefully. Let the feelings burn and not smolder— I have so little space in my heart. Grief is so much worse than rage. — Julia Savoca Gibson
thinking of gloucester I’ll picture it again—
standing on the white bridge near the marine science institute. the sky is stark blue and the tides are a light murky brown, endlessly chopped by the wind. the wind, it’s so strong and so full, that I wonder if I could be hurled into the sky, but I stay rooted. a group of pelicans are chained to the shore, unable to lift their large bodies against the constant flux of air. there is an osprey suspended in semi-stasis, pounding its wings against an immovable force that cares very little, but could not bear to hate.
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my thin tassel of hair is waving erratically. so much so that it may get twisted into braids like a mother or sister used to do for me. If the world is a mother, are these gusts meant to cradle me or push me away? This is no mother, though. There is no loving or hating. rather, I feel exposed to a great something here feeling the weight of myself in the agitated breath of the sea frustrated, trying to understand the pounding in my chest regarding the absolute, exquisite nothingness the hypnotic push and pull of sea, of thought, of being. — Lena Smith
it’s easy to die in colorado pull over on the side of the highway, where the road goes nowhere and you wonder if you’re still alive. you wouldn’t know the difference except for the 24 hour diner where you ask them to poison you. they comply. drop your wasted love into the dead grass, light it on fire, rip it up, spit on it- fuck it up like you’ve never dared to before. no matter what you do, it’s too little, too late. take some of the ash for the road. choke on it and your tears. you’re hollow, filled with black, and the diner knows it. they’re watching you from the window. i know it. bury your loved ones in the shrubs. the diner keeps the cinder alive so you never forget what you’re leaving behind. drive away like you weren’t the end of all good things. — Malvika Shrimali
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Subterranean Low low, churning low Silent echoes resonate from the Modern age miles above. Everything is Deep. And each depth is distinct. The forgotten sea crashes forever in Opaque nighttime, torn up by Jagged cracks and smashed on Lonesome stone boulders. There is no vision. Only dripping and Splashing and sloshing. And at the bottom I sit waiting. — Jack Gillespie
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Grace Cohen
Sevilla
Micron Pen
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Television
by Anna Harshman She liked to get to school early. To sit in the corner where the modern artesque wired fence punched the slick slack concrete and pull the laces of her shoes out so she really couldn’t move even if a teacher told her to and squint her eyes as the cars blared the weather she already knew. It was before anything good ever happened in the day and it was five am because she liked to get to school early. The sun was holed up in the sky and the grass wilted, shying away from the impending mower and she was walking down the street adjacent to the main one because sometimes when the play got to be too much she slept in the bushes in the yard manicured with roses. She did that last night. And woke up too early to go straight to school. Because being early is good but being too early is bad because one time she asked her teacher why there weren’t any real people on television, only ones not even drawn on actual paper but on computers and her teacher had said that sometimes there are things that you just don’t want to see. It was too early for her to go to school and the traffic lights were still asleep for the night and the shops for once finally blended together into one grey tank. Her eyelids weighed down and the shoes she begged for a size too small scratched the ground and then there was the dog with green but maybe red eyes. Not a real one, of course. Around its neck hung a brand-new sign, the paint looking like it had been slathered on too thick and then shoved in the back of a drawer somewhere so that the letters were bulging and cracked but because they weren’t letters they were numbers she could read: six, six, sixty six. Behind the dog was a door — the same almost red but nearly green. And only because it was June Sixth (she didn’t quite remember the year), did her hand grab the knob and pull. It was open. Within the rectangle of grey, the room was circular, and mosaic tiles that approximately looked like (Michaelangelo’s David), (her home), (her dream last night), ran beneath her feet to form a dome above her head. How did you know? The man behind the desk’s eyes had held her since she walked in, and she really wanted to know. Know what? I can’t read your mind, you know. He was a stick bug (almost), tall and carved with wrinkles but his spectacles were clear. The tiles. I know them, the patterns… Don’t be silly. This — his hand swept around the gaping room, nearly grazing the sides — has to be put up overnight. We only come every palindrome, you know. They’re random? Yes. Stillness reigned and her feet turned towards the exit she had entered through but the door was gone — not really. It had skated to the other side of the
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room.
