Volume 11 Issue 1
the Quad FALL 2018
Dear Readers, SENIOR EDITOR: Anne St. Jean JUNIOR EDITOR: Noah Gould SECTION EDITORS Poetry: Casey O’Brien Delaney Martin Bryce Lowe Erin Balserak
Short Stories:
Caitlin Salomon Michael Martin Josiah Aiden Ashley Wright
Creative Nonfiction: Abby Opst Hannah Spatz
Book Reviews:
Jenna Shallcross Josiah Aiden LAYOUT & DESIGN EDITOR: Nicole Mingle CHIEF COPYEDITOR: Hannah Spatz
Typing this letter on an 80 degree day with my fan on the highest setting does not put me in the mood to talk about fall, but I am finding that since I arrived at Grove City, the changing seasons cause me to get more and more sentimental with every leaf that travels to the ground. Even when suffering in the library it’s impossible to stop looking out the windows and enjoying the incredible beauty this season gives our campus. Next weekend I’m becoming an aunt to a baby boy, someone I’ve never met but who I already love so much it will probably scare him. This one tiny person is going to change my family forever, and he may never know how much excitement he caused in the fall of 2018. While all the other changes in my life right now seem to only make me tired and anxious, this miraculous new addition to the human race has made me excited for the future. And it’s only appropriate to think about change when the leaves are doing it all around you.
This issue of the Quad displays a lot of creative work that explores the uncomfortable feelings accompanying change. In Kathleen McAllister’s “The Comfort of the Cage”, change is embraced in enthusiasm, but a retreat to familiarity follows when the speaker remembers the comfort they found there. “Ice Cream Has No Bones” is Pearl Scalzo’s unconventional exploration of the internal treachery that occurs when your feelings for someone change.
I hope this fall finds you turning inward, and that your introspection leads you to consider what change means in your life. But don’t let the fact that the leaves are turning spoil the beauty that accompanies it. Let’s make apple pie and write in tiny notebooks and enjoy Keats’ “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun” before winter shrouds our campus in cold and final exams. Happy Reading,
COPYEDITORS: Hannah Spatz Katherine Frazier Sarah Ramsey COVER ART: Courtney Moletz ADVISORS: Dr. Joshua Mayo Dr. H. Collin Messer EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Dr. Joseph D. Augspurger Dr. Daniel S. Brown Dr. Joshua F. Drake Dr. Michael F. Falcetta Dr. Charles E. Kriley Dr. Julie C. Moeller
Anne St. Jean Senior Editor
Volume 11, Issue 1 Fall 2018 The Quad is published quarterly by students of Grove City College and funded by the college. The works in this magazine, however, do not necessarily represent the views of Grove City College, the editors, the advisor, or the editorial advisory board. The editors are responsible for the selection of articles; responsibility for opinions and accuracy of facts in articles published rests solely with the individual authors. The Quad grants permission for any original article to be photocopied for local use, provided that no more than 1,000 copies are made, are distributed at no cost, and The Quad is properly cited as the source. Anyone may submit to The Quad. Pieces are selected by a blind submission process. Submissions must be sent to quad.submissions@gmail.com. Include what department you are submitting to, year, but leave off your name on your submission. Times New Roman, 12 pt, single spaced in Word Document form is preferred; when citations are necessary, use Chicago style. Any rejected submissions which are not returned will be destroyed. Accepted submissions may be withdrawn at any time. Anyone interested in writing a review should contact the editors.
the Quad Volume 11 Issue 1
Sapping Season Christie Goodwin*
Chipped Lilly Klein
Comfort of the Cage Kathleen McAlister*
Icecream Has No Bones Pearl Scalzo
Speak Gardens Margaret Gonyer
* Alumni
Contents 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 16
Unearthing Bradley Evans
Roll Over Beethoven Lydia Collins
October Roads Elizabeth Kastelein
Mountain Pool Michael Martin
At the Edge of the Woods Lauren Lebben
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Unearthing Bradley Evans
A shove, a creak. Hinges swing free. Dust cloud phantom passes by the door. Curiosity bids me enter – And I mindlessly oblige. Uninitiated, I cross the threshold. The slow march begins. Phonograph, fishing rod, files stacked on files. Wicker, ceramic, upholstery. Ceiling beams thin and frail. Decrepit, all. Silence here, stirring below. Voices downstairs drone on, dirgelike. Why have I come to this lightless place? What am I seeking? The attic a generation’s casket, And I dared disturb the dead.
