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DEAR READER,
We proudly present to you the Fall 2015 edition of NOTA (None of the Above), the only award-winning student literary and fine arts publication of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. We are honored to continue NOTA’s tradition of artistic excellence this year. NOTA’s mission is to showcase art, literature, and music created by UWEau Claire students. Our books represent dedicated collaboration and creative inspiration amongst students of multiple disciplines. Through our Open Reads and biannual publications, NOTA fosters a supportive atmosphere and creative community. We encourage students to express themselves and raise awareness about issues significant to them. We strive for transparency in our selection process to provide opportunities for student engagement with our publication. Lastly, we are proud to be a voice for students and to assert the arts as an integral part of our community. We are, as always, grateful to the faculty advisors who work tirelessly on our behalf and to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Student Senate for their continued financial support of NOTA. Most importantly, we are at our core indebted to the dozens of students who volunteer their time to serve on our selection committees, the hundreds of students who submit their fine work, and the thousands of readers who pick up our publication each semester. Without their dedication, NOTA would not exist. Thank you, reader, for your devotion to the arts. NOTA
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Jesse Aylsworth PURPLE LANDSCAPE Elly West LIFTED HIGH Carlin Sood MIDNIGHT SNACK Marguerite Gilbertson FREEDOM OF FLIGHT Aurea Bergquist TAKE ME HOME Madeline Ludtke LOST IN WINDOWS Sammi Biesterveld WASTELAND SERIES Adria Peters BLUE DRAGON Madeline Ludtke NEW YORK’S HOTTEST CLUB IS... Kassandra Olson TECHNOLOGY: UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA? Aurea Bergquist MINISKIRT Marguerite Gilbertson BITTER SWEET PRODUCE Abbey Meyers WHAT IF... Cheyanne January ANYTHING AT ALL Jesse Aylsworth GENESIS Lukas Carlson UNTITLED Elly West SELF-PORTRAIT Seth Severson ASIA ON FILM Lukas Carlson UNTITLED Taylor Kysely SINKING Kelsey Brown REVELATION Sierra Lomo BEYOND BINARIES Sara Jessick A WORLD OF SILENCE Kassandra Olson UNTITLED Lukas Carlson UNTITLED Jesse Aylsworth INFERNO Nadean Marron GUIDANCE Madeline Ludtke RESHAPED RENAISSANCE Sarah Hartzell UNDER THE SEA Alex Stout UNTITLED Casey Utke TEAR Kelsey Brown SOUGHT AFTER
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EXTENDED—PEAR TREE (FOR MY MOTHER) Laura Radmer
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OVERGROWN MESS Alison Jozwiak
AIR Seth Severson A MODERN HOWL Deanna Kolell BRUSSEL SPROUTS Erin Geyen A HISTORY LESSON (IN TWO PARTS) Emilio Taiveaho (SUNDAY WORSHIP) Ariana Cole IN THE NIGHT Crystal Ruzicka DRAW Laura Radmer RAIN Seth Severson E X P O S E D Abby Polipnick FIRE Lindsey Lecheler GEOGRAPHY LESSONS Emilio Taiveaho SWEET STARVATION Angela Bachmann STUTTER Adara Coker “IT’S OKAY, THERE WASN’T A LOT OF BLOOD” Ally Kann STAIN OF THE UNION Alec Baenen THE ARCHITECT Georgia Curtis HEART. KUV LUB SIAB. Ka Vue MAN IN THE MOON Laura Radmer RAISINS Lisa Krawczyk (SUMMER BLUES) Ariana Cole DANDELION COTTON Nicole Lanzer SAVE Alexander Zitzner ONLY FICTION Brianne Ackley YOUR WIFE IS HOT Emily Spence CANNIBAL Alec Baenen PULSE Erin Geyen NO. 2 Nicole Lanzer MERMAIDS Sarah Suleski IN THE ABSENCE OF A FRONTIER Brendon Paucek AUGUST 7, 2000&WHEN? Emilio Taiveaho
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PURPLE LANDSCAPE | Jesse Aylsworth
Painting of a digitally manipulated analog photograph I took in Rocky Mountain National Park in the summer of 2014. Oil and acrylic on canvas
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LIFTED HIGH | Elly West
This is the freedom, the feeling of weightlessness of an undeserved gift. We are no longer tied down. We are free. Inkjet print
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EXTENDED—PEAR TREE (FOR MY MOTHER) | Laura Radmer
The pear tree in the yard was planted like A tombstone in yellow light, Always bursting to full in the final Dregs of fall. Roots would wrap around A box, if there was one – Whatever the child of my mother Who never breathed life Would conceivably fit into. She has buried him, instead, in her heart As she watches wasps crawl in and out Of the caverns of the white flesh Of fruit. The skin is nearly all that remains And it is thin and weak and covered in scars. My mother tells me How every year, the tree Seems to bear more and more fruit. When This happens, I see her touch her stomach absently. I see her Run her index finger over the ring on her left hand, Like a wedding band, Bearing different colored stones – Four for three children: one blue, one purple, And two green. I have seen eternity in my mother’s eyes, Wide and dark. I have seen it in Her creases of worry and the silver hairs On her head like jet streams, Thin in the night sky. I have seen the end of the world as a place Where the darkness holds its breath In wait for a sound that never comes – The cry of an infant, Or a room filled with sighs Of relief. I saw this in my mother: Armageddon, disguised at first, Falling down my family tree like So many ripened fruits, Round and heavy with promise. The many-headed beast of retrospect Echoes through generations, Heaving downwards in straight lines, And bursting open like rain. Imagine a mother’s face when she puts The tiny gloves back on the shelf in the store, Her grief as she looks out the window To see the pear tree Sitting stoic on the lawn, Blossoming in summer, yet Wanting for warmth. 12
AIR | Seth Severson
you left at night, trying to keep your steps quiet in the wind but the wind heard you and told me in a whisper that you were running away, I caught your hand and it warmed me you didn’t notice floating all too fast your jet-fueled heart pushed on until the flickering lights melted in and became your spot in the stars there’s so much space between us but I’ll toss rocks at your star until you come back home
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MIDNIGHT SNACK | Carlin Sood
A little story in comic form, told through the expressions of the characters rather than traditional word bubbles. Digitally painted illustration
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A MODERN HOWL | Deanna Kolell
