Copyright © 2021 by the Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC). The Grinnell Review, Grinnell College’s semi-annual undergraduate arts and literary magazine, is a student-produced journal devoted to the publication of student writing and artwork. Creative work is solicited from the entire student body and reviewed anonymously by the corresponding Writing and Arts Committees. Students are involved in all aspects of production, including selection of works, layout, publicity, and distribution. By providing a forum for the publication of creative work, The Grinnell Review aims to bolster and contribute to the art and creative writing community on campus. Acknowledgments: The work and ideas published in The Grinnell Review belong to the individuals to whom such works and ideas are attributed to and do not necessarily represent or express the opinions of SPARC or any other individuals as-sociated with the publication of this journal. © 2021 Poetry, prose, artwork and design rights return to the artists upon publication. No part of this publication may be duplicated without the permission of SPARC, individual artists or the editors. Cover & back art: nourish| Zoey Nahmmacher-Baum All editorial and business correspondence should be addressed to: Grinnell College c/o Grinnell Review Grinnell, IA 50112 www.grinnellreview.com
LVV | Spring 2021 ARTS SELECTION COMMITTEE Chelsea Shang Kripa Bansal Shabana Gupta Millie Peck
EDITORS Chelsea Shang Kripa Bansal Shabana Gupta Millie Peck
WRITING SELECTION COMMITTEE Chelsea Shang Kripa Bansal Shabana Gupta Millie Peck
Contents Writing Sophie Jackson A Woodland Womb Thank You, Hephaestus, You Forged Me a Heart.
Lucia Cheng 2 18
upside-down stars
14
Sam Rueter Sarah Licht Feather Duster; or, The glass can only be half-full if I am. The Funeral Crasher Zoom meeting at the office Pickle Poem If couches could speak
Susan 5 9 16 22 28
Katie Goodall Happiest Memory
Joanie Fieser To my great-great-grandchild, age 19 Song for a Veery
Trung Le Hieroglyph Invalid
12 17
26 30
Allison Isztok Open if a current resident of 382
7
24
31
Art Aleesha Shi mermaid flower girl
Kate Tomczik Strand Seine Octopus Copper Chapel
Shabana Gupta Joy Brie Rider
Josephine Blumenthal Meta Minds I am, Here now
Zoey Nahmmacher-Baum 3 39
4 11 31 29
6 8 15
10 25
nourish College Collage
Allison Isztok Sunday Morning
21 36
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Letter from the Editors Dear Reader: 2020 is over. 2021 is midway. It feels like yesterday we walked into classrooms and chatted with our professors — like a couple years have passed since we walked into classrooms and raised our hands to answer a question. As if time weren’t evasive enough, it feels like we’ll never have the opportunity to sit in a classroom again. Yet we’re all waiting in nervous anticipation to return to our classrooms in August. It’s overwhelming. Still, art survives in the midst of the illusionary limbo of time we exist in. One day, two days, a million days could have passed by like snippets of a photograph in a camera roll, but the art created in these flurried expectations of time remains. This magazine serves as a reminder of that. “Art never dies.” We would like to express thanks to SPARC for the opportunity to explore our literary and artistic interests, and our staff for curating this beautiful amalgamation of creativity. Finally, thank you to all of the writers, poets, artists, and photographers who make this publication what it is. We want our magazine to be a bundle of student voice and expression, regardless of the challenges that this world brings to us. We promise to keep delivering and we hope you’ll keep providing! Sincerely, — the editors Chelsea Shang ‘23 Kripa Bansal ‘24 Shabana Gupta ‘22 Millie Peck ‘23
“My most recent happiest
memory is ‘spring,’ full of warm
smiles and cold hands and a long meandering walk while the sun melted everything around us.” ―Katie Goodall, Happiest Memory
A Woodland Womb Sophie Jackson The professor had remarked, once out of frustration, but in words dwindled by affection that her mother was like fire, intense and ardent. An eleven year old Lola had wanted to know
otherworldly, a time-transcendent force of a girl. An agreeable alternative. The portraits hanging dispersed throughout the house of
then, what was she like? She had hoped and more than half
watercolor mermaids with seaweed in their braids and delicate
expected to hear that she was like the ocean, the big waters that
seashell earrings metamorphosed like the school posters of
held so much soul and mystery that a budding adolescent
human evolution. Mermaid tails with elven ears, homo habilis.
couldn’t help but to move through life with the taste of salt water
Miniature pinecones replaced pearl-white baby’s ears as prized,
on her tongue. She had leaned closer to the scruffy necked giant,
hanging jewelry, homo erectus. Finally, homo sapien, when the tails
hoping to hear the words tumble out from the baritone vibrations
were gone and what remained were olive skinned nymphs,
of his throat, disposed and with the same level of fondness: a
beautiful, tall and female, lean bodies, lightly toned. Lola called
stubborn hope which was the childlike precursor to a matured
these pale creations “birch clan” and they drew their power,
certainty of character. What she didn’t know was how seasalt
ethereal and unruly, from their namesake trees. In her mind’s eye
dried up everything, and how quickly: lips, mouth, youth, and
she could see them: a race of glowing, secret wild women who
the subtle sanguineness that lay in the belly of the uncharted
wore little and talked less, unaware of the unoriginality of the
deep, in mystery. Thank God then, for her father, for his
idea, repressed knowledge of the Amazonian woman
foresight, who told her she was of the forest — green,
unconsciously lended itself as momentary strokes of artistic genius. 2
She became preoccupied after her first afternoon sitting legs crossed and bow backed and fully attentive to the projection of the female and male reproductive organs, with the procreation of her impossibly all female race. Of all of human interaction with the forest and its following documentation, only two anecdotes were readily available in her mind. In the first story, a woman went to the forest to give birth on all fours, the right way. In the second, old men left their families for the forest to live out the remainder of their days, to die. For Lola, these rich, complex, and inconceivable speculations were simplified. Women went to the forest to give birth, men went there to die. In this narrative, men disappeared as they reached the invisible wall where open air gives way to pines and eternal sky cover. Of the disposition to not let any problem go unsolved, even if solving it meant a tangibly impossible solution, Lola had to fashion her woodland women a womb of some kind. Despite her propensity towards fantastical artistic endeavors, she, from a young age, had had two bare feet placed firmly on the forest floor, even if she tended to be oblivious to the pine needles impaling her feet. Although appealing in their originality, she quickly placed aside the god-like conceptions of her Greek mythology rolodex — Athena, from the brain, Dionysus from the mermaid | Aleesha Shi | digital
leg — too strange, and rather gruesome. She had the visual 3
practicality of an artist, not the propensity towards symbolism of a writer. When Lola turned fourteen she read the beginning paragraph to a mediocre university essay, left on the table by an older sister. At the time, the true meaning was just out of reach, so again, heuristics working over time, she read it as she wished — as a profound revelation. The only phrase she remembered verbatim was “marooned island” which described the use of the forest as a literary convention. Lola decided that the forest was more than otherworldly, it was indeed marooned — so wholly separate from the rest of the world that it deserved the terrifying shipwreck imagery of something primevally irreversible. Perennial. This is when she realized something art does: it immortalizes. Women without men, without a womb are still women. The forest’s song would be erased and revised, again and again, for years to come.