You have to go through the showrooms to get out, he said. Okay. It’s a common marketing plot, consumerism, that’s all. That’s why you don’t question it. Okay. The first door opened and it was dark but the more her eyes forced through it was light. The walls were freckled and the giraffes began to multiply: two and then four, a large one, a squat one, a baby with criss crossed eyes. Some were pink and blue and purple and grey but their top hats were all the same: six-inches tall, stark, black. Last year, he said, we had dogs wearing the hats, but they got too controversial — animal cruelty, you know — so we had to switch them out. But, outside. Her eyes traced the door now gone. The dog with the red-green eyes. Aaron, yes. The man’s voice trailed downwards. He doesn’t want to go. He reminded her of two years ago, when all of the Targets and Walmarts and Costcos sold giraffes like crazy and then suddenly they disappeared from the shelves. The president decided that they were no longer going extinct and that’s when people forgot that they existed. He asked her if she knew what overstock was, where she thought they all went. Our store, he said, takes pity on forgotten trends. Too bad you’re the only one who’s come in, we could be open more. She heard one open its mouth to speak and he moved her out the door. The next room was sterilized, a crystal case cradling dusty wires, rubber cords, misshapen and untouched charging cables. They huddled together, intertwined and tearing each other apart. It’s everything that almost was. He cleaned his glasses after speaking. This computer, his gloved hand scratched the screen through the case, its pink was two-percent too close to red. This broken case was just too avant-garde. People didn’t understand. She remembered the book she stole from the back of the classroom — it had a picture of a candle in the coldest centimeter of the earth. She closed her eyes and pretended that she was there. He told her that last year the room was balloons but they all ran away. I felt bad, he said, losing them again. Maybe they never actually existed at all. She had to ask to pass into the next room, he claimed to have never seen the wires before and seemed mesmerized nearly to sleep. The door was now gold, carved from rusted hugging chains. This, his voice no longer from within his body but a recording from speakers high above, is our permanent exhibit. A gallery of cages, metal bars only interrupted by each other stretching towards the sky. Dolls inside: old, new, plastic and hand sewn. Holding pastries and pushing strollers, clicking cameras and tying back dresses. Dolls, she pulled from behind her back her own, holding it just out of reach,
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They’re everywhere. It had her hair but its dress had a seam split down the front and a marker stained its forehead. He didn’t respond. Aaron was inside now, gnawing a soft plastic faux schoolgirl on the lowest level, a napkin neatly tied around his neck. I have more at home, she said. I’m not surprised. Most people do, you know. At home, she said, they’re more pretty. This one’s ugly. And small. Has she learned to turn her clothes inside out, that soda washes out paint, the man asked. No. She will. The doorbell rang, her mother entered. On the phone, she mouthed that they were late. The man sat beside her in the car. I won’t see you for a while, you know. I know. Her mother dropped her off at school. Apologetic. Apathetic. “She got lost.” The doll behind the desk marked her name on the paper, when she entered the classroom, another stood at the board. G
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Grace Cohen
Mysteries of the Human Mind
Acrylic Paint, **NEED Paint Markers
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Grace Cohen
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Mr. Goblin
Styrofoam, Air-Dry Clay, Acrylic Paint, Styrofoam, Air-Dry Fabric, Gumball Machine
Grace Cohen
The Goblin’s Galaxy
Paint Markers, Paint Markers, Micron Pen
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JR Herman
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The World is Your Oyster
Photography
gentle reminders in the coming heat of August’s sunny noon, I only thought of last year’s May. our amalgamation of skin and sweat your face atop strangers, haunting me you’re gone from my memory, yet remaining, will you leave if I count to three? your fingers gently circling my neck, you said you loved the anonymity of the city, and that same anonymity protects me now all flags were red, all light were blinding, and I escaped from your reach, newly alone, rather alone than in your crude embrace. — Lace Grant
Saccharine I am overflowing With the honey you’ve fed me, Trying to make me a golden child. It smothers my senses So sickly, sticky, Sour at the back of the throat. It oozes from my pores and I choke on sweetness, On the love you’ve fed me Of your own recipe Carefully tailored away from tradition But nevertheless poison. — Emma Wilkie
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Love Letter to a Sea Slug o gastropods akin to gods bandits of the sea o nudibranchs how my heart aches when you are not with me I love your gall to be so small with no natural defense nematocysts you thieve then gift behold! how you dispense so colorful not bland or dull one mustnt eat in haste a warning sign from yours to mine about how bad you taste but kleptoplasts can eat at last with stolen chlorophyll powered by sun bested by none I marvel at your skill when I see you I’m never blue you really make me swoon slugs of the sea so dear to me I love you to the moon — Mariel Webb
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Grace Cohen
Sea of Depression
Exterior and Exterior Glow Paint
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Carter Helmandollar
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Wear Your Mask
Woodcut Print