I see the impressionable minds of my generation warped by a yoke heaved upon them at 18, forced to pull it for the next ten, twenty, fifty years, who gasp and struggle and swoon and pant, half-mad oxen straining toward a crossroads that goes neither right nor left, but goes up and down and backwards, who grope blindly through a smokescreen with deep shuddering breaths, gulping, choking, and gulping again, who swim through amber waves of grain, first a toe, then to the knees, wading deeper and deeper until they’re drowning, who peer through microscopes, through windows, through eyes which are not their own, blinded by the plank in their own eye, who filibuster ignorantly, spewing words of philosophers and intellectuals long dead, refusing to see the world without the help of a corpse, who ride the rainbow up on a disoriented mine cart, only to find that no pot of gold waits at the bottom, who sputter and smoke when their inanimate objects die, all the while forgetting that human beings die, or that there are human beings at all, dazzled by the blinding white light of mobiles, who bestow power on puppets, dancing with every jerk of a string, jaws forced open, baying with wolves and howling with dogs, who pump their bodies full of caffeine, stumbling about, disoriented, arms outstretched, reaching desperately for a cure, who willingly blindfold themselves, striking the piñata with maddening fury, unbending, its papier-mâché shell unscathed, who trample the spangled banner and dance atop the graves of the fallen and wave their armaments in the air and cry for an end. I see the minds of my generation searching for what cannot be found, but it is the mindless quest that gives the world hope.
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OVERGROWN MESS | Alison Jozwiak
I Am I am an overgrown mess of tangled flowers growing from sadness, thriving on anger from which thorns grow. I am an overgrown mess of unsaid words resting on harsh lips and troubled skies, as thunder claps from inside of me. I am an overgrown mess. A mess of what I should feel and what I should not— a continuous seesaw in a drizzled park, creaking (up and down up and down) as rain falls down. Rain falls down, and I am. I am an overgrown mess from which flowers bloom soft thoughts, and intentions as sharp as the lightning formed from within me. I am an overgrown mess of seesaws that initiate happiness and hope (up and up and up and up). I am an overgrown mess with no need to be cut down.
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FREEDOM OF FLIGHT | Marguerite Gilbertson
This piece represents a contrast between restrictions and freedom. The original purpose of fence posts is to make boundaries or to contain, but here, they are created into wings that elicit a feeling of lightness and freedom. Performance piece; fence posts and leather
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TAKE ME HOME | Aurea Bergquist
I created this piece during the 24-hour project under the restrictions of a theme and a location. The theme was a twist in fate, and the location was the airport. My intention for this piece was to show the deep-rooted desire and fascination that humans have for understanding what exists beyond the earth. Acrylic on canvas
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BRUSSEL SPROUTS | Erin Geyen
She points to my plate “brussel sprouts” she explains “they’re really good.” Heard that before. On my plate is a baby cabbage, fresh out of the womb with its slimy viscous outer film. She looks at me “try it” she says “you’ll like it” she claims. Heard that one too. The little monster slips from underneath my fork refusing to be cut proving its slippery coat a defense mechanism. My thumb and pointer finger pinch the baby while the others stretch away. Slowly the tiny lettuce approaches my mouth my fingers realizing they got the good end of the deal, and suddenly the tiny veggie is in my mouth releasing its sticky defense as my teeth reluctantly sink in and my tongue immediately rejects the newborn green. “oh you’re being dramatic” she says. Heard that too.
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A HISTORY LESSON (IN TWO ACTS) | Emilio Taiveaho
1. S/He carries the Andes on his shoulders the mountain range runs down his spine until it meets its lonesome valley, the back of her thighs. Those who are not indigenous to the region call it southeastern Minnesota, the place where the mountains turn to bluffs—grandfathered in, kept alive by the movements of the Mississippi pumping sustenance through her body. The tributaries of the mighty river reach towards all the uncharted territories of her body, losing themselves along the shores of lake Tuusula, Lake Titicaca, Lake Harriet then freezing once they hit arctic winds in Lapland. They say that North is where his nose and ears were molded. The Suomi architects who carved her facial features along the bay of Helsinki could not have foreseen that their work would be held together with exported skin, mixed with the Esmeralda, the Manta, the Huancavilca, the Puna, and the Español. The color of his fabric is a remnant of the five-hundred-year-old process that never goes away never goes away never goes away, despite all the attempts to whitewash it. They say her eyes were toasted naturally under the Pacific sun, their hazel glare is not their own it was worn by his mother and her mother before by the wo/men who perfected their craft in the first days of the world before the Earth was transubstantiated into words, lines, dots, dots, dots, and stars. Her mind has been colonized by all the great empires— from Tawantinsuyu to the U.S. Dollar. And “he” is too specific, and “she” does not do. And “it” reduces him to bare life, nothing sacred. And s/he can’t control “they” And words like “he” or “she” or “them” or “we” or “I” can’t describe. YOU is a product of history I is a product of history HE is a product of history SHE is a product of history WE is a product of history. US is a product of history. U.S. is a product of history, too.
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What is history for if we can’t remember. What is history for if we can’t forget. What is history for if we can change. What is history for if we can’t change. What is history for if we don’t change. What is history for if we won’t change. What is history for if circles never end? When history disappears do you miss it? Do you miss her? Do you miss him? Do you miss you? Do you miss me? Do you miss us?