Strand | Kate Tomczik | oil on canvas 4
Feather Duster; or, The glass can only be half-full if I am. Sarah Licht Is it wrong to collect, to hold
And when I finish? Do what
close the fragments scattered
you will with me, but there is no
on old memories, caking to
crime in belonging, wanting to
empty bookshelves? If so,
taste where others stood. No, life
never tell me, just watch
is not a series of weights, a finish line,
as I spin ashen threads to gold,
but a series of fragments buried
adorn faded glass cubes with diamonds.
deep within sleeves, evaporating with light.
I’m not a hoarder, but I hold
Dispose of me if you must, for
pieces of ‘what-was-once-beautiful’
we all vanish when the weights grow
on pedestals of flesh, somewhere
too heavy, when there is nothing left
secure, suture-tight. Nothing else
to salvage.
could flood my body with something you could call warmth, creeping through the aerated numbness. 5
Joy | Shabana Gupta | digital 6
Happiest Memory Katie Goodall Sometimes, I think I am so indecisive that I cannot choose anything, ever. Today feels like one of those times. It could be indecisiveness, it could be my bad memory — the world will never know.
Or maybe ‘swing,’ which is full of so many leaps and spins and John making me dip and Gavin jumping up and down after we learned how to lindy hop. Swing society, first year. My most recent happiest memory is ‘spring,’ full of warm
But the word ‘happiest’ does not trigger my thoughts.
smiles and cold hands and a long meandering walk while the sun
If my brain were a file cabinet, there would be no memories
melted everything around us.
stored in ‘happiest,’ no best feelings live there, no great times to remember. But dancing? The word ‘dancing’ is full of makeup and glitter, jumping and spinning to pounding music until I was so tired my feet felt like they would fall off. Homecoming, sophomore year. Or maybe the word ‘contra,’ which is full of more twirling, more laughter, a jubilant violin and my new friends’ biggest smiles. Main Hall, first year of college.
February twenty second, twenty twenty. Happiest, I think, is not one thing. It is big and bright, or small and serene, or any other alliteration I care to think of that day, But it is not one. It is two, the number of feet of snow Copper Mountain got before we skied in the best conditions I have ever seen. It is three, for three sisters all together, who bring me possibly the most happiness out of anyone else in the entire world. It is four, the number of photos my roommate and I have taken together, because whenever we’re having a good time we never stop to document it. 7
It is five, the number of boys in the commons trying to cheer me up after a particularly rough day in stats class. It is ten, the number of people at friendsgiving. We took a picture to remember how well we all did, that we all brought food and dressed up and had the time of our lives. November nineteenth, twenty seventeen. It is infinite, ever-changing, what happiest means to me is never something finite nor decided. It is then, it is now, it is soon to be. It is a folder of videos on my phone, none of which I really know what is going on when I watch them back now, but knowing that I was happy when I took them. It is an empty bottle of lemonade, drank at a park with sushi, and friends, and a long afternoon in the sun. It is a rubber duck, purchased to commemorate when my two best friends and I had our grad parties together. Saturday, May eighteenth, twenty nineteen. So yes, it might be indecisiveness, it might be my bad memory. It might be having so many happy memories that I cannot choose just one. But happiest is there, somewhere, among the mess of a brain that the world has given me. I just have to look a little harder to find it.
Brie | Shabana Gupta | digital 8
The Funeral Crasher Sarah Licht I’ve never crashed a funeral before, felt the whispers of ‘who is that?’ or ‘how did she know them?’ trickle down my back like the muddy grass clinging to my knees.
Grey is lovely here, the pallor of eyes ready to burst with pure affection, umbrellas twirling in the wind like dandelion seeds, life spinning out anew if only they let them go.
Grass at cemeteries is always wet, with tears, with liquid grief spilling down my cheeks as I stare at someone I never met, a life I never knew.
I wish I knew this person, I think as I touch the gravestone, cold femur against my fingertips. This closeness I yearn, is it grief or longing?
I always hated the color grey, dirty white, bleached black, yet grey is how to describe a funeral, life tainted rigor mortis, death no one’s ready to accept.
Can you miss a person you only met in spirit? Because this one was loved, beloved enough to have their funeral crashed, strangers feasting, not on free coffee but loss itself.
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I hope my funeral will be crashed, be loved enough to have people wonder what kind of life I lived, trace my name on cold granite, life hardened, Medusa’s first kiss. They say you die a million times before you find yourself, so my burials, countless, will they be celebrations of the me reborn or the lovely grey of longing, remembrance of what should be forgotten? I used to wonder if it was my funeral, as I kneeled, stroked the illegible name on the headstone, but we all die when life is removed, minds growing closer to a place beyond, somewhere we can never reach.