Meter Maid Raid An empty lot in the early morning? There should be more cars here on a Friday morning. There must have been a raid. centered on the barren asphalt stands a Sonic of a certain orange shade shackled around the windshield wiper blade sits a white slip that could only come from the blanched Meter Maid. if you must fault the victim, instead of the Meter Maid know that no amount of dusk, darkness, or shade can deafen sonic orange can hide from the Meter Maid raid the pale white fingers of the Meter Maid cut from a thousand paper-white slips pink scars around red strips a white slip; an eviction notice the orange car didn’t notice the white warning signs a car of any other hue would’ve knew cars of black red & blue knew not to stay at the sight of white — Angie Borkowski
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Justin Sherlock
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Jet d’Eau
Photography
Snake Oil The sights that I’m seeing are prices, railroad tracks crossing Ss, or Cs or Ys if I’m on vacation— itself an opportunity for cost. A funeral procession of motorized horses (even some yet to be named by taxonomy) jams lines at the station. A fowl stench infects the toxic air engaging noses tan and pale and brown. Five digits— much less four—don’t faze the modern cowboys, cursed with literacy and counting ability. (Are they not called businessmen?) They wrangle snakes from their excavated dens and force their jaws to spew venom, opening and closing like consonants in my mouth. I’m arguing with a horned ideology— not anyone’s in particular— spitting tobacco on its imperfect logic. Even the antiquated cowboy knows how to lasso a wild bull. I lack the dexterity to pass the cowboy rite of passage but I proudly wave my spangled nonsense flag on the haunches of my Honda. The only tether hitching me to the railroad tracks is the threat of deletion, spun with brittle twine: visually fibrous but spiritually thin. The words in my argument are regretfully pulled from a dictionary, a fragment of the whole of the West. — Matt Wright
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Carter Helmandollar
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Printshop
Woodcut Print
So I Say poets never say anything plainly. they fill baskets with words and drop them delicately through plowed rows of brain matter they pour water into sentences and watch punctuation float while they hold the buoy between their teeth they blow hot air in between letters watch q and u separate and wish them happy trails poets never say anything plainy. that’s why i always say everything plainly. in this world, in this field, in this industry words are a commodity and i’d rather put them in perfect order than to waste space on frills and allegory so, i say: i am a black poet with a knack for cutting corners sharp enough to bleed pigs pigs in navy blue hats and shiny black shoes. i, as the round-faced black poet i be, wield words like swords to cut through thoughts and prayers and what d’you know, moves through ‘em like a hot knife through butter. i say: fuck 12. cus i got more life in me but i don’t know if the stretch of my chest is bulletproof so i oink when one walks by and hope i didn’t catch ‘em on a bad day
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i say, with as much fear as dauntlessness: i matter. and the black boys with saggin’ pants do too. and the baby mamas who commit food stamp fraud because there’s never enough food. or money. and the grandmas who push weight to keep the lights on. and the men who ran from their lives and babies and sell cigarettes outside gas stations. we all do. cus i said so. — Shawna Alston
Kinsman-Redeemer That new girl in town you say? I think she goes by the name of Ruth Truth be told I know little about this Ruth I’m far too old To know for instance that she’s from Moab And she’s Naomi’s daughter-in-law And she’s recently a widow And she’s been asking about me— by name. But you see, I’m far too old So I just listen to To what I’m told Well, that Ruth I tell you She’s in my fields the other day During moon shine or rain
harvesting my grain
Well, she’s an awfully pretty thing that Ruth Youthful smooth gentle Till she’s done for the day I told my men to leave sheaves along her way
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Well, my men harvest the harvest And Ruth hasn’t come back this way But I’m far too old to care She has grain I’ve done my share
in over a day
Drunk sleepy naked I go to work on the threshing floor Grain-from-chaff chaff-from-grain All I think of is Her In the rain Chaff-from-grain grain-from-chaff Drunk sleepy naked I put down my staff lay to rest thoughts of my cheek resting on Her breast — Angie Borkowski
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Isabel Li
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cultivate
Digital Media
Isabel Li
flowersho[p
Digital Media
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Mountains Day greets me, teeth bared. I slide out from the mountain pass, born to the rattle of whispered histories gushing from fingerprints in the humus. Belonged hands would swallow my eyes if they could. Reach barred by banyan veins clambering for another sun. Painted plumeria tongues behind — “This piece came to us from the tropics, sir.” — tempered glass. The air walks differently in the arboretums, gingerly paws across drone-sown stories of bark and earth, a lynx at an intersection strung up on the stoplight caught in the hunt for a translator who speaks of how dew sparkling on moss knows endangered languages, how steady arcs of bamboo over drawling streams woven with salmon can smell the world before hatching, how every myth sings fate in this damp soil we’ve inherited by the crack of a musket, how the humus still weeps the ‘ō’ō’s howl sprawls, empty, waiting for one of its kind to fill it. — Will Florentino
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I Found it in Darkness
Inspired by C.D. Wright’s “Song of the Gourd” In dreaming I projected life like a film reel I danced through memory, touched the arms of lovers Found color in lunacy. In dreaming I lacked hesitation, my hands moved with grace, My feet fought gravity and succeeded. In dreaming I conceded truth, I gave myself to ambition. Heartbeats cloaked skin, the air absorbed panic and grinned at failure. In dreaming I walked my way through moonlight, I regarded the dawn before the world, I gave myself permission to break. The ground grasping at hair and bones and skin, In dreaming I crumpled reality into ashes, I introduced it to heartache and hubris, I burnt them with passion. In dreaming I surrendered myself to fantasy, vials containing my fate, awakened by madness, yearning for darkness. — Emma Henry