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LOST IN WINDOWS | Madeline Ludtke
The narrative of this mysterious series is open to interpretation by the viewer and their imagination. Watercolor and ink
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(SUNDAY WORSHIP) | Ariana Cole
worship me not because I am a temple but because my thighs crave attention praise me on a Sunday morning let lovers’ language escape your lips and tumble off your tongue while choirs sing songs of holy innocence, bless me in pure, unadulterated bliss
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IN THE NIGHT | Crystal Ruzicka
Footsteps almost unheard on soft carpeted steps. One at a time, he ascends, his intentions familiar. She feigns slumber, her breaths a calculated rhythm… inhale and exhale as he climbs into their marriage bed; she feels the familiar push and pull as he takes what is his. In the darkness, after, she opens her eyes and stares into the night. In the shudder between her heartbeat, the night soothes, softens, calms, heals her as dawn steps through her bedroom windows. Morning breaks as his snores rumble among the chatter of birds familiar to her vacant window-stare; they see her in her bed and fly to the freedom of the wind’s steady rhythm. The days crawl by, the night dance marked with the rhythm of routine long perfected. She at last neglects to fear the night, though the company never changes in her bed. Heartbeats nestle one by one within her womb, the steps of motherhood bringing home small, tangible bursts of love familiar to the way she felt, once, long ago before she was his. Is it not rape if the ring on her finger claims her as his, even though she dies inside with each night’s rhythm? Trapped, she builds a house of picket fences and familiar faces that smile at her as she walks into another night. She takes the hundreds of steps necessary to make sure no one asks questions about the man in her bed. His company kept by pixelated prostitutes, flesh sweaty on a sheeted bed, the women perform for the man behind the computer screen, his face never seen, cloaked in anonymity, his steps unknown to the nodding, accepting masses of men keeping the same rhythm, their women silent in the night. Stories she hears, unable to show they are familiar. One night, as he watches the women before beginning his familiar walk to her body, she turns awake and faces him in the bed. Though thousands have passed, she has decided that this night is the last night that dies with her being his. Her heart pounds with a frightening new rhythm as she sits up and exits her marriage bed with lightened steps. Her world these days is a different set of familiar steps, her bed is now her own; sleep’s rhythm an echo of the night that is no longer his.
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WASTELAND SERIES | Sammi Biesterveld
This series explores the intrusive nature of discarded debris through photo collage, combining found and original photographs to create landscapes out of industrial objects, recycled material, and food waste. Digital collage
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BLUE DRAGON | Adria Peters
I was inspired by puzzles and how small pieces fit together to create a picture. Cardboard, tissue paper and glue, hot glue, and acrylic paint
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NEW YORK’S HOTTEST CLUB IS ... | Madeline Ludtke
From banjos to Furbies and screaming babies in Mozart wigs, Stefon knows what’s up with all of the hottest places in town. Watercolor and ink
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DRAW | Laura Radmer
We went Down by the riverbank and Our shoes got thick With mud. Winter appeared As a fog over the water, but did not spread Fast enough to stop the rain. We inhaled In circles, pinwheels that carried our pulses To the surface of the moon. We exhaled In feathered grey plumes. You went Down closer to the water, you told Me you loved the sound of the rushing In your ears. You said water is like The blood of the Earth. The dirt settled In the lines of your palms. I touched them To feel the same as you. Again And again, we drew our breath Deeper and deeper Like pulling on a string Attached to my ribs. I feel That a funneled vision becomes You. And perhaps This does not Come off the way I mean it. I mean that I love it like that, when You’re all I see, Entire. We went Back to lie down. When we touched, it was Like the first time: our bodies moving Like the sea and heavy With the ashes on our lungs.
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RAIN | Seth Severson
Smiling in the rain Just been kissed Or no umbrella And very pissed
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TECHNOLOGY: UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA? | Kassandra Olson
This series explores collage, as well as the meaning of utopia and dystopia within technology. Found photographs and collage
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E X P O S E D | Abby Polipnick
Those words I was hiding beneath my tongue They screamed at me At you. And then they left, cursing at me as they stomped out the door. They floated in the air a while, curious about their newfound freedom and twirling into the space outside of your ears as they reshaped themselves to diminish their meaning before they buried themselves inside. Nevertheless they scared you the way they scared me.
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FIRE | Lindsey Lecheler
To a silent song, it dances, painting in yellows and oranges and reds, a wrath of destruction with hot kisses and heated caress. It embraces the trees, licks the fresh blades of grass, it holds the hands of all and turns them to crumbling ash. The rocks then begin to blush, the air is no longer clear, soon to be gone in the eyes of a wide, smoke-filled mirror. The sky crackles to its music, flames graze, then dive and consume. The wind carries the cries of it all in a musky, sooty perfume. It rises high in encore to a great inferno applause. Scorching the ground, encrypting, with the graceful touch of God. It brings a wave of death with torrid touches and hugs of blaze. To a tragic song, it dances, painting in blacks and whites and greys.