Meta Minds | Josephine Blumenthal ink, graphite, black and white charcoal 10
Seine | Kate Tomczik | acrylic on canvas 11
To my great-great-grandchild, age 19 Joanie Fieser If you were here, now
If you were here, now
I’d take you to the golf course
I’d show you the storybooks my grandmother hand-wrote for us
Where the sunset is acrylic on the clouds
I’ll write down my own stories for you to pass along
Not to play golf, by any means
All the way down to your great-great grandchildren
But to walk or bike and say what’s on our minds
I’ll hand-bind a book of our family stories
Two on-the-cusp-of-twenty-year-olds
I hope you’ll add your own
Generations apart If you were here, now If you were here, now
I’d teach you to write a letter
We’d bake something with cinnamon
To draw out every loopy word
Like scones or carrot cupcakes or snickerdoodles
And keep all your little mistakes
Blast the music and sing with all our lungs
Just the way my grandmothers taught me
All the songs my parents loved to sing at our age We’d play Just Dance until we’d fall down laughing And then I’d play Spotted Pony for you on the dulcimer: My favorite kind of evening
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If you were here, now You’d see that though in memory I’m just an old lady My years are made up of 365 days Each one as eye-opening or mundane as your own Though I still don’t know what it’s like to really fall in love or what I’m going to do when I really grow up I know it’s going to be good And I From all these years in the past Want you to know That it’s going to be good for you, too.
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upside-down stars Lucia Cheng This time I’ll get it – is what I tell myself as I narrow my eyes at the night sky. That little pinprick of light hovers there in the dark, teasingly giving out winks here and there as if it knows about the mental hot potato game I’m playing in the dark. What a prick. Is it a star? Is it a plane? A bird? I honest to God can’t tell the difference. Who knows if it’s actually moving? (But, at least I know it’s not a bird. Right?) My breath fogs in the cold air, dimming the light’s brightness. LA is laid out before me, a patchwork of fluorescents, but for now, I just want to know if what I’m looking at is real. The more I watch, however, the more the light seems to shiver under my gaze. I step back. “Are you a star?” I whisper. There is a languid purr and the wet swipe of a sandpaper tongue. In another time, in a gooey patch of sunlight, my cat
stretches, rolling over to expose her fluffy white stomach. I wait for her answer, lying there with her on the ground. Her green eyes bore into me. “Of course I am. Looks like you caught me.” I snort in relief. “I knew it.” Chuckling, with the carpet’s softness cradling me, I press my ear to her chest and listen to her rumble on and on like an airplane motor. She drowns out the deafening sound of silence. This empty house is filled with lights that do not care. God, if you’re out there, can you tell me, are you shining? What’s the difference between everything that’s bright? Well, they say you shouldn’t pin your hopes on one thing. City of lights, city of stars. When this city turns right side up, I wonder, will I be hanging, glistening in the balance, or will I be making my way forward? In a city that doesn’t sleep, will I be dreaming? I’m sorry. Who am I to look? I am only one person projecting onto a lightbulb. 14
Rider | Shabana Gupta | digital 15
Zoom meeting at the office Sarah Licht I doubt anyone wants to be here,
me somewhere else, anywhere else. The others
be here with the silent rumble of bandwidth
smile too, tinted business-casual from bedrooms,
the size of patience, thinning at each strained
glossy and half-chewed, scabs wiped away.
cough, every smile cracking at the seams, threatening to break open. And then what?
We all wait until time is over, until we can close
Lose the bit of professionalism left, drained
our monitors and move on, never speaking
like the tepid coffee I chug to avoid speaking?
of the dozen eyes flitting back and forth, teeth bared in feigned happiness, if only for a final word.
I hate the sight of me at the bottom right,
Yet, no one speaks, unable to break
apathetic eyes trying to spark back to life, a sun
the silence chaining us to our seats, pajama
reforming post-supernova to no avail, yet still
pants weighing us down until finally, a click
I grin like an old painting, weary, chipping away
as my computer battery dies, wiping my face
until bits of me fly away, dandelion seeds to bring
from the screen. Small miracles to kill the chaos.
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Song for a Veery Joanie Fieser Bodiless voice falls like October mist
Through a curiosity in my eyes
A walk in the woods won't unveil answers
How do you sing so freely? What of this
But at least a singing mystery will
world makes you so emotionally wrought?
distract from current woes I hold too close From high, that veery peers down upon me A veery imparts song from branches high
with those sweet mystic eyes like endless night
He sounds something heartbroken, perhaps
Sees through my premonitions, plays a tune
He sings of my black and white memories
As succulent as juicy hanging fruit
Forgotten until his notes flow over His notes sing out in a most dreamlike tone I forget I came for an olive branch
Asking me in that rich avian tongue
Once I’m caught in his avowed melody
“Would not every breathing thing use their voice
I waltz and waver for just a moment
To serenade such glorious a place?”
To glimpse a sleek wing throwing sunlight far Stunned, I slink from the tree, for it was not I cannot help but ask that woeful bird
Such a sage I’d expect from a birdie quite as he
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Thank You, Hephaestus, You Forged Me a Heart. Sophie Jackson Sometimes I like to close my eyes and look at everything
at his feet and smirks. But then I realize that I am an atheist. To
behind my eyelids. There are a lot of things amongst the
me, Hephaestus is a lot more fun than our Christian God.
silver-speckled static, and they give me lots of things to think
Though also apparently a creator, I somehow sense that he lacks
about. I have a lot of things to think about when I’m kissing
the same sense of humor. Or is that just my aunt’s meaningless
people too, and it rarely has anything to do with that person.