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Heat-treated Amethyst by Paige Foltz
The apartment was shitty, but for last-minute, it was a steal. I kicked the door closed behind me and set the last box on my new-old couch; new to me, old to whoever left it outside next to my new-old dumpster. All the boxes littering the room made it feel even smaller now. Without the dry, cold air spilling in from the door, the room grew still and stale and quieter than ever. I balled my hands into fists to feel my numb fingers begin to warm. Apartment fourteen consisted of three rooms; the living room/kitchen that I stood in now and a small bedroom and bathroom. The living room and kitchen space were marked by a change from a questionably brown carpet to a questionably off-white tile. Teal countertops and cabinets formed a kitchen with a small fridge and a gas stove. The bathroom shared the same off-white tile, with walls that always seemed unexplainably wet and a rusty vent on the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if I preferred the dim yellow light in the bathroom or the eerily white one in the kitchen. There was no overhead light in the bedroom, just apartment fourteen’s sole window. I would need to get a lamp for when the daylight ran out — which was so quickly lately. I opened the box I had just set down and rummaged through the unorganized assortment of shit I had been rushed to pack. I pulled out my phone charger and some other necessities but left the clothes for later. The next couple of boxes were the same, but the fourth was full of metal signs and a couple license plates. I tried to smile, but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t reach my cheeks. I sighed instead as I opened the fifth box and looked through its contents: a chip clip from a party, a bookend from the library, my old friend’s sunglasses, a keychain from a stranger… I closed the box and remembered my car’s empty tank, leaving the moving mess behind for the cold night. When I got to the nearest gas station, I left my car at the pump to pay inside. In and out — I’d be in and out. I waited behind another guy at the counter who was trying to point out a pack of cigarettes. The cashier was a skinny kid who didn’t look much younger than I was. He nervously laughed and scratched his head as he looked for them; he must have gotten the job recently. My eyes gravitated to the junk displayed on and below the counter. There wasn’t a single thing I needed. I tried to read the back of cigarette-guy’s shirt, but my eyes fell like magnets to the counter again. The cashier’s enthusiastic well wishes were met with a grunt as cigarette-guy paid and left. I stepped forward and he smiled wide. “Hello! What can I do for you?” “Thirty dollars on pump four.” “Will that be all today, sir?” I slowly nodded as I opened my wallet. The cashier hummed as he began tapping on the screen in front of him.
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“Actually, do you have any of the purple Marlboros?” The cashier’s smile dropped a bit before he turned and began nervously laughing again as he searched through the cigarettes. “Nevermind, don’t bother. Just the gas.” He rang me up, and I mustered a smile at his farewell. I filled my tank up and drove home in silence, sitting in the parking lot for a second when I got back to my new-old complex. “Fucking HELL!” My horn honked as I slammed my fists on my steering wheel. My throat felt tight and a pit twisted in my stomach. I don’t know how long I sat in the car. When I finally made my way back to my apartment, I turned the corner too sharp and ran straight into someone. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I was in a rush, and I wasn’t paying attention.” She bent down quickly and picked up the three lighters that had flown out of my pocket. “Oh. You’re new.” She paused as she looked at me. “Did you move into fourteen? My cousin used to live there; she just moved to the west coast. I’m Citrine! I’m in twenty-eight, just up the stairs!” She grabbed my right arm and placed the lighters in my hand. “I’d be careful smoking in fourteen; the gas stove is questionable.” Releasing my arm, she rushed past me. “Nice meeting you!” I stood and watched her disappear as fast as she had appeared, until it was only my hot breath coloring the cold air and the burning feeling of the lighters in my hand. “I don’t smoke.” Citrine started coming over a lot. It was just a few visits at first; she showed me the safest burner on the stove, the furthermost corner of the bedroom carpet that got damp when it rained, and the slight dents in my new-old living room wall from memories her and her cousin had made a couple of years prior. By spring she was staying every weekend and most weekdays, showing me how to throw pasta noodles at the wall to see if they stuck and bouncing on the couch with excitement even if we were starting our third, six-season show. I had bought a small TV and a new-new couch as soon as I got a job. Citrine had said the new-old couch looked familiar to her, and I didn’t want to give her time to find out why. Lying on the couch just two episodes into the new show, I felt her breathing begin to slow. By episode three she had turned away from the tv and curled into me. I carefully reached for the remote shortly after and shut off the voices. The room grew still and quiet, but the air seemed to hum. I had decided I liked the overhead kitchen light the most; it wasn’t as eerie with memories of Citrine dancing or burning something beneath it. I stared at the mess it illuminated in the kitchen. There were no more noodles on the wall, but I would definitely need to wipe them down the next day. It was nice having Citrine around. I felt like I had always known her. She was goofy and kind and short-tempered, and her face turned beat-red whenever I kissed her. Still, I kept her at length, and I could tell she did the same to me.