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MINISKIRT | Aurea Bergquist
More than a body. Oil on canvas
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BITTER SWEET PRODUCE | Marguerite Gilbertson
This sculpture symbolizes the production of food, specifically corn and its prominence in the food we eat. Creating corncobs out of high-fructose corn syrup shows the relationship between the food we eat and the farmers that grow it. Fructose corn syrup, polyurethane coating, and yellow food coloring
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GEOGRAPHY LESSONS | Emilio Taiveaho
1. I was learning geography using my fingertips—from the trees to your toes to your torso. I remember how you felt and how I felt and the heat of summer. I remember how we would lie—on the grass and to each other and to ourselves. I was learning geography crushed under your legs and arms—and I can still remember the sidewalks on your legs and arms. I remember the ocean in your eyes. The waves in your hair. The River. The valleys. Your eyelids. Fresh produce from the market. I was learning geography by crossing borders—from Quito to Manta to Miami to Winona to my grandmother’s home to Madrid to Lima to a bed & breakfast in Lanesboro to Helsinki to Minneapolis to Tallinn to your family’s summer house. 2. The heterosexual dollar, heterosexual mass-market romance, the heterosexual school, the heterosexual executive, legislative, judicial, heterosexual dogma, heterosexual academies of war, the heterosexual holy scriptures of Hollywood. These were the teachers, my teachers of geography. The genderless mountains the rivers the prairies the highlands the beaches the islands the tall grass the mud the bark of trees your cheeks the space between your fingers your pillow. These were true teachers, teachers of geography. 3. Language, langue, lenguaje. The blur of structures and the mezcla. The cambio. La rupture. North y sur. Mamá y father. Padre Nuestro who art in heaven, santificado sea tu hunger. You looked up, your head burrowed into my chest, and whispered “I like that you are not from here.” Palabras, lenguas, mapas, el océano atlántico, el siglo quince, la corona española, los ingleses, los portugueses, los guaraní, los aztecas, Quetzalcoatl, Inti, Tawantinsuyu, el oceano atlántico, Manuela Saenz. Malintzin. These were lessons, lessons in geography.
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4. Aprendí geografía con las puntas de mis dedos. Acariciando pasaportes, tus manos, tu ombligo, agua fría, hielo, nieve, y ceniza . Aprendí como morir cuando te fuiste de mi vida. Tus ojos cerrados. Tus manos cruzadas. Tu hijo llorando mientras regresabas a tu tierra. “Quiero morirme en mi pais.” Geography is a burden. 5. I learned geography when mi papá left for the end of the world. And you cried and you cried and you cried. I gave my first geography lesson on your mother’s couch, when I told you how she cried and you cried and I cried. We were making maps together. 6. And now, what is geography good for? And my mother’s geography? And the geography of my father? And my grandmother? My dead grandfather? You said you had mastered geography. “We build geographies to tear them back down. Yours and mine and his and hers and theirs and yours. They’re all going to change. The hallucination of reality. It’s all just a way to get by.” Geography is a question of the human condition. Geography cannot contain the human heart. Geography cannot contain the human spirit. Geography is not scripture. Geography is not sacred. Geography is not holy. Geography is not eternal. Geography is not scripture. Geography is not sacred. Geography is not holy. Geography is not eternal.
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WHAT IF ... | Abbey Meyers
My inspiration was to be different, and I really wanted to get people’s attention. Many people look at art and move on, but I wanted the people who saw my art to stop and stare. Charcoal and pen
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ANYTHING AT ALL | Cheyanne January
This piece embodies the phenomenon of existence in the endless cycle of life. Monoprint
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GENESIS | Jesse Aylsworth
Digitally manipulated photograph of naturally occurring fractals found in soap bubbles, rendered in oil paint. Oil and acrylic on canvas
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SWEET STARVATION | Angela Bachmann
suckling on cigarettes to soften the cries teasing empty stomachs, full of sadness chasing each drag with coffee like shots of alcohol, I am drunk on this sweet starvation destroying mind, body, and so much more as reminders ring in my mind like church bells don’t eat, don’t eat, don’t eat
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STUTTER | Adara Coker
Trip wires and grenades engage my circuited lips and act as lightning that strikes disaster on tongue tips. vowels and consonants twist together into burs and snakesI’ve had enough of mixing up my mouth shapes. the structure won’t come out in order, it chokes and spits until my fingernails are biting into wrists, abandoned energy churns into half ended sentences and partly spoken blurbs; I think my language has no place for words. so I will stay struck silent with face glistening, and become the most electric person in the world at listening, and love instead the voices in my head that must survive with a tripwire and a pen.
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UNTITLED | Lukas Carlson
A fantastical city living on, and within, the tree of life. Inkjet print
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SELF-PORTRAIT | Elly West
Our eyes are shadowed, but the darkness has not won. There is a powerful light that can help us see the way. Inkjet print 47
“IT’S OKAY, THERE WASN’T A LOT OF BLOOD” | Ally Kann
My eyes were glassy and empty so I plucked them out and drew a circle with chalk on the cement and played marbles by myself. It was difficult to play, though, because I couldn’t see anything.
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STAIN OF THE UNION | Alec Baenen
Housekeepers, Advisers within the Cabinet of Disinfectants, My fellow Germophobes, Four score and seven dishcloths ago, we as a people have taken as truth that those of unwashed hands ought to be mistrusted. For centuries we have scrubbed the grime from our granite counter tops and inhaled the cookie crumbs from our carpeting with weapons of mass sanitation. We have dusted each corner and painted over every mark on the walls in hopes that we may have created a world where the inklings of our mistakes are transparent. But I am afraid that although we have learned to sweep softly and carry a big broomstick the only thing we have left to clean, is cleanliness itself. We must look not upon our freshly mopped floors, but instead our grease-ridden aprons. For above all else we are filth And not even a Tide To-Go Stick and a bottle of Goo-Gone can rub away the stains that have made us spotless. We are the .001% of bacteria that a 32oz tub of Purell cannot not wipe off the face of the Earth. We are the fruit flies tickling at the smashed blueberries rotting from neglect in the back of the refrigerator that keeps our fantasies crisp enough so that they are appetizing to lock inside of our stomachs every morning. So I ask of each and every one of you Lay down your dustpans, your battle hardened bristles Ask not what the dust may do for you, ask what you may do for the dust. And if our immune systems fail So help us Billy Mays
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ASIA ON FILM | Seth Severson
These photos protray several moments captured during my six-month trek through the beauty that is Asia. Film photography
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THE ARCHITECT | Georgia Curtis
“I love you so much” is scrawled in the dust of my TV. Every time I roll over and see the motivation, my lip curvesI feel you in what was a tent, now a house, constructed in me. A full house to clean, I can’t even keep the dust off my TV. Your lips press onto me and I swear I can feel every glass window shatter in rooms of my knees. I’d pick up the glass with my bare hands just so you could see the daylight through the pieces in the morning. Sometimes I let the storms tear down my walls, allow visitors to leave the stove on a little too longand I push myself to the weeping willow to vanish. You notice the lights are off and I am thrown in the wagon, pulled back home to safety. I don’t mean to be so selfish, thinking that I matter out there when graced under the vines of Mother Nature. You are my comfort zone, my bed on a sick day, and I love you more than any of these words.
