a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing
featuring family and friction a bittersweet look back learning when to walk away
Cover art: “The Other of the Other” by Joseph
Stern
The staff of Glassworks magazine would like to thank Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Program and Rowan University’s Writing Arts Department
Cover Design & Layout: Katie Budris
Glassworks is available both digitally and in print. See our website for details: RowanGlassworks.org
Glassworks accepts literary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, craft essays, art, photography, short video/film & audio. See submission guidelines: RowanGlassworks.org
Glassworks is a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Graduate Program
Correspondence can be sent to: Glassworks c/o Katie Budris
Rowan University 260 Victoria Street Glassboro, NJ 08028
Glassworks maintains First North American Serial Rights for publication in our journal and First Electronic Rights for reproduction of works in Glassworks and/or Glassworks-affiliated materials. All other rights remain with the artist.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Katie Budris
MANAGING EDITOR
Cate Romano
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Alexia Breeden
Ellie Cameron Briar
Austin Schuh
Mel Springfield
Coney Zhang
FICTION EDITORS
Ethan Gross
Sophia Nigro
Rachel Yuro
NONFICTION EDITORS
Jordan G. Avery
Stephen Harrison
Joshua Wilson
POETRY EDITORS
Briar
Alexa Diamant
Jamie M. Roes
glassworks
Spring 2025
iSSue ThirTy
MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING PROGRAM
ROWAN UNIVERSITY
Issue 30 | Table of ConTenTs
ArT
JoSeph STern, The oTher of The oTher | cover rAchel coyne, peonieS 1 | 6
Shelbey leco, only humAnS cAn STop The ecocide | 16
Juno lorber, emmA | 25
Shelbey leco, We’re noT beTTer TogeTher | 31
rAchel coyne, peonieS 2 | 35
Juno lorber, SiSTer | 38
rAchel coyne, peonieS 3 | 45
JoSeph STern, Solo | 48
Shelbey leco, bpme | 66
ficTion
emily neuberger, mATing SeASon | 18
rAzi ShAdmehry, AlTAr cAll | 53
nonficTion
KATie TonellATo, The WAding bird | 7
lulu grAnT, birTh moTher | 32
celiA m. ruiz, my nAme iS noT SAlly | 39
poeTry
millicenT borgeS AccArdi, AlmoST liKe grief | 3
diAnne STepp, hoW i cAme To love beeS | 4
clifTon gAchAguA, on hoW To love me | 13
SArAh fAWn monTgomery, lure | 14
Sever | 15
megAn perAlTA, moTher | 26
lily KATe AnThony, lAWnScApe | 28
They Told me noT To WriTe AbouT roAdKill... | 30
eriK brocKbAnK, peA Soup ii | 36
iSAbelle bohl, And Where do We STore our vAriouS SelveS AnyWAy | 37
pATriciA fArrell, cAScAdiA SubducTion | 46
dAni puTney, cheKhov | 47
AndreW vogel, curSe | 50
SeAn glATch, holding hAndS on The 6 | 52
SAm neW, We cleAn The houSe on your birThdAy | 67
mAríA llonA gArcíA, Spring | 68
The hIsTory of Glassworks
The tradition of glassworking and the history of Rowan University are deeply intertwined. South Jersey was a natural location for glass production—the sandy soil provided the perfect medium, while plentiful oak trees fueled the fires. Glassboro, home of Rowan University, was founded as “Glass Works in the Woods” in 1779. The primacy of artistry, a deep pride in individual craftsmanship, and the willingness to explore and test conventional boundaries to create exciting new work is part of the continuing spirit inspiring Glassworks magazine.
almosT lIke GrIef
Millicent Borges Accardi
We are watching the Olympics, and he says he hasn’t cried, that he has been trying to since mother died. I tell him we are playing off each other like shadow and paper, like his mouth covering mine and breathing into my lungs for me, as if he wants to save me rather than himself, and, then, in the middle of breath, the desperate scream comes like a sound-drilled tunnel of loud air cast into my body, echoing through bones, like a snare drum tapped, the hollow skin pressed tight and trembling. Hollow and fast. They say minor chords are sadder, that D and E minor chords set up a somber mood, a choice unfulfilled, between tension and dissonance. Is an empty vessel only useful when blown into? God, my heart is fixed. I keep trying to find you in E Minor, among the ninth chord, evoking the opposite of joy.
how I Came To love bees
Dianne Stepp
Snic, he pressed the silver button on the butter-colored handle of the knife, snic and the blade flew out.
They were sitting on the lawn, the little girl, bare-armed in a sun dress, her older cousin playing with his switch-blade.
“Here is how you put it back,” he told her, and pressed the palm of his hand on the back of the slender blade and back it went.
It was fall and the neighbors were burning leaves. Some of the bees from her grandfather’s hive under the apple tree, stunned by the smoke,
fell into the grass, their silent insect wings like veined hands folded prayerful across their backs,
the amber of their tiny bodies stilled, stingers disarmed. Snic, the blade of the knife flew out.
No! she cried, as he inserted the knife into the small body of a bee just behind its head. No, don’t.
He grinned. They’re dead anyway, he said. And sliced and sliced again. The two had been eating carrots from the garden, a bunch of ferny tops lay by his knee. And when bees from the hive attacked, he grabbed the carrot tops
and slashing the air around his head and shoulders, he screamed, and screaming ran toward the house, the bees storming after him, leaving the girl where she sat on the lawn unharmed.
Rachel Coyne
The wadInG bIrd
Katie Tonellato
When we walk within sight of the Blue Heron, he hobbles closer to the pond, a shift in his wings. I never veer off the designated golf cart pathways, afraid Sophie, the other half of my “we,” will shit in the fresh grass and either a rich resident living on the boundary of the course will yell at me, or if the poop isn’t especially easy to pick up, one of the workers who maintain the grass will step in it.
The Blue Heron wades alone in the golf ball pond. Across the pond, ducks waddle semi-silently into Sophie’s front yard. They rest their heads on the back of their necks, sleeping in the sun. It is the end of September and the cold creeps in day by day, penetrated every morning by the daylight rising pink over the mountain peaks. For the most part, geese stay away from the pond, choosing to fly overhead in large V’s, then small V’s, and I’m thankful for it. Sophie and I hate geese― although Sophie loves to eat what they leave behind.
I am dog-sitting for Sophie’s parents. Their house sits on the precipice of the golf course, their porch overlooking the golfers, the pond, and the wildlife. Every time I dog sit for Sophie, I see a new animal: white-tailed deer, raccoons, aggressive red swallows, blue jays, ducks,
even a Javelina that jumped out of the bushes and scared the shit out of me.
And now, the Blue Heron. I’ve been at the golf course for two weeks and have no reason to assume it is a different Blue Heron that appears some mornings at the pond. Deep in my gut, I think I know he is the same. The way he moves reminds me of the day before. Slicked back, deep blue feathers part on his head the same way, his neck craned over the surface of the water, his eye watching me, worried, but not by much—worried, but knowing he could get away.
I’ve recently been humbled, and by that, I mean I fell in love. Wholeheartedly—the kind that seemed like the end of all my waiting. Before meeting Nima, being single felt comforting to me, yet I always, always, always wanted companionship. I hid this desire deep down, buried between the crags and fissures of my heart. I found the idea of wanting love embarrassing and problematic in that I wasn’t sure if the type of love I wanted existed—no, I wasn’t sure if there was a person out there who could fill the role. I wanted a partner, someone capable of keeping up with me, and I thought so highly of myself I was sure that no one could ever match up.
When I met Nima, I thought I’d been proven wrong. The compatibility was there, the attraction, the laughs, the silliness, the ambition. All the qualifications for love wrapped into one body, into one soul, and maybe the stars aligned, or fate decided I had earned the right to have this love, because she fell into my lap.
“
I found the idea of wanting love embarrassing and problematic in that I wasn’t sure if the type of love I wanted existed. ”
At the time we got together, I felt accomplished in my relationship, but in other places as well. I was on my way to finishing graduate school, a full draft of my novel-in-progress completed. I was organizing events for the city’s book festival, presenting at conferences on the neuroscience of writing, getting paid to teach. On my way to everything I’d always wanted. And finally, after years of being alone, I found someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So, as my relationship fell through my tightly fisted hand, everything else I was proud of seemed to fall away with it. I was proud of myself, then disabused, because I knew I lacked something,
since we both loved each other, but simply couldn’t get it to work. She used to tell me she had a gut feeling I was in love with my best friend. For months, Nima asked the same questions about my past, over and over, until I found that I wasn’t sure if I was even telling the truth. Presented with a labyrinth in which the truth was not what she wanted, but that is what she claimed she was searching for. I would answer her: “I’m not lying,” “All of that was before I met you,” “Gut feelings aren’t real.” But my answers didn’t satiate her, the interrogations continued, and still, I did not leave. Like a bird trapped in a car, bashing my head against windows, tearing across the backseat, leaving three-pronged claw marks on the windshield. Waiting for someone, maybe even Nima, to reach in with a towel and cover my eyes so I could get out. Not necessarily away from her, because despite her inability to trust me, I loved her, but out, as in away from danger. As in out, with enough room to fly and be what I was before I entered the car. But of course, I am not a bird, I am a human, still leaving paw prints on the window, still knocking into the steering wheel. The only difference being, the lock is built in right there, and despite my two opposable thumbs, I could not open the door, afraid I would not be let back in, afraid I would lose her, not just the relationship.
The golf course follows a design of loops, twisted and turned into circles. Sophie and I walk endlessly until we cut across the grass back to home. During these walks I listen to positive affirmations, which I believe is stupid, but I’m desperate. My attempts at eating and sleeping normally have fallen short. I tried four different therapists throughout the summer, and none stuck despite the fact that I was doing everything right! I exercised frequently, I joined a rugby team, I had a fulfilling job, and still the feeling tucked into me every night was that I am missing. I am lonely. I used to have something, and now I do not.
Today is going to be a wonderful day. Even in its challenges today will be a beautiful story.
I am excited to begin today.
With his knee bent toward his body, the Blue Heron stares deeply into the water. I suppose knowing that the Blue Heron is the same Blue Heron each day counts as having a gut feeling. I can’t know this bird for sure, but I feel it. Yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if this weren’t true. Maybe it isn’t that I don’t believe in gut feelings, but that I don’t place a high value on what my body believes, because truth is so subjective.
My hesitancy surprises me. I am not an indecisive person. When I decided to apply to graduate school, the decision turned immovable. If I didn’t get in the first time I would apply again the next year, better.
If I didn’t get a teaching assistantship, I would defer a year and volunteer with book clubs to get experience. If my writing wasn’t good enough, I would make it so. The choice was an end. I could see clear to the outcome, I just needed to decide which wire to take to get there, and if I fell off one line, there would always be another connecting back to the end. When it came to Nima, I could never see the outcome, only the different cables of fate, extending straight as powerlines. How can I live with myself if I make the wrong choices and I don’t get to the correct end based on my body’s feeling?