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“Why do you have a pen with a string tied to it, Clay?” she would ask. Or “Why do you have five different salt shakers?” And I would shrug, because, while I knew the pen was from the dentist’s office and each shaker was from a different restaurant, I didn’t really know why I had them — why I had to have them. She found some jewelry in my nightstand once and brought it up. I told her it all used to be my mother’s, which wasn’t entirely a lie. She’d always give me this look afterwards, and I could see her hiding her thoughts in plain sight, in her eyes or on her lips. She never pressed me for answers, but I knew she didn’t completely trust me. I wouldn’t have either. I tried to feel her out about it one day, telling her I accidentally walked out of a store wearing a hat I forgot to pay for. “Just take it and give it back. You don’t need it, right? So just give it back.” She said it as if it were so simple, and in some ways it was. I never took it back though. Even so, it was a little easier to leave stores with empty pockets lately… “Clay?” Citrine whispered into my shirt, and I glanced back down at her. She didn’t move or open her eyes. “Hmm?” I brushed a strand of hair out of her face anyways. I wondered if I had woken her up or if she had never quite fallen asleep. “Why don’t we ever hang out in my apartment?” “I just prefer mine, I guess.” “Hmm.” We sat in silence for a moment before she whispered again. “I guess yours is a bit bigger. You’re better about keeping stuff clean too. I always have stuff lying around.” “Yeah,” I answered, brushing another strand away. Yeah. She drifted off, and I just listened to her breathing, wishing I could just steal the moment and keep it forever. If you get what you pay for, or get what you give, then what do you get when you take? Nothing good it seemed. Citrine had left the apartment fourteen an hour ago —or rather, stormed out. The first spring-summer thunderstorm raged on outside. How appropriate. It was Thursday and she had stopped by fourteen after leaving work. She hadn’t been able to find her necklace. “Where is it!” She threw the couch cushions off my old-new couch. I would have helped her search, but I couldn’t look away from her. “I stripped my entire apartment looking for it this morning and couldn’t find it. It has to be here!” When she finished with the couch cushions she got on the floor and checked under it. “My cousin bought it for me before she left. It’s a little yellow crystal on a silver chain. You’ve seen it; I wear it all the time!” She searched under and around the TV stand and on the kitchen counters. “Where is it?” She searched the bathroom floor and the sink. She searched under the bed and on my dressers and on the kitchen counter again and on the TV stand again. “WHERE THE HELL IS IT?” She collapsed on the couch with her hands on her face.
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I slowly sat down beside her and put my hand on her back. “We’ll find i—” “Did you take it?” She cut me off and looked up at me. It was the first time she had met my eyes since she’d walked in. So much boiled inside them — boiled the same way my parents’ eyes had the week before I had to move in. I was caught off guard, yet some part of me wasn’t. “No, I-” “Don’t lie to me!” She stood up. “You lie! I know you lie to me! Where did you go Tuesday?” It took me a second to be anywhere other than this crashing moment. “To the store.” “Really? Why do you always act so guilty when you come back from the ‘store’? Why won’t you ever let me go with you?” I had to connect a few dots. “I’m not cheating. I was gone for like fifteen minutes, and I brought back groceries.” “WELL WHY DO YOU ACT SO GUILTY? Why do you LIE? You told me the lighters you had when we first met were for a friend but,” she stomped into my bedroom and came back with them in her hand, “they’re still in your dresser! You said you didn’t smoke! Do you smoke? I don’t care if you smoke!” “I don’t sm—” “Why is there so much weird stuff in your apartment, Clay? Why don’t we ever go anywhere? Why don’t you ever hang out with friends? Why don’t you ever call or mention your parents? Why,” she took a breath, “why do you lie?” Her voice broke with the last word. She just stared at me, her arms in the air, her eyes searching. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to say it. I tried to show her, to explain everything I didn’t even understand myself as I looked at her in silence. I was sure in my pupils she could see me pleading. She must have. Citrine. Citrine, I swear. She tore her gaze away, throwing the lighters on the couch, shaking her head, and leaving without another word. I found her necklace behind my nightstand thirty minutes later. I don’t know how it got there. I didn’t care. I sat on my old-new couch and watched the white kitchen light bounce off the surface of the yellow crystal on the silver chain as I turned it in my hands. The room was still and quiet, but I could hear the rain pouring outside if I strained my ears enough. The furthermost corner of my bedroom would be damp. “Just give it back,” she had said, as if it were so simple. G
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Justin Sherlock
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Swiss Peaks
Photography