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HEART. KUV LUB SIAB. | Ka Vue
My heart is heavy and I can no longer carry it alone. I have been bred from the blood and ashes of my ancestry and I have felt the boil in my blood when I speak. I have been worn by others, I have been torn by words. I have been exploited and I am sick and tired of being used, of being angry, of being ashamed of who I am and being told who I am and who I am not. I am sick and tired of only knowing how to exist when I am wanted. Others have suffered far worse tragedies than my own, but my torment is different, my pain is my own and I cannot describe to you the way the world seems swallow a piece of me every single day. hluav taws. fire. I provoke trouble to keep the fire in my veins from dying out, because I need that fire to survive. But this fire is often seen as anger, rather than passion. I have mistaken anger and passion as one. And for me, I’d rather be known, loved, and remembered as passionate, than angry. I’d rather be known as a fighter, rather than an enabler, a bystander, a whisperer. People say that when I speak, I breathe fire. I am confrontational. I am scary. Is it because the scariest thing to be confronted with in this world, is being uncomfortable? history. lawv tsis sav nco qab. If I have something to say, I have vowed to no longer suppress this voice of mine. I have vowed to become an empowerer. I have been forgotten, but after I am done with it, the world will not forget my words, they will not forget my voice. They will not overlook this history, because it is my story, and my story will strike the hearts of those who will listen and haunt those who choose not to hear the truth. We are not a side conversation. We are not whispers, nor giggles, nor laughter. We are not who they say we were. And we have arisen from the ashes that you have dusted away. What you have failed to see is that you have lumped all of our ashes together. And together, we are stronger than when we are alone. We live off of one another’s fire, slowly igniting each other’s flames until we burn everything down.
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UNTITLED | Lukas Carlson
I was under the impression I was done when everything was rendered with realism. It suddenly wasn’t beautiful anymore, so I messed it up. Beauty can lie behind its imperfections. Oil and acrylic on ccnvas
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SINKING | Taylor Kysley
This piece was inspired by the beauty of the Kettle Moraine. Watercolor and acrylic
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REVELATION | Kelsey Brown
Originally inspired by charcoal rubbings of various objects, this piece creates an abstract visualization of the moment you experience a revelation. Illustration pen on cold-press illustration board
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MAN IN THE MOON | Laura Radmer
I could tell my father had died by the cadence of the waves. They were calmer than they should have been at that time of night, like they were in mourning. This was his requiem. My father had been famous since I was very young. For the way my mother talked about him you’d think he was a big shot actor, but the truth was his fame was more low-key as the man in the moon. My father thought the praise from her and our neighbors was uncalled for: what he did was boring, tireless work. He always used that same phrase. Boring, tireless. He repeated it until we didn’t want to hear it anymore, and we stopped talking about his job altogether. My mother never told me the precise story of how he got his job: one day he was in an interview at the Chicago conservatory, and the next they were putting a big ugly staircase in the middle of our kitchen. It led to a trap door they put in the ceiling that, by my own measurements, should have led right to my room. But they didn’t. “They go where?” my mother asked. “To the moon.” “Can’t you just take a train? Does it have to be in the middle of our home like this?” She was beside herself. Everyone knew this job harbored great responsibility, and even pain. “Mommy?” I asked. I must have been three years old. “Can I go with Daddy to the moon?” My father looked at me with a helpless smile. “Oh, look what you’ve done,” my mother said. “Now I’m going to lose my daughter, too.” She went upstairs and wept for days, even after my father had already left for his first rehearsal. “I’m conducting the tide, darling,” he shouted at her through their closed door. “Shouldn’t you at least be proud of me?” My father was a composer by trade and a clarinetist at heart. When he would come home after long spells of working, we would sit in our living room, my mother and I, and listen to him play by the fire. He loved jazz and always held the classics in the highest regard. “Without them,” he always said, “there would be no Louis. And without Louis, well, we wouldn’t have true music!” He insisted that true music was the kind that squeezed your heart in a tight fist and only let go once you realized you’d lost your breath. He was poetic in that way. My mother conceded to the new arrangement eventually; we both did. I got used to only seeing him a couple times a month and learned to appreciate the short times for all they were worth: playing ball, teaching me the trumpet, showing me pictures. When I got older, he even talked to me about relationships. “Be careful who you choose, Arianna. Make sure they treat you right,” he said. By then, he was already advanced in years. His face was wrinkled and his hands shook. But his smile was always the same, his crow’s feet marching the same line from his eyes to his temple. When he was away for a long time and I forgot how he looked, I closed my eyes and saw that smile. He told me, “He must have two things in his heart, above anything else: love and music. The two go hand in hand.” He took my hand in his, and I felt like a little girl again. “If he sings to you, then you know he’s the one.” On the night my father died, I walked the whole way home with my hands in my pockets. He hadn’t been home for months, or days, or years. It’s not like I could tell – since my mother’s children were born (triplets, all boys), neither of my parents paid me much attention. I made it a point to spend most of my time out of the house. College had changed me in ways I couldn’t expect. I studied more, I ate far less, and times at home became few and far between. Often my father and I would miss each other by days. He sent letters asking me things about how life was going – he had no cell service up there – but they grew shorter and shorter as the years trailed by. After a while, I got greeting cards. They all said Wish you were here, but he wasn’t saying it; someone else was.