Facebook posts, ecstatic about Mel Gibson’s sequel to the
First, I think about the mechanics of the action, imagining in my
“Passion of Christ.” My Facebook feed is a fever dream. So were
head that Hephaestus sloppily crafted my lips and tongue and
most of my kisses.
teeth and now just for fun periodically forces me to crush my
I sit on a boy’s lap and he smells like absolutely nothing and I
mouth together with someone else's. It is an out of body
think about how, if I were going to, I would disentangle myself
experience, but not in the way it's usually described. When I kiss
from this situation. He leans so far into me I think the whole
someone, I’m transported to a room in a world with a giant ugly
world might lean with him too and again I am closing my eyes
man molding me and laughing in spite all the while, thinking oh
and praying to absolutely nothing that Hephaestus is not
to see the things she does and her confusion as to why she does them. I
watching but Kronos is and that time will stop, rewind, or fast
imagine he sits across from a greyhound who curls protectively
forward and I’ll find myself in the water somewhere, just 18
breathing how I’d like to. Hephaestus laughs and leans back in
up my throat, I fight painstakingly, sometimes hours at a time, to
his rocking chair, it creaking shamelessly all the while. How
force it back down. I think all things must come out eventually,
would she like to know, he thinks, that she’ll end up with the
but in my stomach, throat, and abscesses of my mind I find many
Leaning Boy Tower of Pisa in her bed tonight and then she’ll
things lodged, a cautious sickness settling into my body.
smell something bad and good, and he’ll kiss her and she’ll
My panic rises violently — coupled with that lesser feeling of
respond as the spiteful god drags her arms — like a rag doll or an
mirth— at those moments where Hephaestus decides he needs a
automaton or simply a woman who was weaker than him —
distraction from pining after Aphrodite and installs me face to
around this boy’s neck as half sleep and alcohol take the
face with another human. It is in these moments I find that the
coherence out of thoughts and then the study she gave
crisis, while maybe not at its most strong, at least presents itself
previously to the act will become less mechanical, maybe more
most vividly. Lips purse like enticing precipices and I find myself
visceral and certainly more exasperated. I think I forgave
wondering, not for the first time, how many people think so
Hephaestus briefly in the morning when I woke up held,
strangely about such a simple act. Then my Christian God arises
unwittingly safe.
once again in my mind and it’s Ecclesiastes mocking me now
I think everybody has at least the occasional tendency to think
saying you know, surely you must know by now, that there is nothing
they are being mocked, some more than others and some less. I
new under the sun. This is quite literal. But what about under my
was too serious once so I think I understand, but then I too have a
eyelids? There are islands so far away from any other landmass
tendency to mock. An identity crisis, frequently and without
that unseemly percentages of their vegetation are not seen
warning, presents itself as mirth bubbling up, halfway through
anywhere else on earth. I don’t trust Ecclesiastes to know this,
my throat although the laughter that actually comes out is never
but I expected his God did and either it was not enough evidence
truly its resolution. The crisis remains a crisis, impossibly. I think
for him or he plays the mocking game too (saying King Solomon,
of my phobia of throw up, now slightly healed by the artless act
is that really you?), even to those closest to him.
of college binge drinking and how on the rare occasion that my nausea, existential or otherwise, causes something to rise halfway
I wonder if part of what’s stuck in my throat are the moments when I truly existed in the moment. They must be the easiest to 19
write about, but either way I have no interesting words for them.
over me in the short enticing and antagonizing waves, not so
They dissolve in my throat and enter my bloodstream in a subtle
different from heterosexual intimacy. And I think over and over
loop that only colludes with my subconscious. The most and least
again just to clear my head that time’s a loop and I have loved but
mockable moments of all. I’m nearly sure they were
then I remember I'm simply reading. I try not to forget that
Hephaestus’s worst days.
fantasy is real as well. Mel Gibson steps towards me and hands
Once a boy, who I imagined kissing several times in a very
me William Wallace’s innards in a gruesome mockery of an
mechanical sense asked me when was the last time I ever felt
apology. Hephaestus squints at his automaton, not quite sure
something was. He was laughing (and so was Hephaestus: cursed
what she’ll discover, which stories of his she’ll feel. He’ll feel the
Eros’s arrows fall limp against her skin) but I know he meant it, and
same panic rising in his throat as we come face to face, noses
the question was too personal to stomach. I think about biting
touching and maybe eyelashes, a passionless, stationary kiss. I
back now and explaining how I care for people deeply and
get the laugh briefly now, but it lasts only a minute before I’m
quickly, but Hephaestus’s rumbling laugh echoes in my brain
sent plummeting back to the earth.
and nags, and I couldn’t lie to him. He built me bones and blood
I had one of those moments the other day, where I sighed
and muscle, but sometimes I feel he stopped just short of human.
accidentally with my head pressed to someone else’s heart. The
I still don’t really feel in the way he meant. The way he wanted me
unevenness of the sound, their uneven breaths — two quick ones
to, perhaps as mechanically as I did when I thought about kissing
in and one long one out, like a runner, a panicked morse code
him.
ringing in my ears. I do not know the message and it is best not
This must be why I fall head first and then have to scramble
to. I do know that Hephaestus reached his calloused hand down
for purchase whenever I read stories about unrequited love. My
from Olympus to quickly grab onto my heart before it rose
imagination is strong, and though I know somehow that the
through my throat. I feel his panic, a similar rackety intake of
Gods and the Ecclesiastes have some purchase over my body, my
breath and then a matching sigh, resignation. His presence does
mind delves just as deeply as I like outside of the bounds of
not feel so spiteful anymore. I wrap his hand around my neck
reality. I then try to feel. I close my eyes and let the longing wash
instead, the thousand year old texture slowly limiting the air flow 20
as I close my eyes, ready for the clouds of usual and instead end
although I know it won’t. Risky that, my heart, and those fingers
up somewhere between my reality and my stories. It is the day of
when I cannot even see straight but Hephaestus has distracted
the eclipse of unrequited love.
me and my body as he brings my cheek to his, reminding me of
Somewhere back with — not quite the Leaning Boy Tower of Pisa — less tall and thin and less kind, I think, Hephaestus regains his contentment. I am not sure of whose hands are around my neck this time and it does not matter as fingers find
the warmth in the room where he welds his armor, cruel and kind. I am thankful, because I don’t gag. Hephaestus shakes me, his one-time automaton, and sneezes into the cloud of golden dust.
their way down my throat in case my heart rises up again,
nourish | Zoey Nahmmacher-Baum | gouache
21
Pickle Poem Sarah Licht I’ll never not be bothered
my shirts white, off-putting in acidic perfection.
by the sight of me in photographs,
People are like teeth in that way —
chunky and pixelated, like I’ve never
perfection alien, artificial, yet imperfections
felt round, dynamic, in my life,
are only good in small doses like tequila
forever stuck in that moment
shots before noon.
where I felt like dying for the nth time because my face was cramping from smiling.