Ode to a Drunk Navy Guy Oh, Calliope, Muse of Epics of all the Muses I invoke you because this was epic. Oh, Herakles and Achilles, Theseus and Perseus, Odysseus and Aeneas, all these heroes of myth you put to shame with your athletic frame and your near perfect aim. Your hair was short, shorn like a sheep in summer, the standard, classic, closely cropped crew cut all the cute guys in this city seem to sport. Your eyes were glassy, your mind blank, your heart racing, your judgement poor but oh, that throwing arm of yours and, oh, how your biceps bulged, straining against the soft fabric of your shirt. How the ancient sculptors would have exalted your unadulterated athleticism, your muscle, your manliness. They sculpted chariot racers, discus throwers, spear-bearers but nothing can compare if only, if only the ancient sculptors could have, would have sculpted you, the drunk Navy guy who threw a burrito at me from the second story of a Mexican restaurant. So, sailor, tell me, did you see the avocado in that beef and black bean burrito, and in your drunken state, did you happen to equate the dark green of that overripe guac with a grenade an armadillo avocado? Or was the connection made between the pineapple grenade and your spiked pineapple lemonade?
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Your bold, brilliant motive is beyond my ability to comprehend but, in any case, there I sat, bored, waiting for my food, our paths so close yet far away, but the fates soon brought us together though, as I saw the burrito, lo! — JR Herman
City in the Sky Nobody stayed in a lovely town but Everyone swam in a pretty little sea where the stardust fell-down, down, down from a city in the clouds Anyone can see Nobody left that pretty little town for that big city that Anyone could see so Anyone laughed like a silly old clown and told Nobody where that city might be So Nobody searched for that city in the sky and tried to bring Everyone along for the ride but Everyone shook their head and gave the reply: “I’ll stay down here, on this side.” And so for a year Nobody searched, scanning the sky for the city’s trace on a small cloud from which they perched, trying to find that lovely, little place But they never found that city in the sky, for Anyone’s advice had long been outdated and when Nobody returned from way up-high they found their town had just about faded So Nobody now is on the ground and gave up that search for the city in the sky while Anyone’s laugh, that piercing sound can still be heard, if you try And Someone has never even dreamt of that city in the sky, to which Nobody never went — Jake Schapiro
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Grace Cohen
Extraterrestrial Dimension
Micron Pen, **NEED Colored Pencils
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Angkan How long have you been praying here, on tin roofs slick with humid heat? Breaths cock like guns obscured by tall grass painted in parol colors. Promise you are not too delicate for this life. Run the tap like rosary beads down into your clasped palms, cracked from all that was carried but unanointed. Baptize the burden in my laugh, in my small fingers which mold a holy effigy in your stead. Watch me love as you do. Weak but not delicate. Weak but not- Weak but not you. Glowing streets made small by time and distance, the city you built refracted in my face. Hands on cheeks now warm with salt. A slipper asunder still ringing from the weight of the family recipe fitting wrong in my mouth. I wore your tsinelas too, that night in the barangay when we set off [like] firecrackers, hollering in the buzzing twilight. Eyes like mirrors speak the ephemeral conflagration, flurrying sparks and secrets onto my tongue. Too small toes gripping the threads of other footsteps like a parasite. Show me again, nanay, how to gorge myself on you. — Will Florentino
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Migrants you have your mother’s bluewater eyes. they remain part of you the way that rain holds in soft ground. you both had lives emptied by other demands, callings and opportunities of your father’s that held your leashes and yanked you along life’s way. so when it came time to flee home once again, together you balanced board game boxes on your scuffed knees, hunched in the Thunderbird as you flew toward the Grand Canyon in the dark, a furious ascent. i think about what parts of you are still there, still scattered on the clay. i notice it now, how you both wince in that silent way, when things fall, expecting echoes in the gorge. — Catherine Storke
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The Caves Below Our Corpses Within the merciless Earth is peace, hiding beneath tiers of dirt and littered branches and hums of guns like flup-flup-flup blasting, excavating shallow graves of skin and wet tissues. Doubt regretfully plagues the underground like a martyr Cavin’ Daves dream of subterranean martyr, a burial without the cost, ushering peace to freshly empty families who doubt the worth of funerals and may venture in pursuit. Between the branches in the vast tomb of grottoes runs a shallow stream, flowing with an urgent flup-flup-flup, sourced by concealed rain, dripping flup. flup. flup onto Cavin’ Dave’s apostles, 11 of them a voluntary martyr and the twelfth refusing to wade through the shallow. He does not resonate with the peace echoing off the limestone walls. He branches forth his arms like spears and stumbles atop corpses in his doubt Serenity flees from doubt that the sky will ever