Cracks sound across the grass as the first golfers of the day peel into the lot, polos tucked into their khaki pants, sweaty barbered hair crammed underneath Callaway hats. Sophie tries to climb into their carts in search of half-eaten turkey sandwiches and I tug on her leash to get her to keep walking. Her impoliteness disguised underneath a cute face. Sometimes the golfers stare at her desperate for a pet, and sometimes they grow impatient with how long it takes for us to get to the other side of a long stretch, blocking their strokes. I try to pick up the pace, but Sophie drags behind, burying her nose in the grass.
Katie Tonellato
The Wading Bird
Bria, my current therapist, tries to convince me I need to move on after the break-up. As one does, I became attached to Bria immediately. Joking that she is my best friend, although if it’s a joke right now it doesn’t feel like it. She does not look like the type of therapist I would need. Sometimes I imagined my therapists with tattoos and glasses and crossed legs, and maybe a scarf, but Bria is blonde and wears jean jackets and places her hands neatly in her lap. Sitting directly across the couch from me every week, Bria says, “no, no, no” to my manic insistence that I could not move on. Harsh, yet sweet, she tells me I need to open my options back up again, because I have become closed off, the failure of my relationship laid brick over my heart from even the possibility of love from another person. Nima and I holed up behind the brick, placing block after block.
A week after I started watching Sophie, Nima reached back out. She showed up at the golf course, walking timidly, as if the ground will fall out from under her. I hate seeing her at the golf course because finally after weeks of not talking I was at a place, literally, that I could find some peace, and watching her walk from the parking lot disturbed the place. The birds quaked from their nesting areas, the mountain covered the sunshine, pouring out deep purples into the sky, the golfers peeled into the course in an uproar. I didn’t
want her to see my golf ball pond, or walk past the two rocking chairs on Sophie’s porch, or pet Sophie.
We greet each other, and I tell myself to be quiet, be quiet, be quiet. Within me sits hope, a heavy weighted cylindrical cement ball, wrapped tightly with rope, and too heavy to pull to the surface. I tell myself all the things I need to: if she hooked up with someone else, I’ll know it’s done; if she asks me about my best friend again, I’m done; if she doesn’t say anything at all, I will be relieved. I want to ask her about her friends, about her mom, about her writing but don’t because I know she’ll tell me about kindness, and I am not a part of that anymore. It is the thing I love most about her, not that she is inordinately kind, but that she is a witness to it. She cherishes it, constantly scratching at the people in her life so she can get a whiff.
“I want to learn to love you for real. The real you, not these objects of fascination we are to each other, like we owe each other something.”
“I mean we never even pooped in front of each other!” Her mouth hangs open as if this is a crime, as if this is the most absurd act of not-love on the planet.
“If that’s the marker of knowing someone, I don’t know who knows me. I don’t poop in front of anybody,” I reply.
“I want things to be different this time.” glassworks 10
I don’t believe her. Maybe it’s because for the ten months when we were together, she didn’t have this epiphany. Or maybe because I didn’t know her now. She had three months of a life that I had distinctly been placed out of. Or maybe, in walling up my heart to other people, that included this new version of her, and I could not see above the wall I built. It was too high and the cable reaching over was too long, and I was so tired of trying to see the end when I could only hold onto what was right in front of me. Regardless, I didn’t know what decision to make, frozen in the unknown of this offer, because if it was the truth, the ending I want should appear right in front of me, but there was no way to know if her sincerity was real now,
The Great Blue Heron is what they call a wading bird. This means that when they fish for their prey, they are patient, wading in the shallows with their long, stick thin legs for the chance at a fish swimming by so they can stab the swimmers through the gut with their beaks. This is why when Sophie and I walk past the Blue Heron in the mornings, he does not fly off, in the off chance whatever prey lies beneath his feet will get scared and the waiting cycle will have to begin again. The only issue with that is the murky pond the Blue Heron comes to every morning contains only golf balls. Absent of fish in the water, the Blue Heron will sit and wait forever.
“ The answer is muddled by wetland rushes, skim algae, entangled in the water weeds. I have no idea what line I’m pulling on, what waits on the other end. ”
or real forever, and so, in a way, it was like her hands were covering my eyes, letting me peek subliminally between her fingers, without giving me a full view.
My positive affirmations continue.
I am wise.
I make the right choices. I extend openness to the people around me.
I told Nima yes, I want to try again, but it doesn’t feel like I knew what I was choosing. The answer is muddled by wetland rushes, skim algae, entangled in the water weeds. I have no idea what line I’m pulling on, what waits on the other end. If I were a better creature, I would know something other birds do. Maybe there aren’t just golf balls in the glassworks
Katie Tonellato
water, but a diverse ecosystem: carp, fathead minnows darting back and forth, a catfish with its fat-lipped mouth gliding around the golf balls sunken into the mud at the bottom of the pond. Freshwater snails eating up the algae, small enough never to be seen.
At the tail-end of our walk, Sophie is too busy shoveling goose poop into her mouth before I can pull her away to notice the proximity of the Blue Heron. The Blue Heron is preoccupied, head bent like a question mark over his sinewy neck, staring down into the waters, waiting for a fish to swim underneath his beak, unaware of the dangers above the surface.
on how To love me
Clifton Gachagua
read me neruda on birds, the memoirs, old elliot on cats, his personal life, read me your dream journal, tell me about the domestic in your life, help me cut yellow and red and green bell peppers, tell me about the history of spices, lie how much you like the pasta, the omelette, the overcooked chicken, bad tea, let’s be decadent with time and the body, with film and a camera, little birds in tangiers, say you don’t mind my drinking, my forgetfulness, let’s find a nameless town, rent a room in a new country after it’s nth junta, desperate for tourists, tell me what hartman means, NourbeSe, derrida, all the people i find unfamiliar as you are, mark my tongue with your childhood, the small of my back with your endless ambivalence, initiate me into your secret cult, sacrifice me first, i offer myself, not that there will be room for gods in our life, fill my life with bibliographies i will never read, old deuteronomy and jellicles, swan and kestrel, let’s see what we can co-author, become.
lure
Sarah Fawn Montgomery
I slow sink beneath the weight of my own existence, spine a line for other fishermen to cast easily into indifferent seas unseen in the depths, tangled as river weeds growing ever curved in the current hooked as a question— like chronic, like cure— as though searching for any foolish creature to fall for the lure where medicine means relief diagnosis the shining bait piercing a glittering throat.
sever Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Slice me wide, splay my meat and mellow fat yellowed to shine across some stranger’s smile, gentle butcher, here are my best bones for your stock, to wet the driest day-old bread, and I promise not to howl my hurt across the dining table like some foolish lamb who tastes best before the body is lean and fear seasoned, instead a mussel without the protection of home a severed body boneless and free, soundless to swallow down.
Shelbey Leco
maTInG season
Emily Neuberger
Tom let me buy the hot tub our first winter in Illinois, to make up for the fact that the sun went down at four o’clock. It took more cajoling than I thought was fair, considering we’d moved here for his big promotion. In Tarzana, we had a hot tub attached to our in-ground pool. In Illinois, our property bumped up against a pond, so the risk of erosion was too great to dig, even if the homeowner’s association would allow it. I spent weeks at the Jacuzzi Emporium researching which kind I wanted: a large square whirlpool with wooden siding, with wide edges to set your drink while you soaked. Tom declared it an insurance risk, a cesspool, and not to mention, bad for pregnant women.
“But I am not pregnant, Tom.”
“Not yet.”
Tom had won the battle to move us to this gray place. I knew I had to win something soon or he would become emperor of our marriage.
“I miss the water.”
We lived in a posh town now, which I hadn’t known was important to him until we got here. The town bordered Lake Michigan, he pointed out, and there was an Olympic-sized pool at the high school where I could swim laps if I wanted. There were other women in those places, he said, and I could make friends.
“Too cold eleven months out of the year,” I said of the lake, and “Indoors,” of the pool. The women, I didn’t mention. They were all parent association types. We didn’t have anything to talk about.
I said, “I want a bit of water where I can see the sky.”
Tom sighed. “It’s expensive.”
I didn’t dignify this. Tom’s salary had increased by fifty percent during our move, and our money stretched so much farther here than it did in Los Angeles. We’d been able to afford a house twice the square footage. “What are we going to do with that huge deck anyway?”
Tom was an actuary. I could see him assessing risks. “Kids drown in hot tubs.”
“We’ll get a lock for the cover,” I said. “I’m a California girl, Tom.”
We both looked scared, then, of what the other might say. I took a deep breath. So did Tom.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
I did not know how I’d gotten into a situation where I was asking my husband permission to buy something. This made me livid. “We moved here for you. It’s my turn now.”
~
I met Tom at UCLA, where I played tennis and was treasurer
of Alpha Phi. After graduation I shared an apartment with two of my sorority sisters and worked for Chase as an analyst, ascending to third tier before Tom passed his actuarial exams. After we got married, we bought the Tarzana house. “Kids,” we said, “someday.” On weekends, we hosted themed parties and went on long hikes. When Tom got an offer from PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Chicago, I was wary. I liked that I could take a break from work. I could go back to school, maybe get my yoga certification. But I’d never lived anywhere other than California.
It would be an adventure, Tom said.
We reminded each other we could always come back.
The problem was, the minute we’d moved into the house in the Chicago suburbs, Tom flourished. I saw now that this was what he’d always wanted: to be lord of a McMansion. Meanwhile I felt like a parrot in the Lincoln Park Zoo. All the birds like me lived somewhere else. No matter the artificial mechanisms put in place to keep me alive, I would always be fighting nature.
~
Tom was at work when the guys came to install the hot tub. I watched without a hint of buyer’s remorse as they lugged the materials onto the newly enforced deck. Assembled, it took almost an hour to fill and then I had to wait even longer for the
chemicals to balance. When the guys left, I poured myself a gin and tonic to celebrate.
It was early November and freezing. I put on a coat and sat on the deck with my drink, next to my hot tub, and looked out at the pond. I’d always loved water and liked that this house had a waterfront view. But in California we don’t have ponds— they’d just dry up—so I didn’t know that they were nothing at all like lakes. This thing was mucky and smelly and made our yard the local hotspot for the neighborhood geese. I tried to scare them away until one chased me back into the house, hissing, and I let their annexation stand. Most of them had flown south by now for mating season, but I was still finding their shit in the grass.
“ All the birds like me lived somewhere else. No matter the artificial mechanisms put in place to keep me alive, I would always be fighting nature. ”
Still, I felt better about things now that I had my hot tub.
~
That night for dinner, I roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots in the pan, so they soaked up the fat glassworks 19
the way Tom liked. I never cooked in California. There, Tom and I cut up vegetables and ordered sushi and tossed salads, often with our windows open, music playing into the night. But here, I was home all day with the kitchen, so I worked my way through a big book my mother gave me when we got married. So far, I’d gained nine pounds.