My eyes were red in that photo. Red like I didn’t know up from down,
It’s always the teeth that get me:
and it scared me to stand there
too stained from caffeine-induced insomnia,
watching the world move without me,
as straight as I know I can get,
standing in place to get that perfect shot.
and the people around me glow,
The photographer asked me to say
bleached like the vinegar turns
my favorite animal as I smiled,
22
good mouth shape, he said, and I said a pickle, not to be funny but because the vinegar bleach reminded me of hot summer days, kosher dill pickles wrapped in fast food napkins and ready to eat.
Yes, I know it’s not an animal, but in that moment it felt right, like I gave the first correct answer in my life, because pickles can change; they grow and morph in place, never stagnant, and the acid only makes them better, their fear of drowning in brine making them come out sweeter, better on August days when you just want to go home, but you stay because your dad brought out another jar, Sunday Morning | Allison Isztok | photograph and maybe that’s enough.
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Susan Sam Rueter “It’s alright mom. It’s alright […] Mom, mom, listen to me
she hears it, which isn’t often, she laughs from her belly. Then,
mom […] I know you’re scared, I know you’re scared, mom.
we both sit with her laughter. In the next couple minutes, she
Mom, mom, breathe […] listen to me mom, it’s, it’s okay, mom,
might ask me about school—yes, I am graduating soon—and I
it’s going to be okay.”
might ask her about the weather—yes, it’s far too cold—and then
Susan isn’t sure where she is today. That happens
her voice will grow tired, the nerves will return, and she will ask
sometimes, though it seems to be happening more often lately.
timidly, frantically, for my mom to call her. Okay, grandma. I love
She’ll call the house to chat and then call again fifteen minutes
you, grandma.
later to ask why no one has called her. When it first started, when it first got kind of bad, I tried to call her every day or every
And then I don’t think about her again until I have to. I can’t say the same thing for my mom. She sleeps with a
couple days. She would answer the phone warily and noticeably
phone by her head, and a back-up phone plugged in and
brighten when I shouted my name into the receiver. “Oh, Samuel,
charging a couple feet away. It rings at all hours, and frequently
hello Samuel!”
at odd hours, so that my mother and her mother can have a
She is the only person I know who calls me by my full
conversation they must have had a million times before. They are
name. I hate it when it comes from anyone else, but when she
hard conversations to listen to, though probably harder
says it, I don’t mind. I swear she does it just to annoy me, to be
conversations to have. It’s funny. Sometimes, when I hear my
mischievous. After these greetings, I try to tell her a joke—she
mom’s voice on the phone from another room, I don’t recognize
loves jokes, especially the gross and inappropriate ones—and if
her. She is so soft, so calm, so gentle. It’s a voice I haven’t heard
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from her—haven’t needed to hear from her—since I was a child. This is the worst part. That, for all the wisdom and experience and living and loving my grandmother has accumulated for close to ten decades, she needs to get on the phone several times a day to hear her daughter tell her things are going to be okay. There is a genetic component to Alzheimer’s. Researchers posit that, if your mother has the disease, you are 30% more likely to eventually have it yourself. I know my mother knows this. I know that all the while she calms and soothes and talks her own mother down, she worries that she may one day end up on the other end of the receiver, probably talking to me. Today, when I get off the phone with Susan after talking to her for the first time in several weeks, my mom is anxious to hear how it went. “Did she sound like herself today? Like from your childhood?” And I don’t know what to say to her, whether to answer the question she asked or the one she didn’t. I wish I could tell her what she wants to hear, tell her that it’s alright, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.
I am, Here now | Josephine Blumenthal | mixed media 25
Hieroglyph Trung Le The perished and the unborn.
is the best and the Hider-and-Seeker. The eyes
All the forlorn creatures.
shrug him back and have a good night.
Scales scraped, skin spatulated, sonorants stripped. O wondrous mucus that I pray touch,
For if words can ever be felt,
crest thy tides higher than time could reach,
only the five salamanders can tell.
tap thy water & chase thy shapes.
So they slithered—skittish shedders
—
lacquering the pink bungalow's centerfold—
Fingertips. Free of molasses. Gentle rings
to the cave of behaviors, where words
hop and bop—like Hula dancers
retreat from the wheezers of meaning.
shake their enviable hips around Mauna Loa: sweet ripples
Hush. The words are opening their eyes.
onto history splashes.
Midwives wrap the newborn with their shedded skins that never leave their bodies. The baby slings squeeze
Ridges they maunders;
the lives cast from the leprosarium. Father Damien
the solitude tautens the skaters;
isn’t there. The words are destined to have prosthetics.
he who lodges behind
Born at different mouths, pauper changelings prowl the prince.
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They—We—have caged the words with chrome-steel shackles, taunted them freely under the Broadway limelight,
Hello 你好
and sold them into indentured servitude of our ideas. Open the gates of “you faggot”
Bonjour
and inseminate it with the correction in my body.
مرحبا
Watch them use their public key “ching chong”
Aloha
to wink open our petty Asian submission. Slice the knot of “Nguyễn” like Gordias
Hallo Здравствуйте
Dia
dhuit Xin chào
and kill the dragon in it. guten Tag
— When I talk, I am the weather over the cenotes where the words swim good.
They can fly.
I will feed them the sun
Feel them perching at your tongue.
so they won’t see the border. I will blow the wind of twigs and worms so each can build and live in its ideal nest. I will spare the articulators so they all can greet together.