Bradley Evans is a senior political science major who enjoys collecting books, watching baseball, and searching his native Pacific Northwest for rare birds.
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Sapping Season Christie Goodwin
“Ma, why do we take blood from the trees?” Nelly’s small face was concentrated into a slight scowl. Her nose was bright pink, November glowing in her cheeks. The snap-crunch of the snow drifts stopped with their footsteps. The trees surrounded them now. The girl’s mother didn’t answer, so Nelly continued, “If you stuck a spout in me and hung a bucket, you’d get a whole lot of...” “Nelly, that’s enough.” Her mother’s voice was sharp, but Nelly could see the shadow of a smile beneath her bonnet. “Does it hurt the trees when we tap them?” “Do you think it does?” asked her mother, in return. “Well, how am I ‘posed to know? I never asked one.” The little figure looked up to the spindly, snow-weighed branches, considering conversation with a tree. “Why did we start tapping the trees?” “People were tapping trees long before we were here.”
“And those people?” the girl continued. “How did they know the trees had sugar? “Sometimes the sap spills out of the bark, making little globes of sweetness. A hunter must have tasted it and learned.” “Did they make taffy too?” Her mother laughed. “Well, I don’t know, but if they didn’t, they certainly should be envious of us now!” “Do the maples care what kind of people take their sap?” Her mother didn’t answer for a moment. When she finally spoke, her warm breath billowed out into the cold. “Nelly, look at the tree ahead of us. Does it look exactly the same as the other trees?” “No, its branches are in different places and it has different knobs and the roots are more craggly.” “Can you tell how sweet the sap is by looking at the bark of the tree?” Nelly shook her head. “The first person to tap a tree had sweetness in their veins, just like you. Never forget that.”
Christie Goodwin works in Budapest as an art, history, and English teacher, a combination which somehow makes it acceptable for her to be a total nutcase.
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Roll Over Bethoven Lydia Collins
Ba-dum dum ba-woogie Iv'ries are a ticklin' The strings are a ripplin’ And when the trumpet goes, Though it ain't no Satchmo, We rock till the blast lasts. Leave your blues at the door— The only blues ‘round here Has rhythm before it. So come on in to stay, Dig these rhythm and blues. Go on! Find your partner! Swing her round; watch her feet; Let her twirl to that beat. Shakin' rattlin' rollin’ Don't give us mellow beats, We need the strong sixes. Ba-dum-bum bum-pa-dum No stopping us round here. Like hellzapoppin' We be reelin' and rockin’. Roll over Beethoven We ramblin' like muskrats. Come in, leave your hat. We don't need none of that— Just twist the night away Lydia Collins an English major whose favorite hobby is antiquing, and might just know the year of more Old Hollywood movies and swing albums than the dates of major wars.
