The Tower 2019

THE TOWER

VOLUME 13 2019

THE TOWER

THE TOWER ART AND LITERARY MAGAZINE

Copyright Š 2019 The Tower University of Minnesota, Department of English 207 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455 thetower.umn.edu ivory@umn.edu Printed by Versa Press, Inc., East Peoria, IL Front Cover Art: Mountain, Michelle Nasvik, acrylic on paper, 2018

Mission The Tower is the student-run undergraduate art and literary magazine of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus. We are inspired by a belief in the necessity of artistic expression and its power to enlighten, challenge, and captivate.

Thank you!

We would like to thank the following organizations for their generosity and for making it possible to publish the 2019 edition of The Tower. For a full list of donors, please see the last page of this issue.

Artwords

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS In our current cultural discourse, we’ve noticed an increasing emphasis on what makes us different from each other. However, as a response, individuals and their communities are increasing their efforts to build relationships with one another and across divides.

For the 2019 edition of The Tower, we selected the theme “Each of Us Is Many,” a phrase that comes from Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author: “in my awareness that each of us thinks of himself as one but that, well, it’s not true, each of us is many, oh so many, sir, according to the possibilities of being that are in us.” We believe that communities are a reflection of the diversity of the individual and that if you sit down with someone long enough, you will find a connection. We hope that this year’s edition of The Tower becomes that conversation—an opportunity to hear from and connect with someone different than yourself.

To spark this conversation, we chose a theme that welcomed self-reflection and personal interpretation from our contributors. In response, we received a diverse array of submissions, from which we found three clear categories within the idea that “Each of Us Is Many”: self, relationships, and community. The pieces in the first part reflect the many facets within one’s identity. The second part explores how we find personal connections through our diversity. And the final section demonstrates how we interact with the world—as individuals and as collectives. Our magazine follows these three parts to respect our contributors’ interpretations, allowing you, our readers, to move through the journey of understanding yourselves—and each other.

For this year’s edition of The Tower, we hope our authors, artists, and readers recognize that every one of us is a collection of our own experiences. In our divisive climate, art and literature can provide a common meeting ground for conversations. By exploring the diversity of ourselves and of others, we can find a connection that runs as deep as our shared humanity.

Zenyse Miller Editor in Chief

Elizabeth Schleisman Editor in Chief

The Tower 2019 Staff Editors in Chief Zenyse Miller Elizabeth Schleisman Managing Editors Mikayla Borchert Hannah Haakenson Molly Maguire Marketing Directors Megan Hoff Elyse Yarrick Publicist Jared Dooley Development Directors Sophia Charbonneau Grace Henry Design Managers Lauren Foley Christine Ha

Illustration Emily Jablonski

Chief Art Editor Sophie Vilensky Art Editors Mikayla Borchert Samantha Edwards Samantha Keo Chief Fiction Editor Ellen Ailts Fiction Editors Jared Dooley Jesseca Fusco Christine Ha Hannah Haakenson Molly Maguire Zenyse Miller Chief Nonfiction Editor Tess Maki

Designers Alexandra Buelow Samantha Keo

Nonfiction Editors Alexandra Buelow Sophia Charbonneau Lauren Foley Elyse Yarrick

Copy Chief Kedi Davis

Chief Poetry Editor Megan Hoff

Copyeditors Ellen Ailts Sophia Charbonneau Jared Dooley Samantha Edwards Jesseca Fusco Hannah Haakenson Jonas Keeler Samantha Keo Tess Maki

Poetry Editors Kedi Davis Grace Henry Jonas Keeler Elizabeth Schleisman

Online Editor Sophie Vilensky

ArtWords Judges Mikayla Borchert Jesseca Fusco Megan Hoff Tess Maki

CONTENTS each of us is many

Self Vanilla, Rebecca Sanchez The World Shifted, Zoe Rogers Alter/Altar, Luca Kjos camp phillips road, Bridget Dugan Faith, Gabriela Sierra Bedon draw, Nisarg Gandhi On the Division of Allegiances, Cate Tynjala Persistence, Abigail Thompson Blue Couch, Kendall Laurent The One Where the Bathtub Drain Is Clogged Again, Kayleen Hedberg Bike Life, Joey Gotchnik Shlumpy Girl, Jane Borstad A Mountain Rose Caught in a Snowstorm, Hannah Kil Human Preservation, Allison Hunsley Stuff Stuff Stuff, Emily Jablonski A Part of It, Noah Causey Unseen Skin, Magdalene McClun Perch, Genevieve Vickers All for One, Ella Van Haren That Dragon, Nameless, Miki Schumacher Erosion, Jessica Clayton golden in my own way, Eric DeBord Infectious, Jessica Clayton