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If couches could speak Sarah Licht I miss the softness of aged leather, perfume dripping from cracked seams, imprints of us like insects trapped in amber, struggling for breath, eternally drowning in sweetness until they’re forgotten, lost to time like remote controls and ancient potato chip crumbs. The old scars still remain, I bet. No layers of polish, number of floral throw pillows could erase the wounds we inflicted, fingernails sinking into softened flesh, pining for concession, to feel those wooden legs tremble below us, feel what it feels to be loved, showered in enough affection to flood cities and ruin blankets.
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I wish it knew more than bodies intertwining, ouroboros, hushed laughter of innocence freshly skinned yet never mutilated. If only, it knew of silence, of touch felt only in softened glances, faces flushed with steaming cocoa, the marshmallows we watched melt like the moon bleeding light onto eyes gazing only within, tomorrow the horizon never reached. Does it wonder why the scent of lilacs faded? I wish it could speak to me, tell me that loving too much is only a sin to those who never drowned in it, felt it embroider their chest with weights plentiful and laughed as they sank into the abyss, melting into plumes to steam, tell me that it will keep the memories for me hidden under cushions, so I can finally cull the sweetness and touch the horizon felt only by those who remember to breathe.
Copper Chapel | Kate Tomczik| watercolour
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Invalid Trung Le Turtles move their houses under my feet,
Grains formally un-coarse themselves to invite
Away from the artful chokes of rain. Little
Themselves to supplicate at my confines.
By little, they train to hide their weep under
The populace bleached into a dichotomy.
The carapace, each drop a morsel of a tether
They gave me the fallen wings,
To whip that killer sun down to nether.
And stole my watering can.
Somewhere, where that sun drenched salt
Everything was half-baked; I am a half-man.
Over the fermenting me, I forded
I have half an hour to make you surprised.
nimble currents of the meandering air.
Magic spells halve its wonder to fit me in.
And lost my key to the moving castle.
I am half of the infinite sorrow you bequeath to nowhere.
That day, I became famous to the grounds.
Because I lost my key to my lower half.
"A descended man", the concrete learned my face.
The ascending half.
The wind tried to marry my speckled hair.
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Octopus | Kate Tomczik | graphite on paper 31
Open if a current resident of 382 Allison Isztok You don’t know me, but I guess I don’t know you either. I’m
If you find this letter, it means you have opened the lower
here to tell you Room 382 holds a rich history. It may not be the
drawer to what was once my desk and have discovered the deep
oldest dorm room on campus or even the oldest among the
crevice in the bottom. I didn’t create this fissure, but I imagine
upperclassmen dorms, but it has the most heart. My roommate
whoever did paid a hefty fine for damaging school dorm
and I lived in this room our final year, and it became our
furniture. Unless it came like this, a manufacturing error the
sanctuary. Senior year of college was a whirlwind with early
school did not check for, or Housing simply didn’t want to deal
morning classes and late nights of homework and exhaustion on
with sending back a solid wooden desk to the manufacturer. It’s
the path to that one moment where it all ends—graduation.
also possible this letter has sat unseen for many years and the
When we felt our minds slipping away at 2am to the sounds of
room has begun to forget our stay. I hope it hasn’t.
flipping pages and clicking keys, 382 held us down. I hope you will make your own joyous memories in this room, but you will
As our third year as roommates and best friends, we spent
never fully know those of past residents. To make sure you
most of our time in this room. We’re both introverts who usually
appreciate the room and all it has to offer, I want to help you,
felt more comfortable in familiar, personal surroundings. Why
guide you through its bounty of quirks and the legacy you will
walk to the library or science building to complete homework
soon be welcomed into.
when 382 has all we needed? Our beds sat on opposite walls, so we didn’t look at each other while lying down, but when we did
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homework on our beds, we faced each other. Sitting with our
I wonder if you’ve spilled your boxed lunch while attempting
backs against the cold walls, we would focus for hours
to open the heavy door. It does not stay propped open on its
occasionally looking up to complain about how many pages or
own, possibly due to the slope of the floor of an uneven weight
problems Professor Jones, or maybe Professor McAuley, assigned
distribution. If you turn the key and thrust open the door, you
that day. We agreed on this arrangement after sophomore year
must use your backpack or foot or maybe an elbow to grab it
when we began making faces at each other in the dark rather
before it slams shut. Many before you have been locked out
than sleeping. Like a sixth sense, we could sense with closed eyes
attempting to get to the recycling bin or kitchen and back in a
if the other was mocking us, and curiosity would force a single
race against the door’s continuous closing, and I know you will
peek to witness crossed eyes or a bizarre smile in the darkness.
not be the last. While frustrating, the room enjoys these silly
After many late nights of delirious amusement, we set up our
games like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Once in the evening I
beds this way for every subsequent room. Sometimes, after she
returned to the room to find the door wide open; nothing
was fast asleep, I turned onto my right side and admired her
propped it open and no one held it. It stayed open all on its own
sleep before the room carried me into a dream space. You may
and the light had been turned on, though there were no other
place your beds differently.
signs of someone besides my roommate and I having entered.
You do not know us, but you will walk the same floor tiles as
Did you know a student died on campus decades ago? He was
us. Is there still a blue stain in the corner from spilled laundry
killed by a car that jumped the sidewalk on Main Street. His
detergent? Not my fault. My roommate tried to scrub it out
name was Walter. We tried to find information about what dorm
months later when we both knew all hope was lost. Is there still a
he lived in but never could. I think he lived in 382. We considered
cracked tile in the center of the floor? I heard a guy on the
him our third roommate and would talk to him, keep him in the
bowling team a few years ago dropped his ball when pulling it
loop on our inside jokes. When we argued about where to go out
out of the bag to shine. Did you find the shiny penny I drunkenly
for breakfast on Saturday mornings or which major was more
lost behind my bed? It’s worth little more than memories at this
difficult, we’d plead our cases to Walter. A flipped coin would
point.
decide our fate, the result manipulated by Walter, we concluded. 33
I tried for months to recreate the door staying wide open on its
leans back about 15 degrees. While it catches with no chance of
own, sometimes asking Walter to help me, but never could. If
actually tumbling backwards to the floor, you brace yourself,
your curiosity peaks maybe you could try this yourself. Maybe
tensing your muscles and closing your eyes for when you
he’ll respond to your questions if you flip that penny I lost.
inevitably hit the ground becoming the next student to haunt the
Make sure to keep track of the time. Every evening after class
room. Even though the chairs never change, you will repeat this
we would drudge back to the room and sit cross legged or with
same process every time you stand on it or lean back just a little
our feet dangling over the sides if too lazy to remove our shoes.
too far while sitting.