To stave off the hangover from the gin and tonic, I’d had two more slowly over the afternoon. By the time we had wine with dinner, I was drunk.
I was wearing a thick wool cardigan over a beaded camisole. I peeled off the sweater and brought his hands to my waist, the soapy water seeping the fabric.
Tom’s eyes slid to the dishes. I stomped away, taking my wine with me.
Outside, I used one of the chemical test kits and saw the water was safe. It was bubbling and hot. The hot tub was out of our neighbor’s sightline. I took off my clothes. The November air only made the water
“ I’d never been good at reading constellations and could not locate the north star. Even though I hated the geese, I wondered how they navigated without a map. How they knew it was time to leave. ”
“Let’s try out the hot tub,” I said, pulling him away from the dishes and unbuttoning his shirt.
I bit his ear. I wasn’t very horny, but I thought maybe by behaving that way, I could kindle my own desire. Most of the time, I mimicked passion knowing he couldn’t tell the difference, and hid the spiking fear that I’d never feel it again.
“Let me just put these to soak.”
I was still working on the proper midwestern wardrobe. Right now, I had only my California clothes and the ones I’d bought for ski vacations.
more glorious when it enveloped my body. I tipped my head up and looked at the night sky.
The stars had been one of Tom’s selling points for this town. “It’ll be like Lake Tahoe all the time,” he said, but it wasn’t.
I’d never been good at reading constellations and could not locate the North Star. Even though I hated the geese, I wondered how they navigated without a map. How they knew it was time to leave.
I could see Tom through the kitchen window, doing the dishes. glassworks 20
I wanted him here, with me, even though the sight of him made me irrationally angry.
“Tom,” I called, then when he didn’t hear me, I said it louder. “Tom!”
He glanced up. I waded to the edge and brought my chest out. Sometimes it amazed me that he still liked my breasts. It made me jealous that he had this renewable kind of desire. Male privilege, I thought, that he could still get excited by a glance at my body. It took me an hour to warm up with him now, mostly with my eyes closed, imagining myself in a completely different situation.
“Tom.” I said his name steadily louder until he turned off the faucet and dried his hands.
I don’t know why I wanted him to join me so badly, when most of the time he was with me, I wanted to be alone.
“Wow,” he said when he came out onto the deck, though he glanced to the neighbor’s houses, checking if they could see me. Even though I had done the same thing, it made me angry.
“Can’t you just have some fun?”
“Jeez,” he said, and I felt relieved, knowing now that he would not come in.
I was starting to feel woozy from the hot water. Tom took my glass of wine inside and returned with a towel.
“Come on,” he said.
I ignored the outstretched towel and walked, dripping and naked, into the house.
Tom made me stand on the doormat to dry off, so I wouldn’t damage the hardwood floors.
“It’s way too cold for that,” he said. “This isn’t California.”
I made my eyes go big. “It’s not?”
Tom chose to laugh rather than bite back. I was relieved. We had been arguing so much. I couldn’t stop setting the traps even though I always felt terrible after, like I had spent money we didn’t have.
I took my wine up with me to the shower, so I could rinse off the chemicals.
Our house in Illinois was new, with all sorts of amenities I’d never expected to own. Our shower was inside a big glass box with these jets that misted you from all sides, like a carwash. I turned them on and watched the glass box grow opaque with condensation.
A minute later, a dark shape came into the bathroom. I turned away. Even though I wouldn’t be able to see the details through the fog, I did not want Tom to pee in front of me. Some people found this intimate, but I found it insulting. You’re so incredibly not special that I will relieve myself in front of you.
Emily Neuberger | Mating Season
Cold air invaded my oasis. I turned, arms around my breasts to protect the sensitive skin, saw Tom standing there naked, and said, “Ah!”
Tom was smiling. He put his hands on my waist.
I jumped back. “You’re freezing.”
“Sorry.” He got under the water. My hot oasis had been punctured by the open door. I shivered.
“I was enjoying this.”
“I know.” Warm now, he gripped me from behind, pressing his body to mine and kissing my shoulder. “You looked so hot, I had to join you.”
“Why didn’t you join me in the hot tub?”
“Isn’t this better? It’s private in here.”
“No one could see us.”
I waited for him to respond. When he kept kissing me, I nudged him away. “Did you hear me?”
“What?”
“I said, no one could see us.”
He rolled his eyes. “We can’t have sex in our backyard.”
I drank some wine, but he took it away from me.
“Glass in the shower? You could cut yourself.”
“I hate shower sex.” I wrapped myself in one of the thick new towels we’d bought when we moved.
Our master suite, as it was called, had two walk-in closets in addition to the spa bathroom. I’d liked our house initially, seduced by all the closets. In Tarzana I was always
looking for techniques to camouflage our belongings, which gave me the feeling of being slowly buried alive. But now that we’d lived here awhile, I found it distasteful, this pretending to be rich. Tom obviously loved the spa bathroom and two ovens and wine refrigerator. Sometimes I found the house condescending. I thought Tom foolish for falling for it.
I lay down on our king bed, my hair soaking the pillow beneath me. A few minutes later, Tom crawled on top of me and kissed my nose.
“Hi.”
I turned away. “I’m tired.”
He pressed himself into me, kissed my neck.
Now that I’d laid down, all the wine seemed to rush up into my head, and when I closed my eyes, the room spun. Tom mistook this relent for desire. I could stop him, but I knew if we had sex, I wouldn’t have to for a few more days. I wouldn’t have to have a conversation explaining why I didn’t want to. I opened my eyes and pulled him closer.
~
I woke in the night with a jolt. I read once that this abrupt wake-up is when your liver stops processing alcohol, like the bump at the end of a roller coaster. My mouth was dry and I felt a familiar shame. I needed to stave off the oncoming hangover or the shame would worsen. I’d gotten good at this.
I felt dampness between my legs. Tom and I had stopped using protection two months ago. I didn’t realize that to Tom, “someday” was now. Once we’d brought in all the furniture and bought the new towels and registered the cars to Illinois, there was nothing left to do. Conception was the final item on the checklist.
In the kitchen, I drank some water. I ate two slices of bread standing over the sink, with butter, then swallowed three Advil.
“ I had not known that Tom could watch me fade without grief, once he had gotten everything he wanted. ”
It was three o’clock in the morning but I felt wide awake. Even in California, my friends were asleep. Our conversations had been sparse lately. I felt like I had been careless in moving and was ashamed. Still, it was sad not to see any messages on my screen. I sat on the couch. My hair was still damp since I’d laid down on it so shortly after my shower, and I was cold. I was always cold here.
If Tom came downstairs just then, I might have killed him. His betrayal was so subtle he didn’t notice it. I had not known that Tom
could watch me fade without grief, once he had gotten everything he wanted.
Even though I’d cleaned myself up, I still felt Tom sticking to my thighs. I itched there, feeling that pleasant disgustingness of being alone. I wanted to itch more, to scratch out anything of him that might be inside of me. Then I realized I wanted no part of him inside of me at all, not his body, not his sperm, and especially not a child.
I looked out at the hot tub. It was easy to understand why a pregnant woman shouldn’t go into one. You’d just boil your baby away. And sperm, I thought, was surely no match for bromine.
I went outside. Tom had replaced the hot tub cover while I was in the shower. It was heavy and I worried that the noise of my grunts would wake him. But at last I got it free. I lowered myself into the hot water, opening and closing my legs, hoping to suck some of the chemicals up inside myself where Tom had been.
I looked out into the yard and saw a dark shape on the grass. It was a goose, head tucked into her wing. I’d thought they were all gone by now. She was alone.
I got out of the hot tub. The cold now was bitter. The goose didn’t hear my bare feet in the
Emily
grass. When I was very close, she woke. She hissed, spreading her wings, feathers on end. I crouched, still, my hands splayed out proclaiming peace. My muscles vibrated with cold, the bottoms of my feet burning where they touched the grass. I looked up at the house. Maybe Tom would see me like this, I thought, naked in the yard, talking to a goose. I almost hoped he would.
The goose calmed. Her feathers went down until her small head was smooth again. I wondered how she would get south without the flock, if she knew where to go on her own. I didn’t think she could even make it that far without flying in the V. She was stranded up here in the cold. I stayed there as long as I could stand it. I did not want her to be alone.
moTher Megan Peralta
Animals often eat their young. And mothers drown their progeny, In water or in guilt.
My mother lives 700 miles south. A steel cable runs between us, the kind dogs’ teeth can’t sever.
The cable hums with our silence. Even when the airwaves Languish, I sense her. Locked on my ear like a pit bull’s jaw.
Demanding remembrance in Liminal space.
The scratch on my cornea I can’t blink away. Raw flesh of a nail-less toe Rubbing with each step.
Women mourn their mothers, Shaming me.
She will linger the length of my life, Immortal. Words of a deaf woman sunken in my ear. Your father is a godly man.
But drowning progeny is not Just a mother’s prerogative.
If I free my ear with the edge of a knife And leave part of myself behind, The cable will still hum Her message always
I need this man more than I need you.
lawnsCaPe
Lily Kate Anthony
My mother kills herself on a Monday in September. I always suspected she might. My father blubbers on the front lawn and can’t tell me how. His pulse outpaces his brand-new anxiety pills: he collapses to the onion grass, faint. Was it the shotgun? I press, unrelenting. I stand dark as the walnut tree, whose lower leaves drip in the aftermath of the sprinklers next door, all rakes and rainbows. His pulpy mouth purses as he shakes his head no. Did she hang herself?
My mother’s closet: shoeboxes, scarves. His lower lip protrudes like a child set to wail. So which pills?
Near the perennials, a Persian cat lolls. My father’s face finds his hands and their hiding. Puffy chemtrails split in the sky, above the same yard where I once tripped on mushrooms and watched the gnat clouds dance like Christmas lights over the trampoline springs and the telephone wires. Where did you find her? I ask. In the bed?
Where did you find her? I ask. On the floor?
My father wrings at the back of his neck, red as sunburn, collar stretched. I picture her every which way, eventually. I picture her skin, iridescent like trout. I see the fan on her dresser, blades so fast that they blur.
glassworks 28
Though a river never ran through our living room, I conjure one, and I imagine her drowning with her cheek on smooth stones. My father whimpers in the yard with her gazing ball. The Persian averts his eyes. The gilded foliage drips itself dry.
They Told me noT To wrITe abouT roadkIll, lIke Grandmas and ICarus
Lily Kate Anthony
but I hit my first possum last night outside Southland Casino, with its electric bells and blinking lights, a naked-tailed jackpot under my tire. He was a brief, rabid speedbump, pushing eighty in a sixty-five. I read once that the torso of a doe, when hit with something the size and weight of an F-150, explodes at the grille in a cloud of red mist. I Googled photos of moose mangled in the frames of sedans, hides on hoods and antlers out moonrooves. The possum was simple: he broke, and he bled.