3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 18 19 20 22 24 25 29 30 31 32 34 35 36

Relationships 39 40 42 44 46 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 59 60 61 62 64 67 68 72 74 75 78

Papou, Demitria Sabanty Comfortable, Jihyea Jang On Grief and Other Lovers, Miki Schumacher Stiff, Jane Borstad Baseball, Grace Langeberg Anatomy of a Love Seen, Alexis Ma Untitled, Zoe Rogers She’s Got Sun in Her Eyes, Maia Jacobson Orange, Ian Smith Where Mama Took Me, What Mama Taught Me, Stefanie Amundsen Chasing Grasshoppers, Olivia McGovern A Dreary Afternoon, Megan Lange Architecture Abstraction Study I, Brandon Anderson Flight Plan, Alex Schumacher Revenge, Michael Greer Meat Shop, Rachel Weiss House Poem, Simon Batistich Home, Cassi Miesner Historians, Gabriella Granada in Eclipse, Rachel Weiss The Bottle or the Bullet (my father is), Maya Ulrich And There Lies the Truth, Catherine Retica A Collection, Alyssa McCathie

Community Sea of People, Emily Jablonski Catching Wind, Farrah Mina Spring Valley, Wisconsin, Brooks Nelson Geenen Loiter, Jane Borstad The Preacher’s Son, N.C. Krueger Kids These Days, Sophia Wahlstrom Many Faces Many Places, Sarah Mai Mountain, Michelle Nasvik What Did You Say? Lucas Kurmis New Seaberry, MA, Haggai Simon Homage to Gen Z, Geoffrey Ayers CAT CUBE, Robert McGrady Vert de Terre, Haden Riles The Earth Green, Mengjie Zhou The River, Alexandra Blanck Us? Jack Magnus A Nice Thing, Lauren Swee Solstice, Cate Miller Watermelon and Cayenne, Demitria Sabanty Summer in New York, Kate Drakulic Stitched Bottleneck, Melissa Gust

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 90 94 96 98 100 101 102 104 106 110 112 113 114

ArtWords 117 121 122 124

127 134

Corners and Points: The Point Is That This Is Not a Loveless Town. The Corner Is, the Love Is Hard to Digest, like Gallstones, Ciara Cagemoe For All the Women I Love and the Men that Did Not Love Them, Gabriella Granada BLUE, Julianne Pekala The Formation of Our Flying Forms a Shadow Down Below, Cheryl Willis

Contributors Acknowledgments

SELF “I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”

—Anaïs Nin

Vanilla REBECCA SANCHEZ

I

gushing nonsense, his native tongue.

through God. My mommy was seventeen, spreading the love of Jesus Christ in Chapopote, a remote village on the Tamesí River in Mexico.

My papi was twenty-four and fiercely smitten with my mommy the moment they met in his neighborhood church.

My papi claimed she looked like an angel. They remained in contact. In 1995, my papi came up to Minnesota to be with my mommy for two weeks. He hasn’t left since.

His native tongue was like sweet maple syrup on his Sunday morning pancakes.

It was motorcycle maintenance and a spindly black beard. Spanish. My papi’s Spanish was weekend phone calls home and yearly packages to the halfbrother I’ve never met. My mommy wouldn’t say it, but our living room carpet was bilingual. Our kitchen sink was bilingual. But my sisters and I were never bilingual. Rather, my Spanish is splintered. My Spanish is colorblind.

My Spanish hates crowds. My Spanish is afraid of commitment. My sisters are worse off.