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Chipped Lily Klein
They called them false memories, but they weren’t really false. They were just someone else’s. “So this,” she said, holding up a paper-thin slice of electronics that was smaller than the nail on her pinky, “will teach me how to speak Mandarin?” “It will indeed,” said the doctor, grinning at her. He was too young, handsome, and cavalier to be trustworthy as a medical professional. “Like a native. Slang, local expressions, everything. You’ll sound like you grew up in Hong Kong itself.” She laid the chip down on her palm, angling it this way and that so the light sparkled off the minuscule mesh of wiring. “With no side effects?” she asked for the third time. “None at all? This will just let me speak Mandarin—it won’t mess up my English or my French, or shuffle some other memories into the bargain? I’ve heard some horror stories about that.” How can you even separate a person’s language from the rest of them? she wondered. It’s wrapped around everything else. It forms nearly all the other memories. The doctor’s grin did not waver. “Nope, no side effects.” He plucked the chip from her palm, pinching it between two fingers. “This little baby’s been tested, tried, and proved every which way to Sunday. Absolutely no unintended consequences.” His grin somehow widened. It looked painful. “Trust me.” She didn’t, but no one was hiring
English-French translators these days, and rent was due next Tuesday, so she nodded. “Alright. Where do I sign?” The surgery had not left a scar, but she still found herself rubbing the spot at the base of her skull where they had put in the chip. She fancied she could feel it there, a tiny hard rectangle under her skin, but she knew it was her imagination. It was far deeper than her skin. The important thing was that she’d woken up after the surgery utterly fluent in Mandarin. So fluent, in fact, that she found herself lapsing into it when she was thinking hard, or angry. That wasn’t so bad. She could live with that. She already had a job lined up, her first in over two months. The pay from that would cover all the expenses she’d racked up during her unemployment, plus a little extra. The problem was the wandering. She’d never liked to take walks for pleasure before, but now whenever she had a spare moment, almost before she was aware of herself, she was out the door and headed downtown. Her feet seemed to know the way through streets she’d never seen before, and the fact that those treacherous feet always brought her to a little family-owned noodle shop in the Chinese district of the city was not lost on her. She soon called the doctor. “Not our problem,” he said, all the charm gone from his voice now that she’d bought the product. “We install
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the hardware, we don’t produce it. Call the company that made it.” He hung up before she could ask him what company that was. There were dozens of companies producing chips like hers, and his practice’s site didn’t list which company he partnered with. She tried to call again, but only got voicemail. She resolved to go to his office herself. She set off, but once again her feet took her a different route than she had intended, and before she knew what was happening, she was outside the noodle shop once again. The Lucky Cat, it was called. It was a typical holein-the-wall sort of place. It was noon and she was hungry, so she took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The interior was dim and close, yet homey and familiar in a way she found disconcerting. It was a deja-vu sort of feeling, like a memory that could be from reality or from a dream. A sign on the wall said “SELF SEATING,” so she picked a small booth by the door and waited. She did not look at the menu, but she knew she wanted the chicken lo mein. A server approached the table, a young man with neat black hair. His name was Jie. She told herself she’d read his nametag without realizing it, but then realized he wasn’t wearing a name tag. “Hello,” he said, with an easy smile. She could see, somehow, that it wasn’t genuine; he always showed teeth when
he really smiled. I shouldn’t know that. “What would you like?” “Chicken lo mein,” she said in Mandarin. “Extra chicken, light sauce. Vegetables on the side please, little cat.” That had slipped out without her permission. Jie’s smile faltered. “What?” he asked. “What did you call me?” She felt her face heating. She stood abruptly, and he stumbled back half a step, mouth agape. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her throat felt tight. “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well. Never mind. It just— happened. I’m sorry.” She rushed out, ignoring Jie’s raised hand and his call for her to wait. The street outside was too bright after the dim restaurant. Traffic whizzed by in a blur, the hum of it and of the people on the street whirling together in her ears. Her legs shook beneath her, and despite the warm sun she felt cold. Her own body seemed strange to her, foreign, like coming home and finding all your furniture had been rearranged without you. Home, she thought, I want to go home. She set off immediately, her mind running through her encounter with the waiter over and over again. The chip at the base of her skull seemed to grow colder and heavier as she walked, till she could almost feel it there, weighing her down, changing her
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brain. Wandering was one thing—this was something else. She tried to tell herself that there was another solution: that she’d been to the restaurant before but had forgotten, that she’d met the waiter and learned his name then. Thoughts of the chip, of the stories she had heard about people getting chipped and going mad as new memories warred with the old, wavered and swayed at the edges of her mind. She felt like someone had replaced her insides with cotton balls. Her feet slowed, turned in towards an apartment building—but it wasn’t hers. Yet her eyes locked onto a tenth story room with a window box of dying violets, and she found herself remembering the red rocker that sat on the other side of that window, a little table beside it. Beyond that was the kitchen, with its shiny red pots and pans, and the old stove that took forever to cook things but was too expensive to replace. Down the hall
would be her brother’s bedroom, and beside that her own, with its red quilt and homemade white pillows. Red, she remembered as she looked down at the blue button-down she was wearing, was her favorite color. But I’ve never lived here, she thought, leaning against a nearby lamppost. I’ve never even been here. Whose memories did they give me? A name floated up, like something rising from the depths of the ocean. It breached. “Min,” she whispered. That’s me, she thought, but she didn’t think that. Someone else had. Her trembling fingers found the place at the base of her skull where the chip lay.