When I was a child, they predicted my death like they’d been counting my cards, like it was only a numbers game: a slow suffocation, a ventilated wheeze, lungs filled with the sap of my cystic fibrosis. I’d be forty at best. When I hit the possum, I was glad it was sharp and unprophesied. It might be strange to admit that I envied him, sharp snout and marsupial scuttle outside the gambling hall, stamped to the potholed street by the hand of dumb luck, but I did, and drove on.
Shelbey Leco
bIrTh moTher
LuLu Grant
I am a child when I whisper to you in secrecy. Alone, under the cover of night, tucked in my bed. Are you out there? Can you hear me? I know you are halfway around the world, clueless to where I am, yet I believe the universe will carry my message. So, I tell you I’m okay. How I am healthy and loved. How I practice piano and always do my homework. On nights when I feel brave, I wipe my tear-stained cheeks and bare my heart. I miss you. I hope we can meet one day.
~
I am twenty-nine years old when I am given your identity: a name, a birth year, a photo. I stare at your high cheekbones, double eyelids, thick eyebrows—not a mirror of mine, merely an essence. It’s hard to believe it’s you, my birth mother. Two decades of wishing and now, your image is right in front of me. I should be thrilled, but that initial light of joy quickly transforms into gray sadness. Now, you have a face. Now, I know who left me on the street all those years ago. How could you?
It’s a Saturday night in September when you first hear my voice. Ni hao, I say, trying my hardest to erase any hint of my American accent. I beam at you through my webcam, welcoming a response. You say nothing. You shirk my gaze. You wipe your tears. I want to reach out and hug you, but all I have is rudimentary Mandarin. Mei shi. I say. Mei shi. I tell you it’s okay even though I’m not sure it is. Will you speak to me? Can we grow a relationship?
Little by little, month by month, we work to stitch together our shattered hearts. Through messages, photos, and video calls, we bond. There is a day when you blossom and give me a wide, toothy smile. I love it. It’s just like mine.
~
“
Little by little, month by month, we work to stitch together our shattered hearts. ”
I am thirty-one years old the first time we embrace. It’s dreamlike, our arms wrapped around each other in reunion. When we part, you gently take me by the shoulders, your worried eyes scanning my body. Who do you see? The newborn baby you left or an adult? Do you see me as yours or do I belong to another
woman, the one who adopted me? You guide me out of the airport and into your life, your arm secured around my waist, your fingers pinching my coat.
At your home, you slide me into slippers and hurry me to a bedroom where you give me socks with bunnies, pastel-colored underwear, and a set of fuzzy pajamas. When I hold the set to my body, your eyes widen and a deep chuckle bursts from you. Tai da le! Too big! I assure you I don’t care. I will gladly wear the first clothes you bought me.
It’s early morning when you peep into the bedroom. I think you are eager to see my face, start your mother duties. Chi fan ma? you ask. I agree to eat. You stomp into your shoes and bustle across the street for breakfast. Some mornings, you bring noodles in beef broth with chopped meat and cilantro. Others, you bring boiled dumplings or my favorite, steamed pork buns. You observe me as I savor the flavors of my homeland.
After breakfast, you won’t let me help with chores. Instead, you tell me to wash my face, brush my teeth, and get dressed. Even though I am a grown woman, I let you treat me like a child. I let you become my mother. I let you because you never had the chance.
~
You are fifty years old the first time you mend me back to health. You dissolve herbs in steaming
water, whisking them with a wooden chopstick. I take the small porcelain bowl from you and sip the medicinal brown liquid that is supposed to ease my cold symptoms. I swallow with a grimace. My throat burns. My head pounds. My muscles ache. Everything hurts. Even this—you and me together.
When you touch my forehead with your palm, your eyebrows knit. You move the heat lamp a centimeter closer to me and pile another quilt on top of me, tucking the heft under my legs like a cocoon. You sit by my side and without hesitation, take my slender, small hands. My spirits swell with this gesture. I close my eyes and welcome the closeness, the cool roughness of your hands enveloping mine. I want to know these hands, the ones that cradled me for mere hours before they gave me away forever.
I think about our short time together, whether you memorized my face, the weight of my body, the smell of my skin. Whether you tried to convince yourself to keep me or if you held me to your breast and whispered Dui bu qi. Mother, are you sorry you gave me away?
You’ve told me the story about how poor you and Father were, how you needed money to save your first daughter who had fallen three stories, how these circumstances led you to wrap me in a blanket, place me in a bamboo basket, and leave me in front of an orphanage hours glassworks 33
before the sun came up. I’ve made myself understand your reasoning. But then you had a baby girl and then a baby boy. You kept both.
I want to ask you so many questions, but I don’t dare ruin this precious moment. I don’t move. I don’t open my eyes. I let us hold hands in intimate silence.
Five minutes pass. Then ten.
Eventually, you release me and stand. You smooth the comforter and shuffle away from me. My scratchy voice calls out to tell you goodnight. Wan an. You respond and tell me to rest well. The door clicks shut and I drift to sleep easily, knowing I will see you in the morning.
PeonIes 2
Rachel Coyne
Pea souP II
Erik Brockbank
Driving north through Central Valley in the late summer heat hardly a wind can breathe.
Once, when I was so filled with heartache I rarely opened my mouth for fear the last bird in me would flit and flicker out I packed my car and left San Diego for the bay.
In the arid miles from the grapevine to Gilroy I felt most at home in my sorrow: something about that vast, flat plain tendered by fruit trees and sunbaked pasture, or the way the sky filled its place made no concessions despite its emptiness.
I understood too what sort of electricity crackles in those tall transmission towers bow-legged cowboys all out of secrets visible down to their bones.
Every time I drive through that shimmering fever I find the same melancholy, waiting like a fruit stand by the road.
I think I’ve lived many lives by now a feeling as I pass the trees in their fencepost rows leaves lush with striving and all their history in the soil below.
and where do we sTore our varIous selves anyway
Isabelle Bohl
our proudest personas our most hideous natures
all night I turn this question like a flame as an owl in darkness calls
are they by ancient alchemy melded into alloys slithering inside veins in Hippocratic stasis
or as Neruda mused in a faraway ciudad do they live for a while die and rise again transformed miracle butterflies
it dawns on me they are discrete pennants we fly on timely occasions our generous fierce or respectable profiles
maybe we stash them in lacquered watchmaker cabinets each tucked in a tiny drawer ready to be plucked instantly
how odd such blazons must seem to the raven perched yonder in his humble cassock this morning cattails by the old pond ask not and who are you today
my name Is noT sally
Celia M. Ruiz
The white woman’s voice exploded in my head.
“$#%^$**&”
Her breath smelled bitter.
I sat at my desk, hunched over, staring at my dusty shoes, mismatched socks, and wrinkled skirt that I had pulled that morning from the corner of the room where we all slept, my family and I. Around me, my classmates shuffled and kicked the floor. Maybe my discomfort was too familiar, reminding them they could be next.
A student next to me whispered in Spanish, “She’s asking you your name.”
“Me llamo Celia,” I mumbled, swallowing my still sobs.
“What?” she snapped.
“Yo soy Celia,” I whispered.
She grinned and crossed her arms. If only I could disappear, if only I could make her disappear, if only.
“Sally?” the teacher snapped.
I didn’t know if she misheard what I said. Or maybe she heard perfectly. But she kept repeating a name that was not mine.
“Okay, that’s your name, Sally. Say hello to little Sally, class.”
“HELLO SALLY.”
A loud chorus of squirming, sweating kids yelling out a name that was not mine. It did not take long before everyone was calling me
Sally: the teacher, the kids, the principal, and later even my mother, her family, my little brother, my stepfather, and even that kind man across the street from the house we lived in, who sold raspadas—they all started calling me Sally.
I hated that name; I hated the teachers. I hated my mother.
I never understood why my mother didn’t correct the teachers. Maybe she thought that a name like Sally would break the generational barriers of racial isolation and exclusion from white Anglo society. Perhaps she wanted to change me for another child she could control, a child who did not remind her of herself or, worse yet, remind her of my father, a man she divorced when I was only three and whose carefree traits she constantly disparaged.
Or maybe Mother’s reason for calling me Sally was more profound, darker, anchored in revenge against some woman from the past. A Celia that she claimed my dad was having an affair with when she was married to him and pregnant with me. Dad denied it. I had always believed him.
She would yell, “You’re just like your father,” reminding me of the one person whose absence stung every morning when I awoke and burned deep within at night when I went to sleep.
It was not unusual then to have our names converted to an Anglo equivalent: Alejandro became Alex, Roberto became Robert or Bobby, and my mother Eliza became Alice. But usually, the conversion bore some resemblance to the original name. The teacher could have changed my name to Cecilia. Or ignored the Spanish pronunciation and called me Celia, pronounced in English.
But Sally?
Sally was a character in the silly elementary school readers we used in the 1950s: Jane, Dick, and baby Sally. The illustrations in the book showed a family that did not look like us: white with blond hair, a mother and a father, and a dog named Spot. They lived in a big home with a white picket fence. They spoke a language I did not yet speak. They did not eat beans, cabeza de vaca, rice, tortillas, and tacos de lengua as we ate. Sally only lived in the world of our readers, a fake little girl in the perfect world of the ideal American family.
A world that did not look anything like mine.
And English—well, it was a brutal, aggressive bully who slapped and humiliated me, who constantly reminded me that I did not belong, no matter how Sally I became. I died a million deaths when students laughed at my mispronunciations, like when I said “shit” instead
of “sheet” when reading about how little Sally masqueraded as a ghost one Halloween.
And Spanish—at school, the teacher made it clear that it was dirty, prohibited, something to be effaced, and buried in that black hole where shame lived.
English felt like the cold stainless steel of a surgeon’s blade meant to cut the malignant tumor, Spanish, from my brain. But residual remnants remained untouched, and they clung and proliferated. The lyrical musicality of Spanish continued to sing quietly at home with neighbors. Even the raspada man spoke only Spanish.
After the daily assault of English, I would rush home to the comfort of Spanish.
But the linguistic lobotomy did leave its markings: I spoke broken Spanish that Mexicans in Mexico deride as pocho and inferior, and English sneered and snubbed me, telling me I was an imposter, my English substandard. In Mexico, the Spanish colonizers labeled our Indigenous roots dirty and inferior, supplanting our indigenous language and identity with the Spanish language and culture, pushing our Indigenous identity to the shadows, a relic of discrimination that exists in Mexico to this day. In contrast, in the United States, my Mexican identity was reviled regardless of my indigeneity or mestizo status. Where Spanish Mexican or glassworks
Indigenous Mexican, we were not white and therefore inferior.
I was not little Sally with the blonde ringlets and could never be.
Self-conscious and not fitting in, I learned to survive in that interstitial space between languages, culture, and identity. At times, angry and rebellious, I felt like my deaf Aunt Lucia soundlessly screaming, “Look at me, listen to me.” But no one saw. No one heard.