After hours sitting in soft silence, a consistent comfort, the room
Walter plays another funny prank on residents of 382. You
would nudge our minds off the page and back to reality with just
may have already discovered this, but the light switch only
15 minutes to spare before the cafeteria closed. We’d rush,
works 99% of the time. We found out about this odd
through cold wintry darkness or a blinding orange sunset, to the
defectiveness one night when my roommate and I were just
cafeteria for carry out boxes. One late-February night with high
getting back from showering. As we entered the room and
winds and single-digit temperatures, we sprinted for food at
flipped the switch, the light in the center of the ceiling sputtered
7:50pm—10 minutes until closing. While my roommate bundled
and promptly went dark. More rapid switch flipping provided
up in a brown winter coat and tall grey boots while attempting to
more sputtering, and we eventually gave up. I swore I could hear
balance on one foot against her dresser, I left in slip-on Vans and
him laughing amidst our disbelief. The next few minutes
a t-shirt. The man who swiped us in thought it was absurd, but
involved my roommate stumbling in the dark over shoes and
we still made it out with food right as they closed the doors. No
textbooks, which I always asked her to clean up, to her bed where
matter how many times we raced out of 382 against the clock, we
she grabbed her phone and led me safely to my own bed with the
made it to the cafeteria every time. Will you?
flashlight, all the while us laughing at our unluckiness and
I imagine you at the aged, scuffed desks, sitting on the hard chairs that surprisingly rock back slightly. You stand on one to
cursing Walter. We tried to report the occasional lighting difficulties to Housing, but I do not believe they ever attempted
tape a poster on the wall and in a single weight shift the chair 34
to fix it. If this happens to you, consider it a fun surprise from
solid flute case will work just fine. You could take a pencil and
your third roommate.
play connect the dots with the tiny hole remnants or create a
I assume you will, or have, decorated the walls. I hope so
constellation—a starry wall of the room’s past moments and
because the off-white does not exactly provide an exciting or
memories. These relics of your décor will join ours. We live
motivating environment. We were royalty of procrastination and
together in these walls, dozens of former students speckled like
simply never felt like taking the time to finish our room décor.
the walls’ freckles. We will not judge your favorite artist or
The initial few weekends we spent drinking among few signs of
actress; we just want you to feel at home.
personality. We had nothing to show for ourselves. The room was
What are the two of you like? Do you get along well? Are you
displeased at our lack of enthusiasm, leaving the space feeling
seniors as well? Were you randomly selected to room together by
cold and unwelcoming. Eventually, to appease this unhappiness,
Housing or did you choose each other? If so, why? Do you tell
we bought tapestries and posters displaying our favorite animals
each other everything? Are you sure?
and colors and music, inviting 382 to share in our lives. As you
Are you excited to live in this building? It’s got beautiful
probably know, using nails in the dorm walls is prohibited.
architecture on the outside even if the inside is a bit lackluster.
However, pin holes can barely be detected, and even if they are,
The black tile in the stairwell is a bit grim, and we’ve already
they are so small there’s no use filling them, hence no monetary
covered the less-than-savory off-white wall paint, but there’s
fine! Taking a clue from previous residents, we used thumbtacks
nothing to be done about it. One night in a delirium after
to hang everything, but the walls are incredibly hard to break
submitting papers for a sociology class at 2am, we laid on the
through. Neither of us own a hammer, and we had no desire to
cold floor. Although salt from melting snow and other gunk from
drive to the hardware store on the edge of town to buy one, so
the bottom of our shoes covered the tiles, we pressed our cheeks
using our superior college intellect we used the nearest strong,
against them while whispering ridiculous shade names for these
handheld object. In our case, this was an oddly-heavy candle due
walls. Garlic shell, dirty snow, almost-spoiled oat milk. She
to its thick glass exterior. In your case, if you choose to follow the
eventually passed out with her cheek squished against the tile
traditional pin method, the Organic Chemistry textbook or a
and dark hair falling into her eyes. I stayed awake awhile longer 35
watching her chest gently rise and fall. Maybe you can think of more paint colors if you’re bored solving a calculus problem set. Although larger than many other rooms in the building, we never invited people over. The room only experienced our presence aside from the occasional drunk boy who entered in the early hours of the morning believing we were someone else before we would shout at him to get out. We probably should have remembered to lock the door more often. I wonder if the room ever felt lonely knowing no one else. We selfishly kept the space to ourselves and let none of our classmates experience the joy of these four walls. During the day it is largely empty, and in the evenings, we entered just the two of us. With owning our own cars and, therefore, methods of moving in and out, 382 never even met our parents. After decades of roommates inviting friends over and filling the space with bodies to celebrate passed tests and forget failed ones with flowing alcohol, we cut 382 off from the outside world. Learn from our mistakes—indulge it and invite others into the space. Drinking! Do you do that? If you aren’t a big fan of parties, this room allows or the perfect nighttime drinking escapades. We never went to parties as we didn’t really like the crowds and awful alcohol choices. Well, she tried to get me to go a couple
College Collage | Zoey Nahmmacher-Baum| mixed media
times, but I just stayed in doing homework while she went out 36
with some friends from classes. Usually, every Friday or
talked about our Buddhism religion course for hours, staying up
Saturday after completing all our homework (okay, maybe not all
late into the night in the library or carious lounges of the music
of it), we would climb in her always-dirty white Honda Civic and
building atrium. Come sophomore year, after spending most of
purchase red wine and whiskey from the local gas station. A
the previous year with each other more than our roommates, we
bottle of wine split between us made a perfect pregame for
chose to live together. This room, 382, meant our third and final
harder liquor. The wine numbed our minds to not care about the
year as roommates, our last times together before graduation. We
sting of the whiskey as it slid less-than-smoothly down our
danced to Ke$ha and Disney movie songs, tracked winter salt
throats. One night when setting up a game of Hanafuda, a
across the floors, played pranks on our neighbors, cried against
Japanese card game, we were struck with the genius plan to split
our beds when finding out we didn’t make it into the same
the wine so we could each drink straight out of a bottle. I rolled a
graduate programs. That’s another thing—don’t be afraid to cry.