I’m hungry, Min thought, or said. Let’s go back to the shop and have some noodles. Min’s feet obeyed her, and she wondered if those feet were really hers after all.
Lilly Klein is the proud owner of The Canterbury Tales, The Aeneid, and twelve Star Wars novels.
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October Roads Elizabeth Kastelein
Sunlight flashes as trees rush by in the crisp wind, Aroma of smoke and fresh mountain air. An inhale. Speeding through towns with few houses and a general store, Gold leaves illuminated by sunlight, sweet tang of Stayman apples from a roadside stand, The tantalizing aesthetics of autumn. Thoreau’s wilderness habitation suddenly makes sense, the shores of Walden reflecting birches shedding their parchment exoskeletons. One glance in the rearview reveals a cardboard box tilting precariously atop the luggage, A print of a large red apple and the words “VIRGINIA FARM MARKET” in bold capitals. The Harvest pie rests inside, its flaking crust enveloping apples, blackberries, rhubarb, strawberries. Drifting past fellow travelers, License plates only tell the surface of their tales. Rounding a bend – a hill of crimson, gold, green leaves not changed. Burnt clementine. A watercolor. The station is full of cars, pumps beeping. A graying man in a short-sleeved plaid button-down stands squinting as the screen increasingly empties his pockets. On the road again, a passing truck creates a momentary wind tunnel. The parking lot of the town hardware is empty but for a life-sized plastic gorilla. A cardboard sign hanging from a telephone pole reads “Auction” and points somewhere off to the left. Windmills turn on the hilltop. Sixteen. Approaching a bend, twenty-one more. Silos and ancient barns scatter the pastures that the highway intrudes on. Telephone wires undulate and zig zag every once in a while, across the street. Didn’t your mother ever tell you, look before you leap? We’re high up now, on a narrow road. Pungent farmland awakens our senses. The horns of chestnut and white-spotted steers curl out, not maliciously, but like the corners of a hidden smile. A white church steeple. Three pairs of headlights. No destination. Dead and scattered leaves resurrected by the sun’s rays, Turning cartwheels, they skid across the pavement. It wouldn’t last long, but it was freedom.
Elizabeth (‘22) is an English major and a lover of sweater weather, rainy day cappuccinos, and the Oxford comma.
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Comfort of the Cage Kathleen McAlister
The sky is the sort of blue That burns, the ozone layer washed Clean by a day of rain and a night’s downpour Of meteors. If you listen closely, you can hear The hopeful hum of the stars and the whirring of The earth’s orbit—the promise of tomorrow. It’s a perfect day for flying. Looking out at it all, I can feel The ripple of wind running Through the grass and the glare of sunlight On the cottonwood leaves as if My body had left me behind to watch It wheel through the plodding clouds, Coasting on the southern breeze, Drifting further into the wilderness, Resting in the heights with a bird’s eye view. There is freedom in the sky. But for all the sight and the ease of flight, My feet have grown deep roots, my heart Pinioned by a fear of getting lost. In the garden a hummingbird hovers, wings whirring, In the trumpet vine. A ground squirrel Darts into his hole. The kitchen is cool And dark, the coffee is fresh. I can hear The floors creaking with the familiar footsteps Of yesterday. There is comfort in this cage.
Kathleen McAlister ('18) spends her hours writing mini plays and dreaming of Europe as she folds hundreds of tiny pairs of leggings at Baby Gap
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Mountain Pool Michael Martin
Striders irritate The delicious stillness Of the Monet mountain pool. They dart and ripple Translucent myrtle green murk. Monotone leaves tile mudded banks. Pebbles with opulent lacquered curvesBlue-gray, burnished roan, dilute black, smoky grullo. The glade is rocky and clothed in mosses, Vibrant and colored with living green. Straying roots intertwine to bring forth the trunks Of sycamores and smooth beech who wade ankle-deep in the water. The sun’s fingers reach through ridges and leaf to gild the poolA vague diamond on the bronze water.
Michael Martin is a Junior English and Communications major. He runs very fast and is kind of a big deal.