“
I was not little Sally with the blonde ringlets and could never be. ”
Just weeks before—before I was thrown into that strange classroom in that strange town with strange people, I did not know—I had been living with my paternal grandmother, wandering the open fields of red dirt and mesas of Artesia, New Mexico.
In Artesia, everyone called me Celia.
Artesia was a land filled with spirits and magic. The red dirt rolled endlessly into the embrace of the blue. Distant hills dotted with cacti, mesquite, and sweet blue sage throbbed with spirit and energy. The wide-open plains shimmered and simmered with invisible life—lizards, scorpions, and snakes squirmed in and out of rocks and boulders. Grasshoppers jumped, bees buzzed, and crickets sang to
me. And the masters of the skies, the owls and hawks, soared above me. Sunset turned the hills and distant horizon a deep purple. Sunrise a fiery orange. And the mysterious wind seemed alive and filled with whispers and secrets of the spirits of our ancestors, or so my grandmother used to tell me when she shared her secrets with me, the secrets of the invisible powers and healing with herbs and teas.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, my last day in Artesia, I was searching for treasures in the barren pits in our Artesia neighborhood when a glittery black car slithered into the front of our crumbling old adobe hut. A dark-haired woman with ruby-red lips and translucent hazel eyes emerged. I stopped and stared—could she be a movie star? Behind the wheel was a dark-skinned man with a thin mustache, looking ill at ease, or so his darting eyes and shifting body suggested. When I approached, I heard they were there for me. The glamorous woman was my mother, who had abandoned me three years before to run off with her lover. So long ago, I forgot what she looked like, the melody of her voice, and the rose smell of her perfume.
She returned from nowhere, and my grandmother told me,
“She’s taking you to California.”
I ran and hid, but they pulled me, screaming and kicking, trying to scratch their eyes out. They forced me and my little brother into the car and drove for two days west into nothingness. I sat curled tight like a roly-poly, trying to figure out how to run away and return to Artesia since I knew my father would one day go there, looking for me, and I would be gone.
She took us to Visalia, California. Visalia was flat, dry, hot, bleak, and soulless. It was in the middle of a two-hundred-mile inundated, flat, fertile valley, the agricultural basket of America, where Mexicans poured to labor and harvest the
“
And they called me Sally. There was a sterile emptiness to Visalia—a pervasive and heavy sadness. The poverty was harsh and unforgiving; domestic violence randomly and unpredictably permeated family gatherings, and the hatred of the white community shamed you to your soul.
When we arrived in Visalia, we were greeted by a shriveled old lady with short, curly white hair, dark skin, and a dark mole on her nose who said her name was Doña Pola. She stood outside the small, deteriorated wood home surrounded by patches of dried yellow grass. She was the mother of my step-
I was not American. I was not Mexican. I was not part of Mother’s new family. I was half-indigenous, but ... my birth certificate classified me as White, which white society around me told me I was not. ”
massive fields of cotton, oranges, lemons, peaches, walnuts, grapes, plums, and melons. Maybe because of the constant surge of Mexican farm workers, racism was barefaced in Visalia. Names like “wetback,” “greaser,” and “illegal” were loathingly mouthed by both whites and American-born Mexicans who wanted to differentiate themselves from the newcomers.
father, my mother’s lover who Mom had run off with, leaving me and my baby brother behind like used old socks. She held her plump grandson, three-year-old Roberto Jr., or Bobby, my half-brother, in her arms. She made it obvious we were “the other children.”
Doña Pola spoiled and catered to Bobby and ignored us. When we quarreled, she would yell, “Leave
him alone. He is loved. Not like you two. He has a mother and father who love him!”
She was especially harsh with my little brother, maybe because he was another male who threatened to displace Bobby. Or simply because we were the outsiders, not the biological children of her son, my stepfather, and not part of their family. Doña Pola would hit my brother, calling him “Prieto, Indio feo,” or ugly dark Indian. She glared at me with such disdain and disgust that she silently conveyed, “You do not even warrant an insult.” She, like the others, only called me “Sally.”
I had been dropped into a foreign world. I was not American. I was not Mexican. I was not part of Mother’s new family. I was half-indigenous, but because of the Spanish conquest and the 38% Spanish in my DNA, the census and my birth certificate classified me as White, which white society around me told me I was not.
Both at home and school, I was expected to be submissive and obedient, which I was not. I was expected to conform, which I tried but could not.
And they all called me Sally.
But my jet-black hair and almond-shaped eyes reminded me that I was not nor could be a blondhaired, blue-eyed little Sally.
I lived in a permanent liminal state, full of internal dissonance, conflict, and anger over identity and place.
If I had been born more compliant or docile, I might have become an authentic fake Sally want-to-be. I might have forced myself to transform into an ordinary, inauthentic person, blending in, subservient, knowing my place, and never, never challenging what was expected of me: a woman with no voice, an invisible minority, an object to serve and pander to the men who thought they owned and ruled me—a one-dimensional creature from the elementary readers.
No, no, no, no! I would not.
I hated Sally.
Maybe my father was right; I was born with the El Paso pachuco DNA: the rebel, the defiant one, a trait he loved and nurtured. Or maybe my mother was right, and I was too wild, rampant, or, as she always complained, “You are just too much.”
All I knew was that I wanted to kill Sally.
If only I could figure out how.
In the mornings, I would prepare myself for school. I strolled along dusty pathways leading to a muddy, low-flowing creek lined with large live oak trees whose magical branches swirled and swerved with gentle grace, reaching into the heavens and whose invisible roots anchored them deep into their homeland. Before I crossed a wobbly old wooden bridge to get to school,
Celia M. Ruiz
My Name is Not Sally
I would stop at the waterway’s edge, listening to the gurgling water that gently meandered through blue-gray rocks and slushed through the mud. I would climb down to the shallow edges, mesmerized by the pools of water swirling with flickering pollywogs that squirmed and darted under stones. Sometimes, I caught one and watched it flip and flop in the palm of my hand.
The pollywogs were slippery creatures, not frogs, not fish, not worms. They were better than butterflies, which only transformed from cute, fuzzy caterpillars to beautiful, graceful ladies. Pollywogs changed from aquatic to terrestrial creatures, exchanging their gills for lungs. Tails for feet, shedding their slippery skin for dry porous covering, and best they could jump high to escape the muddy, wet container of their past. The metamorphosis from ugly nonentities into frogs was magical, despite many seeing frogs as ugly and slimy. How could that be better than transforming into a butterfly? Well, frogs promised a secret and power that butterflies did not have. Frogs were charmed creatures that could transmute, yet again, under the right circumstances, into a prince or even a princess.
I fell in love with frogs, a love that I still carry to this day. Like the legend of the phoenix that reemerges from its ashes, frogs, too, can transmute without fire and destruction.
Every night, I would curl into the corner of the floor where I slept, praying that when I woke up, I would magically find myself home in New Mexico, the sun smiling, the mesas calling, my father laughingly calling out, “Celia, ven. Ven, ven, Celia,” bringing me a steaming cup of cinnamon-flavored atole.
PeonIes 3
Rachel Coyne
CasCadIa subduCTIon
Patricia Farrell
They say The Big One is due— its name an incantation—
will my silence anchor the plates in place keep the shelves from diving under each other?
my mother too believed in the power of stillness— growing up with mantras seen but not heard, mums the word loose lips sink ships
her only nod towards living atop a fault line the sticky putty on the base of her precious Lladro figurines
but eventually this spell will break and all will shatter— foundations shift—cracks open swallow us up or release us from ancient moorings
so in deference to the inevitable I place a delicate glass vase that once belonged to her on the window frame ledge unsecured—
Chekhov Dani Putney
The gun is invisible except when not— the collection opposite your white bed, everything pearls, safe the wood of your hunting days, up the Sierra, chew under each boy’s lips. I think about bait, the addict in me, a chase so easy animal no longer cuts it. Do you want to see? but I fake romance in response, grip your hairy chest as if I’ve never done this before—innocence, my mother taught me, signals something to be taken. & give we must. The thread between hate & liberation is a bullet. For men who fuck men it’s Russian roulette, muzzle pointed inward, a splatter that swallows the lot of it. Those who grow up on foothills & mountainsides know the act before kindergarten, beer-bottle parents the best models, not once hearing the word internalized. I remember my mirrored face in this moment, a forever-delayed object, lighted but intangible. Lucky for me I’ve mastered the slash, or maybe it’s the hyphen, the trick is losing the I in order to kiss the chamber back inside a man’s gullet. Just hold me, I lie. & you grin like you’ve got me. & I nod like ruination was my forgotten past. In your bloodshot eyes I’m already falling. Someday, yes— it will all be worth it.
Joseph Stern
Curse Andrew Vogel
It comes. And it goes. Never announces itself. But you’re the one wasting your life.
It’s sitting there without a care at your fifth-hand kitchen table, turning tea in steaming water.
When the rice is burned black to the pan, it just walks away. We all know whose fault this is.
Your bundled sage crackles and sputters a pungent fug into every corner of your place, yet it’s responsible for the salt sprinkled along your windowsills.
Then it tags along uninvited to the department store, turns up its nose at every skirt you like. A disgusted scoff every time one of your tattoos peeks past a cuff.
It still harangues the hours you lie in, perches on your shoulder all the way to work, carps at your ear, never forget.
Its hand leaps to your mouth if you might risk a thought to your boss. Every time you look at a job ad or take out your resume, it sucks at its teeth.
It changes the radio whenever you have somebody else in the car, sours the snack stolen in refrigerator light, sets the timer for that little daily pill.
Every time you meet someone out for a drink, it’s just coming from the washroom, damp hands rife with that harsh chemical odor, eyes swiveling, expecting an introduction.
You stagger in late, alone for once, and find it, happy you’re home, painting sigils on the walls, trying its level best, embracing you, protecting you with its hex.
holdInG hands on The 6
Sean Glatch
My lover’s palm is slick with sin. His skin so smooth he will slip out of it.
Oil and metal seep through my mask, the train horn blasts all the way up Lexington, and on the wall, a poem about a tarot deck announces our heart-dumb past and future to this family of sound-struck strangers.
Still I let the borders bleed between the boy and me, our fingers—highways—perforations— ink running past the dotted lines, how our two bodies sway with the rhythm of the train like a poem we never learned but knew by heart. This moment feels like filament, electrons marching loud as light
Until the wire snapped—but still I glow from memory, the strength of being a faggot lit by touch, our knuckles interlocked into the borders of a country just our own when we were stupid enough to die for love and loved each other anyway.
alTar Call Razi Shadmehry
In the beginning, there was fire. Or, a perfect and epic collision of dust, gas, water, and then fire. Uninhabitable earth. A flash of light, an elemental whirl, and then lava became rock, condensation became oceans, and their plates pushed up mountains, stony and silent. The story the Bible tells is not real. No gardens. What we know as Hell was, ultimately, the genesis of all of this.