The first time I tried to go up the stairs in the kitchen, I was seven years old. It was early in the morning and I had put my socks on so my feet wouldn’t make small slapping sounds on the linoleum floor.
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I stood still for a long time, just staring at it. “Dad,” I whispered. “Dad, can you hear me?” Silence. Snow was falling gently outside. Everything was a blanket of white. “I’m coming up, okay?” Climbing those stairs was a feat. Each step seemed to get progressively higher until by the last, I was out of breath and felt very small. I was excited and terrified to find out what was hiding behind the trap door. My hand reached out. And then slowly, deliberately, I took it back. With a slight pause, I turned around and headed quickly to my bedroom. My mother would be awake soon. I never told her about what I almost did. Later that day, we went over to the Y for my swimming lessons. As I watched small waves scamper along the length of the water I asked, “Does Daddy tell this water where to go, too?” My mother turned her face to the ceiling. Her eyes were closed, as if in prayer. “I suppose,” she said. “Why not?” On the night my father died, my mother was sitting in the living room when I got home. I could tell she had been weeping. Her face, though much younger than my father’s, was creased in sorrow. The space between folded skin had become rivers. It was interesting, I thought. She wasn’t crying. Crying was reserved for the mundane: ending a relationship, breaking an arm. Weeping was the more serious practice. Only the truly wounded wept. “Did you see them today?” my mother asked. Ever since I was a child, I had dedicated a part of the day to sitting and watching the waves roll along in their fluid symphony. By doing this, I thought, I was communicating with my father. “Yes,” I said. “It was so quiet all day. So still.” My mother held her rosary while she stared unseeing at the television. “He would have gone mad.” I sat down next to her, close enough for our knees to touch. I put my arm around her shoulders; she trembled through her cardigan. “I know,” was all I managed to say. After he died, the neighbors went out of their way to be kind to us, even though we never told them anything. “We heard what happened to John,” they said. “We saw it on the news.” Mrs. Dexhardt and her husband were the first in a long line of polite mourners. I found out later that the news said he drowned; he must have over-exhausted himself and fell off the podium right into the Atlantic. “It’s gotta be real tough,” Allen Dexhardt said. “I can’t imagine doing the work he did.” He was a man that had always envied my father in small, suburban ways: our house was bigger, our landscaping better designed. He tried to set me up on a date with his son once, but I found the experience unbearable. “I looked online,” he continued, “and at least this shouldn’t come as a shock. I mean, the mortality rates for that job are…are…” “They’re to the moon,” I said. I laughed once in the silence that followed, not sure what had come over me. Our neighbors looked at their hands. My mother looked at me imploringly. With a sudden fierceness, I just wanted to be alone. I excused myself from them and went back into the house. I thought, maybe if he fell, he didn’t drown. Maybe there was a chance he would swim back. The last time I saw my father was the end of my sophomore year of college. He looked even more like an old man then. His sons were young enough to be his grandchildren. “I miss it so much,” he told me that night. My mother was on the phone in her nightgown and the boys had been put to bed, leaving my father and I sitting at the kitchen table. He said, “Every memory I’ve had here is good.” When he looked at me, there was sorrow in his eyes. “Even the bad ones are good.” “Then why don’t you just quit and come home?” I asked. “Mom needs you. Especially now, with
them.” I meant her children. I didn’t see them as my siblings. They were born against the doctor’s advice while I was already out of the house. My father opened his mouth to say something, but the space where his voice should have been was filled with a shrill cry. His sons were awake. When he closed his mouth, he gave me that same sad smile I saw on the day I asked my mother if I, too, could go to the moon. “We’ll get back to this,” he told me.
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We never did. Disappointed, I went to bed early and left for school the next day when he was already gone. On the night my father died, I called my friends and we went to the beach. This was after my mother had gone to bed. We met each other late at night and drank wine out of the bottle while we stuck our toes in the sand. Jason said, “I bet he’s out there somewhere.” He always talked about things as if he knew them well, even when he didn’t. “I mean, your dad was a hell of a guy.” “Don’t be stupid,” Beth said. She sat cross-legged, trying to build a sandcastle with a corkscrew. I was sitting quietly, picking up sand and letting it fall through my fingers. I was surrounded in little piles. “No,” I said. Even though the idea had come into my mind before, it seemed wrong now. “If he’s gone, I think he’s just gone.” Both of my friends looked at me. “Or else he would have called.” There were points during the night when I thought I heard my father’s voice. Over the stillness of the waves, I thought I heard his laugh. In the cloudless sky, I thought I saw his smile among the stars. But it wasn’t. And my father’s half-alive body, swimming and dragging itself to the shore, was never found.
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BEYOND BINARY | Sierra Lomo
This piece pushes our perceptions of bodily autonomy and gender identity. The invasive process of labeling individuals within gender binaries is highlighted as viewers examine this body. Watercolor and ink
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RAISINS | Lisa Krawczyk
handing me the pack, you asked me to smell (but “probably not do much else” with) the cigarettes; they smelled like raisins. “pure tobacco.” counting down the raisins lit— with four, we stood on the balcony: the engineer, the pipe the poet and the fluctuating brains that follow patterns of rain. watching people (both shameful, shameless) walk toward and away from the apartment. three the swarms of yellow cabs pulling up and driving away taking, leaving the groups were bacchanalian— the high heels and short dresses and dude-bros and yelling from below asking us if we wanted their last beer as you prepared the pipe, glass and spiraled— kaleidoscope.
talking but more like riddling— left are two. hearing the birds start singing and the rising of the morning sun— decidedly the best time to end the night and one falling asleep in proximity and still I was afraid of touch— hovering satellites with the smells of raisins, masking rainy, fresh air drifting around wanting to merge.