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Icecream Has No Bones Pearl Scalzo
The beginnings are just an idea Possibly a plan Like choosing a flavor Limited expectations of taste Dead thought life for afterwards Yet, no stomachache The flavor is chosen Process begins Explosion of tastes Realities of colors Sparks on the tongue Stomach smiles But, icecream has no bones. Words are spoken Frostiness creeps in The last bites Aftertastes of dullness Remainders beginning to melt Fire of dread Yet, no stomachache Because icecream has no bones. Efforts failed Unexplained gaps in weak words The spoon is empty Sickness of always craving Ash Stomachache Another bowl later Perhaps ending in trash Sparks end, bites end, tastes end Because icecream has no bones
Pearl is a senior biology major and Chinese minor who wrote this poem after a break up.
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At the Edge of the Woods Lauren Lebben
Against all odds, a hen and a fox formed a friendship. The fox, having a very delicate stomach, could eat nothing but berries; the hen, being barren, had no eggs to protect. Mr. Bracken—for such was the fox’s name—was shamed by other foxes because he was no hunter and even swooned at the sight of blood. Mrs. Begonia, the barren hen, was often shooed out of the coop with a “If you weren’t so lazy, you might have laid an egg by now!” from the other hens. The two, being outcasts among their own kinds, grew very fond of one another. Many days, Mrs. Begonia would toddle to the edge of the farm, as Mr. Bracken padded to the edge of the wood, and the two would traverse that border until sundown. Not much was said between the hen and the fox, but every time as a good-bye, she said, “You must take a bath before tomorrow, Mr. Bracken.” To which he replied, “Mrs. Begonia, I was born with this red in my coat.” It was a little joke between the two of them. Once, Mrs. Begonia found her friend pacing, swishing his bushy tail in a most agitated manner. When he caught sight of her, he bowed his head and flattened his ears crying, “I heard my brothers say they meant to visit your coop tonight.” His eyes were very moist and his legs were very shaky. She understood at once what he meant and turned without saying another word. She hopped and hiccupped as fast as she could back to the coop and told the rooster of Mr. Bracken’s warning. The rooster told the dogs, Hickory and Hemlock, who sat up all night, guarding the coop. Mrs. Begonia did not sleep at all. About three hours before dawn, she heard the dogs growling and snapping. The highpitched bark of foxes grew louder and louder. Mrs. Begonia’s wings trembled. Around her, the other hens stirred. Then, the baying and barking slowly quieted down. A long and terrible moment of silence. Everyone heard Hemlock’s voice at the door gasping, “It’s alright. Three foxes, but
two are dead now and one with a broken leg. That was Hickory’s work. Don’t worry. He won’t be back anytime soon.” The rooster thanked the dogs and murmurs of gratitude echoed throughout the coop. Mrs. Begonia still could not sleep. “I forgot to thank him,” she thought, “I even forgot to tell him to take a bath.” She resolved to visit him first thing in the morning. But Mr. Bracken was not there in the morning. Mrs. Begonia spent all the breakfast hour waiting for him at their usual meeting place, all the lunch hour plodding down their favorite trail, and all the dinner hour plodding back. Sundown arrived and Mrs. Begonia knew it was foolish to be so close to the woods after dark. “You must take a bath before tomorrow, Mr. Bracken.” She called to the shadowing trees. She sat a moment, added in a low, husky voice, “Mrs. Begonia, I was born with this red in my coat.” And returned to the coop. Meanwhile, the dogs brought the two dead foxes to the farmer and were greatly rewarded, since the farmer’s wife was particularly fond of fox furs. Happy to have pleased the farmer, Hickory and Hemlock decided to make a regular activity of foxhunting. “After all,” said Hickory, “No good ever came from a fox.” “Just what I thought,” replied Hemlock, “And there’s bound to be scores of them in the woods.” The two dogs agreed that the next chance they got, they would trot down to the edge of the farm and sniff out a fox.
Mrs. Begonia grew quite thin in the course of a week. She had not eaten much on account of spending all her time waiting for Mr. Bracken to return. The odd thing about this was, the longer she waited for her friend, the less lonely she felt. Her worry for him drowned out anything she could feel for herself. Finally, on the evening of the eighth day, just as Mrs. Begonia turned to leave, she heard a soft voice from behind a fern.