I don’t say this to my mother. I don’t say it to Ms. Christine either, even though she said we could talk to her about anything, and I believe her because she bought Laura tampons in sixth grade when she was too scared to ask her mom. Still, the truth of Earth’s wrath and fury feels like my business alone.
Plus, I don’t have many questions about Earth’s creation because I saw a video in school just a few weeks before graduation. It all took a very long time—longer than the five minute video, and longer than seven days. Six, I mean, because God rested on the seventh day. And five, really, because on day six He made animals and Adam, and then Eve from Adam’s rib.
“See? God made boys first, Hannah,” was the second thing Danny ever said to me, after he’d finished crying and crying.
It was Vacation Bible School week the summer after fourth grade. Ms. Christine made us shake hands before the relay games began, tug-of-war up first. He was captain of one team and I was captain of the other.
“May the best man win,” Danny said, which was the first thing he ever said to me.
I shook his hand with a tight grip like my mother taught me, then marched back to my side of the rope. Laura’s sleeves were pushed up like mine, ready to stand behind me and pull. Cara squatted, more interested in the field of daisies than field day. At the sight of me coming, Carson kicked her to attention, and then the other kids fell in line too. I took my spot at the front, Danny took his, and I felt him tugging before the whistle even blew.
Finally, my team won fair and square after the tie-breaker, and we had to shake hands again. Danny’s face was red with anger and hard work. I stretched my hand out towards him and he looked at Ms. Christine as though he didn’t want to meet me there.
“Be a good sport, Danny,” she said.
He stepped up to me with his head down. His hand was gritty and sweaty.
“The best woman won,” I said, staring at the crown of his head and daring him to look at me, but he didn’t.
It was just as fair as what he’d said before the games began, and yet Danny burst into tears like a baby. He ran to Ms. Christine.
“Hannah, say you’re sorry,” she said sternly.
“For what?”
Danny sniffled: “You called me a GIRL.”
“ My Father who art in Heaven because he died. Car crash, six months after I was born. These things are God’s will. When dad’s death comes up, my mom says the church saved all of us. ”
Our teammates paid us no attention, their matching shirts now a teal mass in my mind. The theme that year was All Aboard, and the shirts featured Noah’s ark filled with lions, tigers, bears.
“But—” I began.
“That’s not very nice, Hannah,” Ms. Christine interrupted.
“He called me a man first.”
I apologized to the trees over Danny’s shoulder. Water games were up next and I didn’t want to waste time. This was seven years ago, back when I was ten, and still I think it was pretty clever of me, pretty babyish of him, and annoying of Ms. Christine. But I have forgiven her. Danny, I was never angry with. Instead, I’ve been curious.
~
My grandfather used to pray over family meals: “Dear Heavenly Father, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. Thank you for this family. In your name we pray, amen.”
Heads bowed, my brother would squeeze my hand as hard as he could. Every time I opened my eyes, his were open too, waiting for a reaction. None of the adults ever dared to peek during the prayer, so this was my silent suffering.
When I got a little bigger I started squeezing back, but not until my grandfather had passed and it was Nana’s turn to preside over the prayer. We had thirty seconds flat to see who could squeeze hardest before the hum of “amen.” It was fun, eventually, to watch my brother’s face change at the pain of my hand in his.
~
We went to Spain earlier this summer to visit my brother who’s studying abroad. He used a little bit of the money dad left him. Nana paid for her, Mom, and me to go as my glassworks 54
“Hannah—” she sighed.
high school graduation present. The cathedrals were a spectacle. All for the love of God, my mom sighed, but to me they seemed like acts of fear, like God might have mercy on whoever had the craziest ceiling.
“Your father would not approve of me saying this,” my mom whispered at a monastery in Granada, “but the Catholics sure can paint.”
My father who art in Heaven because he died. Car crash, six months after I was born. These things are God’s will. When dad’s death comes up, my mom says the church saved all of us.
My brother loved the naked ladies on the ceiling. My mother scoffed at them when Nana did, but I saw her looking up when she thought nobody noticed. I didn’t look up for long even though I sort of wanted to. What I couldn’t stop staring at, though, was all the stained glass. It colored the pews in a way I’d never seen at home.
“The panels of glass tell the stories of the Bible,” the guide said. “So that people who couldn’t read could still understand.”
I didn’t know there were people who couldn’t read except for babies.
“But also,” the guide continued, “they believed that the quickest route to God was through the light.”
~
The only time Danny ever saw me cry was at camp the summer before high school. It was the last night after a long week of relay races,
Bible studies, and worship sessions. Singing along with the worship band was my favorite part of the day, besides breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At nighttime worship, a lot of people cried. I never did, but there was a tug in my chest when the music played.
We were eighth graders that summer, which meant we were first in line at the dining hall, slept in the biggest cabin, and got an extra hour of free time in the afternoon. That day, Laura and I had spent it throwing each other off the blob. We each had two corn dogs for dinner, and then Laura said she had to shower before worship.
“But we never shower before worship,” I said, and she said she had to go on stage with Ms. Christine.
“To share my testimony,” she added, then grabbed her towel and shut the door.
I laid on my bed in dirty clothes while Laura showered, and then I showered because she did. By the time I got out, she was already gone and I was fuming mad. I couldn’t think of a reason Ms. Christine would invite Laura on stage and not me. If anything, she should have invited me up and not Laura. I could share my testimony. About how my dad died and the church saved us.
I walked to worship with Cara and Carson. When they asked where Laura was, I only said she went early. I was relieved they weren’t going onstage either. We filled in the aisle next to the boys from our church. I sat next to Danny. I could have left the seat between us empty—we had one extra without Laura—but I didn’t want him to think I was afraid of him, or that I liked him.
“Look how big,” he said when I sat down.
He presented me with a purple welt underneath his knuckles. It was something the boys had been doing all week, giving themselves hickeys. Me and the girls tried when we got back to our cabin, but the marks mostly faded after a few minutes.
“That’s cool.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Kinda hurts,” he said. “But it’s the biggest right now. Will’s is second.”
At the sound of Will’s name, Cara perked up.
“Let me see your hickey, Will,” she said, and climbed over me to get to him.
“Sit down, Cara,” Mr. Sam said. “And you boys stop sucking yourselves.”
You boys stop sucking yourselves made us laugh until the lights went down. The camp pastor came on stage and we cheered. He was a celebrity to us that week, floating around the dining hall at meal times so we could catch a glimpse
of him up close. It didn’t excite me to see the pastor from church at home, but the camp pastor felt different somehow.
“He’s so cute,” Cara whispered when the applause died down, and I guess that was the difference.
“We’re gonna talk about redemption,” the pastor said. “Y’all know what that means, redemption?”
He discussed sports teams, then coupons, and then our human souls.
“We’re all sinners,” he said. “We’re all unclean.”
If there was one thing I’d ever learned at church, it’s that we’re all dirty sinners.
“Everyone put a hand up,” he said, and we did. “Put a hand down if you’ve never told a lie,” he said, and no hands went down except for the liars. “Put a hand down if you’ve had an impure thought,” he said, and the boys laughed.
I wondered about the hickeys on the boys’ hands and what God would count as an impure thought. I put my hand down when Cara and Carson did.
“We’re all in luck tonight,” the pastor said once all the hands were down. “Because we can all be redeemed of our sins and take the clear path to Heaven if we accept Jesus into our hearts.”
That’s another thing that I’ve learned in church: accepting Jesus into your heart means you can sin all you want. I’m not sure how many times you have to do it for it glassworks
to work, so I take the opportunity every chance I get—at camp every summer, a couple times a year at revival, and really anytime someone with a microphone asks if I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
“We’re also in the company of true discipleship tonight,” the pastor said. “Some of your friends and campmates have felt the call in their hearts to be redeemed here on stage, out loud and in public so that others can witness their servitude.”
That’s when I noticed the back of Laura’s head sitting by Ms. Christine. I couldn’t believe Laura didn’t tell me she was going to display her servitude in front of God and everybody. I was nervous for her, suddenly. The band came back on, plucking their guitars slowly.
“I’d like to invite you up one by one,” the pastor said to the front row, “to share with us how you’ve been redeemed by God’s love and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.”
Ms. Christine held a poster board and passed it to Laura. They stood and filed up to the stage behind other kids with poster boards. The music was soft, no words. It was always moments like these—when the band played like this and all of us were quiet—where I really thought I felt Jesus in my heart.
The first kid walked up on stage with his Bible study leader behind him. He swung a mop of floppy hair out of his eyes and held up his sign: I was LOST, it read. He flipped the
sign over. Now I’m FOUND. The boy held the sign up to the light like he wanted Heaven to see. The leader patted him on the back, and they walked off stage together.
Next, a girl walked up with her leader. Instead of HOMOSEXUALITY, read the front. She flipped. I chose HEAVEN. There were a couple of claps and “amen”s while she held the sign to Heaven. It continued this way for three more signs, kids my age who had done bad and been saved, and then it was Laura’s turn.
She looked pale but brave. Ms. Christine walked behind her, wiping her eyes. They stopped in the spotlight. Laura’s sign rose and covered her face. In big letters, in Laura’s handwriting: I was RAPED.
I read the words but did not understand them. Again and again, I sounded the word out in my mind. Raped, raped, raped. I knew what it meant. But I could not connect the meaning to my friend who held the sign.
“What?” Cara whispered.
Danny shifted beside me. More whispers rose across our aisle. Laura flipped her sign. On the back, she’d written: Now I’m sexually PURE.
“Did you know that?” Cara leaned into my ear.
I stared at the word PURE
that my friend had written in black marker with her careful left hand, blue chipped polish. She held it up like a shield until Ms. Christine put a hand on her back. There were claps and “amen”s as Laura left the stage.
Cara whispered my name. Carson sniffled. Danny shifted again. I was filled with a fresh feeling, something ugly, new, and unadulterated: hatred.
The first time Danny and I had sex was prom this year. I didn’t tell anyone and I still haven’t. Laura thinks we did everything but and everyone else thinks we only made out. It was the first time I had sex with anyone but I didn’t tell Danny that. I knew he’d had sex with a girl from Eatonton High last summer, though I heard that from other people so maybe it wasn’t true. But he seemed to know what to do, one way or another.
Laura and I went to prom with two boys from the baseball team, but the rest of the youth group chose not to go. Afterwards, Laura told her mom she was coming to my house and I told mine I was going to hers. We texted Cara and Carson to see if they were in anybody’s basement anywhere.
Carson texted: Danny’s. 3808 Downey Rd., Ivey, GA 31031.
As if we hadn’t been to Danny’s birthday parties since elementary school.
“Kegggg,” Cara followed up.
By the time we got there, everyone was already drunk. Cara handed me and Laura a red cup each.
“Keystone,” she said, and made a face.
Laura and I shrugged because we never tasted the difference between any beer.