piece of notebook paper, shredded edges and all, into a funnel
Between us and every former resident, 382 knows well the tears
and used it to pour from one bottle in another empty one we had
and despondency of college students. The neutral walls and large
lying around. You may scoff at the idea of a literal paper-thin
window will provide you solace in your sadness, a close comfort
funnel, but it worked masterfully. Not to say we never spilled
away from the eyes of other students and professors. Do not
while pouring—that was usually a given when drinking. After all
worry, this does not count as negative energy; the room and the
the minor spills, those desks must have permanent wine residue
memories of former residents will take your grief and transform
soaked into the wood grain. That is our mark, our reminder to
it into serenity.
you and others to have fun amongst the chaos of classes. Grades
I apologize for the messy handwriting. It seems my pen is
matter, but please don’t think they mean everything for your
running out of ink. I sit here alone in the center of the room, all
future. The room doesn’t need that type of negative energy
aspects of personalization gone. My car is filled with my things,
seeping into the walls.
and in a few minutes, I will leave and move to the West Coast for
I don’t know how long you two have known each other, but we met as freshmen, not as roommates, but as classmates. We
my graduate studies in Social Psychology. I will probably never walk through this room again. My roommate left a few hours 37
ago, instead driving to the East Coast for her own graduate
“congratulations” on the email from that very school. Faux tears
studies. She, too, will most likely not step in this room again.
had fallen on her face that night. Or maybe they were as genuine
When she left, we stood in the doorway looking at each other,
as mine, just with different purpose. Maybe she wept for her lie,
unsure of what to do or say. How do you acknowledge that your
her deception that she knew would separate us across the
time together was on loan and that the moment you dreaded has
country. I never told her I know, but our mutual silence upon her
finally arrived? When you eventually graduate, have a final
departure screamed louder than I ever could. Maybe I suffocated
celebration with the friends closest to you, no matter what room
her with my attempts to escape loneliness. Maybe if I had gone to
or apartment you are living in. Make it happy.
one party or suggested a classmate of hers come to 382, she
I hope you are still reading, though I don’t exactly know why
would have stayed with me. I’m smiling through the tears
you would. You’re not living in this room to know about me or
knowing she will sing in the snows of Boston next winter. I don’t
my roommate. You never asked for a guide to help you
expect you to mourn a loss you do not know, a connection you
understand 382’s loveable quirks. For all I know, you hate this
never experienced, people you never met. I just wanted to write it
room and the blue stain and the cracked tile and they finally
down.
covered our thumbtack solar system. You might not believe in
As we walked to the graduation stage this morning, she
ghosts or care at all about Walter or anyone who has passed
whispered that she would visit me on the West Coast soon. When
through these four walls. Maybe this letter has wound up in the
she introduced me to her parents hours later, she called me her
large, communal trash bin in the hallway. . . I have a secret to tell
best friend, and I’ll be shipping her a birthday present next
you, assuming you’re still listening. If not, I’ll be whispering it to
month. Are you and your roommate best friends? Do you tell
the wind, kissing a thought goodbye. I just want to tell someone
each other everything? Are you sure?
what I saw, the knowledge I keep locked away, the thought I
I have a final request for you. Room 382 looks out onto the
can’t get out of my head. We cried together when she said she
lake, the small manmade one where students can look at geese
wasn’t accepted into the grad school I had been, but after she fell
and the occasional fish while wandering the campus. On a
asleep that night, I opened her laptop and read the word
Sunday morning when the room is quiet and most people are still 38
asleep on campus, look through the window. Watch the sun rise over the trees and shine on that lake. The water glistens, and light flashing on the small water ripples wink at you. Even if you do not get along with your roommate or the bathroom two doors down floods or you fail every test of the year in Quantum Physics, or maybe Philosophy, this will be a moment of pure happiness. I sat there before you, winking at the water and listening to the thunderous silence of the world. You will never experience what we did in Room 382, but that is okay. You will make your own memories, leave your own mark on the space. But this window, this morning beauty? This is a gift from me to you—a joyous memory.
flower girl | Aleesha Shi | mixed media
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Contributors JOSEPHINE BLUMENTHAL ‘23 is a studio art and anthropology
ALLISON ISZTOK ‘21 listens to songs from Bob’s Burgers while
major at Grinnell. The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed her
playing the World map on Geoguessr in her free time.
explore the deeper workings of the mind through her art studies, which have come to surface through self-isolation. LUCIA CHENG ‘23 is an English and Anthropology major with a knack for becoming a drama magnet. JOANIE FIESER ‘23 usually puts sriracha on savory things and peanut butter on sweet things. KATIE GOODALL ‘23 is a second year from Colorado Springs, Colorado. In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her dogs, writing, and baking excessive amounts of cookies. She hopes to see everyone back on campus soon. SHABANA GUPTA ‘22 is a third year psychology major who's constantly changing the medium ze uses for zir art, which means there's an impressive range with very little ability in each.
SOPHIE JACKSON ‘22 is an independent major. TRUNG LE ‘24 aspires to have a romantic life like Trịnh Công Sơn. SARAH LICHT ‘22 is an English and psychology major. ZOEY NAHMMACHER-BAUM ‘24 is a first-year from Wisconsin. She is undecided about her major and most other things. SAM RUETER ‘21 is a Psychology major. ALEESHA SHI '22 is taking a nap. KATE TOMCZIK ‘22 is a biological chemistry and studio art major. She has explored a variety of mediums and continues to create art to escape studying STEM.
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