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“Are you well, dame hen?”
She nearly fainted from happiness. “Mr. Bracken? Is that you? I’m well! We are all well, thanks to you. But where have you been these past days?” There was a pause in which Mrs. Begonia began to fear that she had imagined her friend’s voice. Then, with many hesitations, he whispered, “…I’m glad you’re well. I’ve been worried these several days for you.… I came as soon as I could.… One of my brothers who visited you found me. He… he was very angry that I had warned you. My leg was broken in our argument and it’s now just healed enough to visit you.” Tears wet the feathers of the hen’s face and neck. “Won’t you come where I can see you?” she asked. The fern rustled. Mr. Bracken limped into the pink rays of the sunset. His front right leg was mangled and misshapen. He stumbled and fell, shivering in the cool twilight air. Without another word, Mrs. Begonia sat snug to her friend’s flank and laid her head on his back. Back at the farm, Hickory and Hemlock had found that they had finished their chores with half an hour to spare. Excitedly, they raced to the woods in order to begin their foxhunt. “I smell one already!” growled Hemlock. “This way!”
Mrs. Begonia jumped. The dogs were sprinting straight towards them. She knew from their panting and frothing what their intentions were. She tried to push Mr. Bracken to his feet, but it caused him so much pain, she gave up. The dogs were almost on top of them. She hopped in front of the fox and wildly flapped her wings. “Stop, Hickory! Stop, Hemlock! Mr. Bracken is not a thief !” Her words broke off into many frantic and unintelligible clucks that were so bizarre the dogs slowed their pace. Mrs. Begonia breathed deeply and tried to explain, but by that time, the
fox had risen to his feet and limped toward the woods. Hickory, seeing the limp, took him for the fox he had wounded over a week ago and was filled with a raging thirst. In a second, the hen was pushed away from her friend. She was stunned, frozen. Then a yelp from Mr. Bracken woke her from her shock. With all the fury that any hen could muster, she threw herself, claw and beak, onto Hickory. She beat her wings against him and squawked as loud as she could. Not so much pained as annoyed, Hickory turned to Mrs. Begonia, lifting his ears in question. Seizing the moment, she rushed to the sprawled form of Mr. Bracken, pressed herself close to the ground, and nudged her friend’s head. His coat looked a darker hue than normal. It was so hard to tell in the dusk. Weakly, Mr. Bracken opened just one of his eyes. Mrs. Begonia tried to say something, but words stuck in her throat until, “You must take a bath before tomorrow, Mr. Bracken.”
The pain in his voice could not hide the fondness with which he spoke these next words. “Mrs. Begonia, I was born with this red in my coat.” And Mr. Bracken moved no more.
The dogs were—needless to say—very confused at the sight of a hen so affectionate with a fox. Disappointed that their great hunt had ended so fruitlessly, the two trotted back home. Mrs. Begonia fell asleep beside her friend. When dawn came, she swept up the dew with her feathers and washed all the stains from the fox’s coat. When she returned to the coop, a great pain filled her stomach—greater than any she had felt before. Three days she sat speechless in her roost. On the fourth day, the farmer came to see what was the matter. He gently lifted the hen. There, laying in the straw was an egg.
Lauren Tebbin would like you all to know that she can do a mean Russian accent.
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Speak Gardens Margaret Gonyer
There are days when daisies tumble out from between my lips and my nose wrinkles from the way they tickleand others laugh along. There are days when petunias slide off the edge of my tongue, and the petal's embrace is particularly gentleand others touch with care. There are days when a rose’s thorn slits the tender skin of my mouth as I offer beauty that I do not accept myselfand others see it clearly. There are days when a single bleeding heart cannot explain, so they pour out in long stems, repetitive, sincere in their insanityand others worry. There are days when my first words in the morning are sunflowers, emerging shamelessly and in brilliant, tall colorand others can't help but look. There are days like today, when my lips rest softly back to back while I plant my garden on a piece of scrap paper, begging it silently for more bouquets to give away.
Margaret Gonyer played a dude during 24 hour theatre, and if that isn’t impressive, I don’t know what is.
Hearts & Minds Bookstore Dallastown, PA heartsandmindsbooks.com
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Fall 2018
VOLUME 11 ISSUE 1