“Anybody from Pullman here?” Laura asked.
“Yeah, Jon Riley, Rhett and some other guys I don’t know,” Cara said.
Laura was only waiting to hear Rhett’s name anyway, and right on cue he called her over to be his pong partner. She left my side without a word. I knew I wouldn’t see her again until it was time to go, and we might not even go until morning.
“Why does she like him so much?” Cara asked when Laura was out of earshot.
“Don’t know,” I said, and took a big sip of beer.
Mostly, Rhett made fun of Laura when she made a bad shot and this would make her giggle, and then he would say something mean about her hair or her outfit and that would make her eyes roll, and then they’d sit on the couch and Laura would swing her legs over his lap and that would make him flip his hat backwards, and then finally a bedroom door would shut and that would make the boys laugh and the girls nervous, but what could we do if our friend could do whatever she wanted?
Since that summer after eighth grade, Laura wasn’t shy about sex.
We gathered around her like she was a messiah. She was honest with us but kept it brief: yeah, sometimes it hurts; sure, you can just lay there; no, I’ve never swallowed it; yeah, it feels kinda good, I guess. We all had endless questions and limited experience. Laura and Cara knew the most, then Carson, then me.
I’d kissed a few guys and, one time, in a booth at Waffle House after a football game, Danny held my hand for a minute and then put it on his gym shorts. He was hard, which confused and embarrassed me, but by the time I moved my hand I wanted to know more. If he’d done it again, I wouldn’t have minded. I was watching Laura flirt with Rhett and thinking about Danny’s hard penis when he popped up beside me.
“Beer’s gonna cost ya,” Danny said. “Well, free for Cara and Carson. Five bucks for you, Hannah.”
I took another sip and puffed my cheeks like I was about to spit in his direction. Danny flinched, surprised. His laughter made me laugh, and then I accidentally spewed a little.
“Hannah!” Cara squealed, horrified like she was my mother.
“Ew,” Danny said, laughing more. “Get out of my house.”
I made myself swallow so I wouldn’t choke or make a bigger mess.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“Birmingham, visiting my sister at Samford. Don’t go in their room. That’s the only rule.”
I finished my cup of Keystone and then drank three more. I could feel it in my knees that I was drunk. Danny brought me a tequila shot and I gagged but kept it down, and then we played a game where we had to drink every time we heard the word “America” in a song, and the song was all about America so we drank a lot.
“ He led me to the bathroom even though I knew where it was. I wasn’t shocked when he followed me in, shut the door, and then kissed me. ”
“I gotta pee,” I said to Danny when the song ended a second time.
He led me to the bathroom even though I knew where it was. I wasn’t shocked when he followed me in, shut the door, and then kissed me. He pushed his tongue in my mouth and it tasted like tequila which almost made me gag again, but mostly glassworks
I reveled in the unfamiliar feeling of a boy’s body pressed against mine. I could hear the sounds of the party’s peak from the bathroom. I put my hands on his chest and pushed gently.
“I really need to pee,” I said when he pulled away.
He moved, gestured to the toilet, and kept his face to the wall while I did my business. He turned around when I stood, his face flushed red with alcohol and wanting me.
“I always thought you were pretty hot,” he said.
I was drunk and believed him. I washed my hands and he wrapped his arms around my waist, pushing his front against my back. It scared me, a little, to feel that he wanted me. But then, the fear turned to anger turned to lust turned to intrigue. I turned around and grabbed his face and kissed him hard.
This took Danny by surprise. To feel that he might fear me made me hungry and so I kissed him harder. He faltered for only a moment and then put his hands on my shoulders, looking me in the eye. He reached for a doorknob.
“Come in here,” he said, a slurry order, and I followed him into his bedroom.
~
The second time I ever saw Danny cry was a couple of weeks ago. It was the final night of our last-ever week of camp, since we’re about to head off to college. The
band was plucking slowly and the camp pastor, the hottest one we’d ever seen, had finished a long sermon about purity. He was reciting the usual things. If we wanted to undo all the ugliness we’d done and save ourselves a spot in Heaven, all we had to do was walk up and promise our lives to the Lord.
Laura and I stood side by side, showered and in our nice clothes.
“Look at Danny,” she whispered. I leaned across Cara and Carson to see Danny at the end of the aisle, tears streaming down his face. He had his head upturned, eyes closed, and palms to the sky in worship. I thought about Danny’s impurities, and my own, and the ones we’d shared all summer. Something heavy thudded in my stomach.
Mr. Sam put his hand on Danny’s back and whispered, Danny nodded, and they walked up front. Danny dropped to his knees, the camp pastor said something to him, and then Danny sat with his face in his hands until the song ended and a line formed behind him at the altar.
Later, at worship circle—where we all circled up and debriefed after worship—Mr. Sam called Danny to the middle. He looked tear-stained and tired, like the boy I remembered from tug-of-war.
“Danny has made the decision to dedicate his life to our Lord and Savior,” Mr. Sam said. I clapped because that’s what we were supposed glassworks
to do. Mr. Sam turned to Danny and put an arm around his shoulder.
He continued: “Danny, I’m so thankful to have you as a brother in Christ, and so proud you’ve secured your spot in Heaven. Let us pray for Danny.”
I bowed my head, muscle memory. Mr. Sam thanked God for Danny’s discipleship and for cleansing his impurities. For the first time in my life, I worried that my quiet answers to every altar call didn’t actually count, and I wished I would have cried and wailed and raised a sign to Heaven so there’d be no doubt that I was light enough for God to see.
During the worship circle after Laura was redeemed, I cried so hard I almost vomited. They pulled her into the circle, we began to pray over her, and then she burst into tears and so we all did. Finally, Ms. Christine walked all of us soon-to-be ninth grade girls into the hallway. I was halfway embarrassed and halfway curious who dared to look right at us, so I scanned the room. Danny’s eyes snapped to the floor when I caught them on me.
“Remember when I went to beach camp with Mountain Lake?” Laura asked once we’d all calmed down a little.
We nodded. Mountain Lake was the big, non-denominational church in Macon. Every year, they went to the beach in Florida instead of the
lake nearby like we did. Laura went with girls from her travel softball team.
“Well, there was this guy there…”
He was twenty, an intern for the church, and he told Laura he’d teach her how to surf. But that’s not what he did when she arrived at his condo, and she said that when the camp called her parents, her dad ripped his shirt right off his body. There was something about cops, and a restraining order, but mostly the church promised they fired the intern and that was all.
That was all. I hated that guy, I hated that church, I hated that Ms. Christine wasn’t there to teach Laura how to surf instead, I hated everyone who was there and didn’t go with Laura, especially her stupid softball friends who were off with Pullman boys while Laura was knocking on a stranger’s door.
And I was mad at Ms. Christine, and everyone at our church, too, and at Laura for not telling me, and at myself for not already knowing. She’d told me that she had fun at beach camp and came home early because she had a bad period. Her period was always bad, so I didn’t think twice about it.
“Thank you for your bravery, Laura,” Ms. Christine said, and the other girls nodded.
“Does anybody have more questions?” and the other girls shook their heads.
Ms. Christine said we could talk to her if more questions came up. She also said that we don’t always have to understand why bad things happen, we just have to trust in God’s perfect timing. I hesitated when everyone else stood to leave. If God was always in control, I couldn’t think of anyone else to call on to answer for what had happened to my friend.
“Hannah, why don’t you and Laura go to the dining hall,” Ms. Christine said, forcing me to attention.
She slipped me two tickets to sneak into Senior Sundaes, a late night ice cream party for seniors, which we wouldn’t be for four more summers. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and looked directly at Laura for the first time. Her eyes were red and waiting on me, as if I were the only thing she’d watched all night, and I wanted to collapse.
My right hand, my funniest friend, my fastest friend, my bravest and absolute best friend. Suddenly, there was a crack between us. Ms. Christine shut the door behind her and Laura’s face crumpled. Now that we were totally alone, I knew it couldn’t be me who collapsed, even though Laura now existed on a plane I couldn’t understand. When Laura rushed into my arms I caught her, and together we cried until our shoulders dripped with snot.
Seeing Danny’s body was fascinating and embarrassing. He was sort of my friend, but mostly he was a person who’d been in my orbit since childhood. Whether I was walking into school or church or a basement on a Friday night, Danny was a fixture of the landscape. I saw him often, but I’d never really seen him. His body didn’t look like the men painted on the ceiling or chiseled into marble like I’d seen in Spain.
The first time did hurt, like Laura said it would. I bled a little bit and Danny stopped and said he was sorry. I was drunk enough that I didn’t care and so he kept going. In the morning, I would cry at the thought of his mother being angry at my blood on the sheets, but I wasn’t thinking about that when he told me to get on top of him. Danny looked up at me like he couldn’t believe he’d been chosen, like I was a prize and he’d won. It shifted something sudden and shadowy in me, being wanted like that.
When he was about to be done, he pushed my hips away and told me to get off. I stood to dress so I didn’t have to watch what came next. He said most girls used the bathroom after so that’s what I did, and then we went back to the party like nothing happened. I was sore and burning for a couple of days, but mostly I found it all kind of interesting.
Especially the weeks that followed. Danny was different around me. Maybe he was scared. I could feel him looking at me during church service and when we stood in a circle of our friends at school. I felt untouchable and mysterious, and like I had something over Danny that I hadn’t had before: power. ~
We leave for college next week. Me and Laura are going to Kennesaw and living with two girls from Atlanta. Danny’s going to Samford. Cara and Carson are going to Southern. My brother just got home from Spain and makes fun of Mom when she cries about
“
eventually God blessed her. We stood and I let my mom hug me tight. I didn’t ask why my father feared fathering a girl. And I didn’t ask if it was a blessing to be a girl, or just a blessing to rule one.
“Biscuits’re ready!” Nana called, and my mom squeezed me another time before we walked downstairs together.
When we arrive at church, we part ways at the center aisle and I sit with my friends like I have since I was twelve. Except today, Laura, Cara, and Carson sit at the end of our usual pew, all full because Carson’s cousins are in
Danny looked up at me like he couldn’t believe he’d been chosen, like I was a prize and he’d won. It shifted something sudden and shadowy in me, being wanted like that. ”
me growing up, so I try to be nice. Everyone’s doting on me. This morning, while Nana made a big breakfast, Mom tapped on the door and sat on my bed.
“I prayed and prayed for a girl, you know. In secret,” she said. “Your father was terrified of a girl, but I wanted one. That’s why you’re named Hannah. My answered prayer.”
Because Hannah from the Bible was patient and trusting and
town. The girls stand to hug me hello, but now my only choice is to sit next to Danny and two other guys in the pew behind them.
“What’s up,” he says.
“Y’know,” I don’t know what else to say.
I want the girls to turn around and talk to me, but Carson and Laura are whispering side-by-side, and Cara leans over them to bother Will.