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(SUMMER BLUES) | Ariana Cole
suckle me, honeydew sticky lips against sticky summer skin and those pesky mosquitos that nip and bite, and buzz and fight outlined against the dying sun suckle me, my flying friend crimson stains on my arms and palms and your sweetened tongue I itch and swell, and scratch and welt with contrasting ideas of love
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A WORLD OF SILENCE | Sarah Jessick
Rather than explain everyday situations of hearing impairment to people, why not show it using visual communication instead? These layered photographs are an exploration of that question. Photography
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DANDELION COTTON | Nicole Lanzer
She swirls upon a glossy floor of oak Her slender tendons poised in arabesque And soles a channel for unspoken hope This language captured in each dexterous step Melodious motion hue on canvas bare The brushstrokes wrought in brilliant chassé Kinetically expressing every care In petal satin worn with spots of gray The delicate doll of china floats through space As dandelion cotton in the breeze And compositions shaped in a frame of grace Like a herring’s painted wings upon the seas It’s in this sport of cognitive release The dancer finds at last her inner peace
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SAVE | Alexander Zitzner
spend! spend! spend! never save! more buildings! more cars! get rid of all the trees! more bars! more scars! take what’s theirs and make it ours! destroy the stone but save concrete! kill the animals but save the meat! I’ll stand here and watch it fall listening for cries that will not call out to me or you or to us or them there’s nothing leftspend, spend, spend.
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UNTITLED | Kassandra Olson
This series uses light reflecting off of a female barbie doll to evoke a sense of curiosity and uneasiness from the viewer. Photography
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UNTITLED | Lukas Carlson
Inspired by Titian’s Rape of Europa. Oil and acrylic on canvas
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ONLY FICTION | Brianne Ackley
Why is it always you? When it’s between you and me It’s always you Some would say we are hope and realism Or any other cliché an author frowns upon Ice and Fire Sunshine and Moonlight Fact and Fiction But in reality You are both in your own being You don’t need me for a balance And that’s why it’s always you For I am only hope Only ice Only moonlight Only Fiction You don’t need another half to make you whole I do So life chooses you And leaves me to fend for myself
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YOUR WIFE IS HOT | Emily Spence
Wearing as little as decency allows, she is hot. Yearning for relief. You’re always occupied! Another round of golf or getting a drink. The excuses are endless. It has pushed your wife to the brink. Due to your neglect, she reached out to me, Relished me with her dissatisfaction in you, husband. I am here to stand where you should be. Unbeknownst to you, she stayed home that day for the appointment we had set. Both of us were excited, anticipating the approaching bliss. Prior to taking my leave, she bestowed an extra reward unto me, Grateful for my gracious performance. I urged her to contact me again when cases such as this arose. Perhaps you learned when you got the bill, but I had already proceeded to the next summer woman whose dream I was to fulfill. Rarely do I come some place twice. And while I continue on, for you, husband, I just have one piece of advice: Your wife is hot. Trust Weiss Heating & Cooling to repair any air conditioning device.
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INFERNO | Jesse Aylsworth
Digitally manipulated photograph of naturally occurring fractal forms found on the surface of thin layers of ice, rendered in paint. Glitter, oil, and acrylic paint
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GUIDANCE | Nadean Marron
In what manner can one find a way to follow another? Oil on panel
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CANNIBAL | Alec Baenen
Someone will always have straighter teeth Look better in the same dress Have one less gnarl in their hair Or wear a suit of skin that glows a few shades brighter But nobody’s teeth chatter to the same tune of unfilled cavities and unfinished thoughts That shiver under your breath in over bitten ballads and crooked folk songs Nobody’s collarbones poke through the cusps at the shoulder of that dress like yours And your bedraggled jeans with wrinkles at the ankle Tell better stories than her freshly ironed Saturday night Nobody’s trendy hairstyle can replicate your cowlick with a tub of Axe hair gel And his Clearasil clogged pores cannot live up to your bullet hole ridden face of acne Nobody’s skin can boil through the blood beneath my eyes like your sun-spotted decadence Crow’s feet tiptoeing from the ladle of my hands smoother than her buttermilk palms So stow away your dimple cropped gumdrops Your cream whipped eyes of egg yolk The pantry house of your Salisbury stomach ache and marinated heart of meandering Have never looked any more appetizing slathered in my jam of graphite The bottomless dish of my paper white lies
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PULSE | Erin Geyen
my thoughts marinate in the blood that courses through my veins pulsating so intensely that i cannot seem to breathe without the flow increasing fueling the hunger that waits. patiently. until the exact moment i am ready to be indulged upon from the inside out by none other than the one whose mind gave birth to those very thoughts and suddenly i am the reason i no longer exist
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RESHAPED RENAISSANCE | Madeline Ludtke
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation, reinvented as a nonrepresentational abstraction. Acrylic and oil
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NO. 2 | Nicole Lanzer
A wonder an apparatus so archaic And birthed by rings of crippling cedar Can withstand a world so App-for-that and avant-garde A spear of dusty carbon Protrudes its mustard shaft To transmit thought or lack thereof To latent page from clammy palm Yet one thing this primal gadget lacks The confidence and gall of a ballpoint Whose etches are eternal And cannot be discarded in flecks of rosy rubber Scribbles humming in a wide-ruled margin Squeezing in and out of coiled sterling The words leak in an endless flow Like lava from a stony crust But often times the ashen tip Merely hovers above the ivory spread By the flesh that grips its rigid torso Poised for genius dormant still In search perhaps For the accurate jargon To adeptly describe Itself
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MERMAIDS | Sarah Suleski