play with him again, will ever flup-flup-flup in his ears like the buzz of butterflies or tickle of branches tumbling down hills of dissent and manufactured martyr. Artificial, feigned peace reigns on Earth’s facade; authenticity calls her shallow Her craggy depths shyly retort the shallow comments made of her womb. Swarmed with her essence of doubt, the twelfth apostle makes his peace with his unintended grave. He dreams the flup…flup…flup of a thundering battle tank threatening to birth a martyr and runs far afield through obscuring branches Scattered among the inverted branches of the tunnels lay thirteen shallow epitaphs inscribed on obsidian coffins, retelling the martyr of the Earth and her cautionary air of doubt. Blood trickles steadily, flup-flup-flup, pooling around oddly placed steel, the only remaining spear piece
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Within the merciless Earth branches tendrils of doubt, inviting passersby to the shallow end, where the never-ending flup-flup-flup hides between boulders of martyr and pebbles of peace — Matt Wright
Medusa’s Guilt They would have been protected from the elements sprawled inside a stone tomb Instead the moss sprouts their funeral shroud It puts down roots behind their eyelids and they have become their own cold jailor; self entombs self And yet, they understand the woman who stole their end Because the monster with snakes for hair wasn’t she entombed within herself, too? She recognizes how they crave to smash their shell to rubble How they strain to roll back the stone and feel a sharp breeze of freedom through the gap How they itch to shed the consequences of an unwanted gaze Medusa watches from the audience She too cannot crack her own face and slip free She feels the guilt coil in her stomach, writhing like the snakes who whisper in her ear to freeze the ones who look like the man who froze her. — Emma Eubank
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hear me! am i cursed to buy my own hot chocolates forever? i want someone to write about me, for once. to not feel like the only lovely thing! for humanity to not feel like a skill honed out of spite for a world so cruel. beauty for the sake of being saved from ugly things feels like my dying breath each time i move.
my heart is very big and fractures very easily and i know i am a force to be reckoned with but oh, you must believe me! i never wished for such tsunamis and earth-shatter.
can you please enter my mind? can you at least read my lips? i’ll spell it out for you. i’ve grown tired shouting to the sky: dear god, i just want to be simple! — Malvika Shrimali
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Isabel Li
maladaptive daydream
Digital Media
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Setting of the Sun, Part One I feel a sense of melancholy As daylight fades away My thoughts deepen with twilight at the dying of the day (But I know it’s just the setting of the sun) My mind turns to the things which I know Cannot hope to last These things I love and cherish Must all fade to the past I know that I shall miss them when they go to depart I’ll hold them and I’ll keep them In the silence of my heart Many days hence from these days, when These things are dead and gone I’ll silently resign myself And hopefully move on (And I know it’s just the setting of the sun)? — Lacy McLain
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Rhythms I’m leaving the valley today. The wind has called me. Each season I hope That I won’t have to go, But then the air shifts. We never carved our names In the trees, did we? But The traces of us are there still. I can’t look back as I walk, Yet I feel your gaze on My retreating back, steady. Hum a tune when the river thaws At the dawn of the spring, So I will find my way back to you. Winter will end soon enough, The warmth will creep back in, And I will listen for your song. I’m coming home today. My love has called me. — Julia Savoca Gibson
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Contributors’ Alyssa Copeland - is on the case. Carter Helmandollar - is a senior at William & Mary with a double major in Studio Art and Marketing. She has a passion for art and hopes to continue her studies in painting at a graduate level. Emma Eubank - can’t wait to one day speak to her crush. It’ll totally happen. Emma Henry - is a current freshman at W&M, and is honored to have her poem, “I Found it in Darkness,” published in The Gallery. When not expressing her thoughts through poetry, Emma can be found writing for The Flat Hat, practicing martial arts, hiking around the College Woods, or embroidering cute trinkets for her friends. This poem is inspired by C.D. Wright’s “Song of the Gourd,” and was written while Emma was working on a farm in New Hampshire. She hopes artists never stop writing, and desires that we all, as Whitman would say, contribute a verse to this powerful play. Emma Wilkie - is a freshman who loves cats, dancing, and acting with their friends. She is thinking about double majoring in psychology and linguistics. Grace Cohen - ‘25 is proud to share a variety of her works. Each piece is a fantasy world; they invite the viewer to soak in every detail and to wander with their imagination. Notice the repetition of circular figures and organic shapes—a nod towards the fluidity and microscopic composition of life itself. JR Herman - ‘24 is a Classics and Ancient Near East & Africa Studies double major. During her free time, JR enjoys writing, taking photos, curling up with a book, baking sweet treats, listening to French music on Spotify, and deciphering Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Jake Schapiro - is a sophomore majoring in history. He first began writing at age 6 after receiving a make-your-own-book kit from his grandparents. His writing has improved since then. Jamie Holt - is a senior in the class of 2022 double majoring in Photojournalism and French & Francophone Studies. This piece is from a body of street-photography work taken during the fall 2021 semester revolving around beach spaces near Williamsburg. Julia Savoca Gibson - strung a few words together in her time at William & Mary. Some of them even made their way into this magazine! She hopes you enjoy them. Justin Sherlock - is a junior, graduating in the fall of 2022. He is majoring in Biology with a minor in Film and Media Studies. This collection of work is from his recent study abroad program in Switzerland. Lacy McLain - Hi, I’m Lacy, I’m a rising senior and I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. For me, writing is a healing act. It’s how I express myself. “Writing is discovering
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Notes that which I did not know I knew”, and it is joy. I’d like to express my gratitude to my family and Dr. Renee Kingan for their support and encouragement, I would’ve quit long ago had it not been for them. Malvika Shrimali - is a rising junior interested in environmental journalism. Sometimes they are very sweet but sometimes they are very, very bitter. And god said, let there be poems. Mariel Webb - Hi, I’m Mariel! I’m a sophomore studying Biology in the hopes of becoming a zookeeper. As an autistic person, I can often struggle with finding the right words to convey my thoughts in a “typical” way. Poetry gives me an opportunity to use words in a way that makes sense to me. Matt Wright - I am a graduating senior majoring in Psychology and Film & Media Studies who has long had an interest in writing, especially poetry. After taking a poetry class at W&M, my passion and motivation is stronger than ever (I would highly recommend the class!). Paige Foltz - is a freshman majoring in psychology. She usually writes poetry but stumbled upon this prose piece this semester. She hopes you enjoy reading it as much as she enjoyed writing it. Shawna Alston - is finishing her first year at the college. She wishes she had learned something. Will Florentino - is a sophomore majoring in Ecology and Conservation. He loves [being in and around] trees and thinks you should definitely go hug one right now.
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Dear Reader,
Editors’ Note
Behold! Fifty-four pages packed with the most creative work from the William & Mary student body: it’s The Gallery’s spring issue. We are very grateful to all our contributors whose moving poetry, sharp prose, and gorgeous art make up this edition. Thank you for sharing your talent with us! This March, I got to hold the first ever issue of The Gallery in my hands. It was actually titled A Gallery of Writing, published in 1979. Originating from an English capstone seminar, the magazine was themed around Beltane, a Celtic festival; it featured exclusively writing. This issue, and all past issues we were able to find, will soon be digitized for all to see thanks to the efforts of our digitization editors Emma and Juliana, and the archivists at Special Collections. It’s fitting I got to see the first issue recently because this is my final issue as editor-in-chief of The Gallery. The Gallery was the first organization I joined as a freshman, and the countless Thursday evenings spent in Tucker over the past four years are some of my fondest college memories. I’m so proud of how the magazine has grown since I joined, and I’m so excited for our incoming editors-in-chief Malvika and Jenna—along with our brilliant section editors and everyone on our staff—to create beautiful issues in the years to come. It truly has been an honor and a joy to serve as editor-in-chief the past two years. To all Gallery members and contributors, past and present, thank you. I’ll finish this note with a story. While I was moving out of my dorm room after graduation, I found a box with extra copies of The Gallery under my bed. I took the copies to Tucker so they could be enjoyed. I paused by the Wren Building before heading back to my room, taking in this last moment of my time at William & Mary. Then, the wind roared, lifting my hair off my shoulders and rustling the trees all around. It reminded me of my poem “Rhythms” from this issue, aptly the magazine’s final piece. I will leave you with its opening and closing lines: I’m leaving the valley today. The wind has called me… I’m coming home today. My love has called me.
— Julia Savoca Gibson
Colophon The Gallery Volume 36 Issue 2 was produced by the student staff at the College of William & Mary and published by Carter Printing Co. in Richmond, Virginia. Submissions are accepted anonymously through a staff vote. The magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CC and Adobe Photoshop CC. The magazine’s 54, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. The titles of all the pieces are Derivia. The text on the covers are set in Headliner No. 45.
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