Danny laughs at his friend glassworks
and then turns to me, a smirk on his face.
“Are you hot, Hannah?” he asks.
I’m confused. “Not really, why?”
“Nothing. Just—you know what they say about whores in church,” and his flutter of a wink reaches the center of my chest.
Since prom, we’ve had sex three other times—at a party on the last day of school, at a party after graduation, and then the morning after that. This is the first time he’s acknowledged I’ve done something a whore would do. He’s the only one who knows.
“Oh, fuck you,” I roll my eyes.
I lean forward and stick my head between Laura and Carson’s, pretending to listen to their conversation. Danny’s friends laugh. I’m sick. I know that all of them have done what Danny and I do. A lot, with girls they call whores. I try to think of a synonym for the word to use for men, but I cannot find one.
The organ tolls. The sermon is geared to us graduating seniors. The pastor, a man I’ve been made to listen to since before I could speak myself, reminds us that we always have a home here, and that church is everywhere, not just within these four walls. The thought suffocates me, that I will be at church no matter where I go.
“Bow your heads, join hands with a neighbor, and let us pray,” the pastor calls.
Mid-morning sun streams in through tall windows. The parking lot is all I can see from my pew. We don’t have stained glass—no color nor medium for the story of Jesus except for what we’re told, or what we choose to read ourselves—but I have always thought our church was beautiful, that if there is a Heaven, there must be light-washed wood and white walls in at least some of the rooms. The Lord’s Prayer begins, and Danny slips his hand into mine.
“Our father who art in Heaven,” and now Danny’s hand is on my knee. “Hallowed be Thy name,” he slides from my knee to my thigh. “Thy kingdom come,” a sharp breath as he moves further up. “Thy will be done,” and no adult dares open their eyes. “On earth as it is in Heaven,” and I grab his hand and hold it firmly between us on the wooden pew.
My eyes and legs stay squeezed shut until the prayer ends. Danny scoots away from me and doesn’t look my way once for the rest of the service. I wish I were sitting with my friends or with my mom and Nana. Somewhere, my brother sits with his own church friends, and for the first time I wonder if he knows what I know. I want to tap Laura and leave together and tell her about how I am mad about church—about how I cannot decide if devotion and domination sit side-by-side, or are overlaid completely—but we never leave church early and I know I must stay.
Danny is careful, almost fearful when we’re alone in a bedroom together. Nothing like how he is in front of his friends in church. As a teenager, my brother dropped dollars from his allowance into the offering every week, then pulled my hair and pinched my sides till I quietly cried in the pew. Laura never missed a single service after the bad thing happened to her, and even still goes to Mountain Lake sometimes. Her mother nor my mother ever said anything about what happened. Ms. Christine didn’t either, and us girls only ever whisper about it, as if pain is a dirty thing to discuss.
I sit quietly. I burn in my pew. This is another thing I’ve learned in church, that God’s children are all very quiet unless we’re begging Him for mercy. And that we should all be sorry. And that in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. What I know alone is that there was fire and fury. Roiling, wrathful waves. And after that, obedience. Stony and silent.
Shelbey Leco
we Clean The house on your bIrThday
Sam New
In the hallway, we wait for the tornado to pass. It knocks the squirrel from the oak tree, bloats his belly, eyes milky green as cloudy water. The eye of the storm creeps in at the time you were born. Your eyes are planets in a mirror. The rest of you blurs around these globes like the glass is smudged from skin pressed against it. But the glass is clean. We cleaned it. Still, vision channels into this continuum until all you see is through:
past skin, bone, out the other side beyond walls, moving into magma, deeper into earth’s caverns. Here, there’s still music—a faint piano
heard like rain behind walls. We’ll never unsee this year.
María Llona García
The last cherry blossom on the tree outside our window falls, its blushing flesh made milky by the sun—soon we’ll move apartments and I won’t see this tree pinken again. Time passed first in little ripples—a haircut; a perfect cup of coffee; a burn on your hand, healed— then like a wave, washing over us and leaving us salty and out of breath, exposing what it eroded away: the bare pebbles of our eyes, wide open, nowhere to look but at each other— eyelids too thin to hide our shifting gaze.
Spring coaxes flowers from the dirt, your pollen allergies flare up and I throw out the orchid on our counter, half dead already
arT
Rachel Coyne is a writer and painter from Lindstrom, Minnesota. She can be found on Instagram: @imrachelcoyne
Shelbey Leco is a New Orleanian native artist. Most of her work focuses on mixed media and portraiture art. Her art is derived and inspired from her grandmother, Dolores. When Shelbey was little, she often went through art supplies quickly which her grandmother couldn’t keep affording. The solution was giving her pens, and teaching her to fill in negative space with patterns from coloring books. As an adult, Shelbey never shied away from vibrant colors and explored new materials. She often incorporates recycled materials such as: old books, trash, and textiles.
Juno Lorber is a visual artist and writer. Their poetry has been published in Lunchbox Magazine and their art shown at NYU Tisch. With a background in ballet and psychology research, Juno’s art explores the human form, gendered expectations, and emotion through dramatic black and white figure drawings and portraits. They can be found online at: junowork.carrd.co and on Instagram @junowork
Joseph Stern’s work has appeared in Witness, The American Journal of Poetry, The Common Ground Review and won awards at the International Photography Awards, The Paris Photo Awards and other competitions. He can be found at: blackmarketsoul.com
fICTIon
Emily Neuberger is a Brooklyn-based writer. Her debut novel A Tender Thing was published by Putnam in 2020, and her work has appeared in swamp pink, The Bennington Review (Pushcart Nomination), The Sun, The Common, Joyland, and more. She’s currently at work on her second novel.
Razi Shadmehry is an Iranian-American writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and glassworks
teaches English Composition at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College. Her work can be found in The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, Split Lip, and elsewhere.
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LuLu Grant is a transracial, international Chinese adoptee. She currently lives in Mexico where she teaches ESL online to children around the world. She has words in Hippocampus Magazine and Five Minutes.
Celia M. Ruiz is a retired attorney and a second-year MFA student focusing on creative nonfiction at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). She is working on several projects. The first is a personal memoir, My Name is Not Sally, which recounts her struggle to overcome extreme poverty and hardship after dropping out of high school at sixteen and a divorced teenage mother on welfare by twenty. Ms. Ruiz’s memoir is a story of resilience and survival. At IAIA, Ms. Ruiz is also working on a memoir about her father, Alejandro Ruiz, who was born in Loving, New Mexico and is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. This story focuses on survival and the reclamation of our Indigenous identity—a narrative that honors and preserves the memory of ancestors.
Katie Tonellato is a queer writer based out of Flagstaff, Arizona. Originally from Tacoma, Washington, she is currently an assistant teaching professor and coordinator for Northern Arizona’s University’s MFA program. She organized The Bird in Your Hands prize, a contest centered around BIPOC voices. She was a runner-up in the Writer’s Advice Flash fiction contest in 2021 and participated as a judge for the contest in 2022. She has been published in Cleaver Magazine, The Hive Avenue and elsewhere.
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Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry books. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, CantoMundo,
California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), and Barbara Deming. www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com
Lily Kate Anthony recently completed her Creative Writing MFA at the University of Memphis where she specialized in fiction, dabbled in poetry, and served as both a reader and Art Editor for The Pinch. Her work has previously appeared in The Southwestern Review and Echoing Green. She works in an oddities shop in Memphis, spends her spare time reading tarot cards for strangers and friends, and can be found on Instagram: @lilykateanthony
Isabelle Bohl was born and raised in France but now lives in the Northern Adirondacks, New York. She is a retired teacher who came to poetry later in life. Her poems are inspired by nature, readings, and her small community. Her work has appeared in Quartet Journal, Rye Whiskey Review, and the anthologies Voices 2024 (Cold River Press) and True North (a publication of Clinton-Essex-Franklin Library System).
Erik Brockbank is a poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has recently appeared in Spillway, Sugar House Review, and Bodega.
Patricia Farrell lives in rural western Oregon. Formerly a biologist and landscape architect, she completed the Certificate of Creative Writing program from Linfield University in 2021. Her poems have been published in Paper Gardens, Camas Literary Journal, Verseweavers, The Thieving Magpie, Wild Roof Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. In 2023 she won first place in the New Poets category of the Oregon Poetry Association contest.
Clifton Gachagua is the author of Madman at Kilifi. His work appears in Seven New Generation African Poets and in ANMLY, +doc, Alien Magazine, Africa39, Manchester Review, Down River Road, Kwani?, Harvard Divinity Journal, Poetry Foundation, The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories, PEN America.
María Llona García is a Peruvian poet and translator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, poetry from The New School. Born in Lima, she currently lives in Brooklyn, where she writes about family, memory, and glassworks
the plants she can’t seem to keep alive. She can be found on Instagram: @maria_llona.g
Sean Glatch is a queer poet, storyteller, and screenwriter in New York City. His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Milk Press, 8Poems, The Poetry Annals, on local TV, and elsewhere. Sean currently runs Writers.com, the oldest writing school on the internet. When he’s not writing, which is often, he thinks he should be writing.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/ Lip Press, 2022), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press, 2018) and three poetry chapbooks. Nerve, a craft book on unlearning the ableist workshop and developing a disabled writing practice, is forthcoming with Sundress Publications, and Abbreviate, a short collection of flash nonfiction, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University.
Sam New is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing, poetry at Old Dominion University. She received honorable mention for the 2023 ODU Poetry Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Society of Virginia. A Best of the Net nominee, her work appears in Portland Review, Reverie Magazine, Birdcoat Quarterly, Waccamaw Journal, and elsewhere. Her work is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, South Dakota Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Mantis, and Watershed Review. Follow her on Instagram: @samnewpoet
Megan Peralta is a former small-town newspaper reporter. Her spouse and partner in life has always encouraged her to pursue her love of writing, while her writing mentor has helped her use poetry to make sense of insanity. She is forever indebted to both these amazing women.
Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, and neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. Their debut full-length collection, Salamat sa Intersectionality (Okay Donkey Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. Mix-Mix, their second full-length poetry
collection, is forthcoming from Baobab Press. They’re also the author of the poetry chapbook Dela Torre (Sundress Publications, 2022) and the creative nonfiction chapbook Swallow Whole (Bullshit Press, 2024). They received their PhD in English from Oklahoma State University and MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women. Find them at: www.daniputney.com or on X: @DaniPutney
Dianne Stepp lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband. She is a retired mental health counselor, avid gardener and fiber artist. Her poems have appeared in Gyroscope, Tar River Poetry, Comstock Review, Windfall and other journals and anthologies. She’s published three chapbooks—Half-Moon of Clay, Sweet Mercies, and The Nest’s Dark Eye.
Andrew Vogel listens, walks the hills, and teaches in rural eastern Pennsylvania, homelands of the displaced Lenape peoples. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in Poetry East, Crab Creek Review, The Briar Cliff Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Roanoke Review, and Cider Press Review.