Abigail was raising runestones on the patio. She understood her own limitations enough not to attempt an authentic, chiseled, monumental look. She used glittery puffy paint and plasticine and clear lacquer, something the Vikings probably would have done if they’d thought of it at the time. “But how will the mermaids get in?” Patience asked. “We don’t have a pool.” “We could,” said David. “We could put it where the garden is.” He hated zucchini and so he hated the garden. Patience knew this but pretended not to, and planted row upon row of zucchini every year. She harvested buckets of it and they ate nothing but zucchini casserole and zucchini bread and zucchini soup starting in June and going until her family’s tears filled up the finally empty buckets. She saved those tears and watered her garden with them in May. Patience ignored his suggestion, and so did Abigail. “I don’t know how they’ll do it,” Abigail said, squeezing out the curve of a mermaid’s tail with sparkly Emerald Effusion. “A seer can’t know everything.” “You’re not a seer, Abby,” said David, reasonably. He tapped the letter O on his electric typewriter a couple of times. The center of each O filled with ink, like they always did. He could never get it fixed. No one fixed typewriters anymore. And so all his O’s came out solid. Book. Crook. Shook. All dark in the center. The crook shook the book. He shook his head, darkly, centered, and typed: My daughter is going to murder me with mermaids. Please help. Patience caressed the length of a zucchini, wiping the dirt from its emerald effusion. She placed it in a bucket with its squashy brethren and bent to cut another from the stalk. Her garden was rimmed now in runestones; lumps of clay decorated in what Abigail called “the old-tradition.” Spirals of vaguely Nordic patterns and animals, and words proclaiming their reason for being. The one nearest her foot read, This stone was raised by Abigail in memory of her cat, Peaches, who was hit by a car. Peaches had been a dog, but Abigail firmly believed him to be a cat, and his death one afternoon while chasing a sedan had not changed that. Patience wondered if she could grow a peach tree in this climate. When David finally published his novel (which he had to write first) they were moving to California, and she had spent a good deal of time on websites reading about the growing seasons out there. She knew she could grow a peach tree in California, but she also knew that David would never finish his novel. Abigail knew that David would finish his novel. She did not tell her parents, but she was sure of this, because mermaids would have a hard time getting into their landlocked midwestern yard. When they lived by the beach in northern California it would be a different story. Then she would erect a runestone for them, possibly a real one, tall and carved from the jagged boulders lining the beach. This small clay lump was merely a prototype. It was about the size of her torso with a pale blue base and bright red letters. This stone was raised by Abigail in memory of David and Patience, her parents, who would be murdered by mermaids. She did not yet know how to write in ancient runes. She thought maybe she would learn when she got to college. The soft click-clacking of David’s vintage 1970s era electric typewriter filled the quiet summer afternoon in a way that he thought was reassuring; a bread-winnerly sort of tapping that also said “I am not merely a corporate robot.” The neighbors over the fence who heard it only thought it carried an air of stubborn hipsterly pride, which said, “I am from the west coast and I do not like you.” They were not wrong. The awkward, fart-like noises of Abigail’s puffy paint tubes releasing their colors onto the clay punctuated the tip tap click clackity clack while Patience considered the possibility of humming along. Quietly, contentedly humming was supposed to be one of the joys of gardening, but she had never been good at anything musical. “Hmmmm,” she tried. “Hmmm hmm.” No. No use. Abigail painted a smile onto the mermaid twining round her runestone and then smudged it off again because mermaids didn’t have mouths. At least not the ones who would murder her parents. At least not the ones that twined through her dreams and perched on boulders in the Pacific ocean, watching the beach house with the rows of peach trees, and waiting, and humming.
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UNDER THE SEA | Sarah Hartzell
My goal was to create an “impossible city.” I’ve always been fascinated with mythological creatures, so I decided to incorporate mermaids into my theme. Digital painting
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UNTITLED | Alex Stout
Inspired by the tranquility, color, and fluidity of Putnam Rock, I attempted to capture the beauty of the scene. Digital photography
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IN THE ABSENCE OF A FRONTIER | Brendon Paucek
Lost in a labyrinth from here to there, The aged man’s wisdom is His badge of blindness, piloting the possibilities Of is and isn’t, true and false, the ins and outs of His existence, into a bay of safety and relativity. Bound by time, squinting eyes Stare into glowing orbs that Wink and blink but never tell. The perimeters of our being Fall short of the universe’s ends. Draco’s grimace twists and snakes To the sound of our unanswered bellows. Peering through Hubble’s one-way discoveries Unzip layers of the past, bringing the old And ancient to dance with the young and new. Signals sent. Scrambled and unheard. Transmissions unseen. Unwitting and secret. The aged man, weak and unseeing, Gasps for air in a terrestrial vacuum. Dizzy and dazed, his understanding of The cosmos are flipped and inverted. The edges now centered and the core Outside the boundaries of a star-dusted mind. Space flows toward separation, But time careens in. He rests on his final bed, an arrow Of light from Orion shoots straight and true Through his heart. His breath breaks a Lifelong habit, but his blindness cured.
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AUGUST 7, 2000&WHEN? | Emilio Taiveaho
Your head My chest Your crevice My crest Your hand My skin Your eyes your grin Your nightstand Your eyes Your stare The clouds The clouds were there in your hair you took your share The entire earth The entire earth was there was bare you took your share Your head My chest My crevice Your crest We laid the best days to rest
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TEAR | Casey Utke
The human mind is the source of all emotion, and the eye is the gateway. Oil on canvas
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SOUGHT AFTER | Kelsey Brown
This is an interpretation of Isaiah chapter 62 in the Bible. Jesus doesn’t only want your Sunday mornings; He is seeking your heart. Flaws, tears, smears, and all. Acrylic, illustration pen, charcoal, and pencil on manipulated old canvas
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