During the summertime I would always steer my papi to the garage, to the radiance of his revered HarleyDavidson. I would adjust the helmet strap beneath my chin before he could saunter back inside, body bound for the basement—his safe haven. His knuckles would grip the clutch, and I would squeeze my bony fingers between his belt and southern style jeans. We’d roam beyond the potholes and bluffs, the Mississippi River churning beneath our

My younger sisters and I spent the f irst few years of our lives in the little yellow house on Grace Street. We were clumsy kisses upon our communal bunk bed, swollen with stuffed animals and frayed blankets. In the early mornings we devoured our sugary cereal, caramel brown eyes pasted to the television like bubblegum. In the evenings we played pretend, gnawing on our grimy fingernails and giggling. We were a force to be reckoned with. We twirled our tongues around popsicle sticks as our papi strummed his guitar on our front porch,

Self

n 1987, my mommy and papi met

3

shadows, my papi’s arm extending in a friendly gesture to passing motorcyclists.

Inhale. Exhale.

In high school my Spanish was my phantom limb. Twitching. Aching.

Mommy never explicitly explained ethnicity to me. Mommy never told us that we were anything but white.

Pale skin. There was never a need to. In high school I spoke my Spanish for the first time. Gingerly. Delicately I traced the curve of my nose, my papi’s nose.

Stuttered. Swallowed my tongue in the school cafeteria surrounded by my fluent half-Mexican friends. My Spanish was ashamed. Faulty telephone wires.

Disconnect. My Spanish was my negative space. I knew my aunt was right: I should be fluent. I should not sound so— White. p

The World Shifted Zoe Rogers acrylic on canvas, 2018

Alter/Altar LUCA KJOS Ten amber moths at the back of my throat, Fanning air into my lungs: A rescue from the drowning, With their waterlogged wings pumping, With their feet a-pattering, Pulling me, then, inch by inch, onto the shore.

Sometimes, when it’s winter Some of them cocoon; My head dizzies itself full of cotton— Eyes, ears, sprouting silk, But I know they are trying to insulate The only way they know how.

Ten amber moths at the tips of my fingers, Feathering softly over my skin— Sometimes burrowing in, Sometimes a horror show of small bodies, But I know they are trying to speak to me The only way they know how.

Self

Sometimes, when it’s summer They grow large as the sky, Lift off, and pilot up into paroxysms Then drop into despair— But when the hot, heavy moon twists the tides, When the sands of the shallows roar with brine, When the blood of the world fills me dreadfully—they are there Pulling me, then, inch by inch, onto the shore.

5

camp phillips road BRIDGET DUGAN happiness is a hook lifting up two sides of an unwilling mouth i hate how every metaphor for depression involves water but i was sinking and now i am buoyed i can’t stop smiling at everyone can you believe it? happiness was hiding in a small family-owned restaurant in wausau wisconsin i fit in my body i like the words coming out of my mouth they sound like me i wish i could bottle this feeling and take seventy-five milligrams in the morning with food searching for memories in my brain is like sticking my hand into a filing cabinet and finding it full of cement i write down everything as if a post-it can capture spin-the-bottle adrenaline

Poetry

the hardest thing about mania is when you’re down you think you’ll never feel up again and when you’re up you think you’ll never feel down again everything feels alarmingly permanent

6

the easiest thing about mania is it is such a pleasant surprise

Faith Gabriela Sierra Bedon oil on canvas, 2018

draw NISARG GANDHI i draw with a pencil on my skin sometimes elongating my eye lines to make it look like i smile truthfully sometimes i break tips of graphite off and they stay and grow like little trees arising into raised outlines tapestries of forests and moments of idyllic perpetuity but what do i know of perpetuity i am but cataclysmic chasms held together by seasons of frozen rivers, iced-over stasis molten sun-coils crawling over azure tundra

Poetry

sometimes my pencil is familiar and that is it it is it

8

while darting eyes around me follow characters i do not draw follow words i do not know follow never-before-seen-me

sometimes undisturbed and unprovoked i breathe fire into the air my pencil torch alight spitting out the dry heat in my lungs fighting my urge to open my wings and fly the dragon has alighted sometimes i sit in shade i have drawn letting it cover me as i watch fists and feet go down step-well stairs arduously, decidedly naught but remnants of what used to be perfect lines by rulers and by pencil sometimes my pencil writes of silk-smooth-skipping-stones i can skip them far across rivers upstream and never watch them sink sometimes my pencil is sharpened to the bone and i cannot break off bone i have never broken bone sometimes i snap my pencil in two

Self 9

On the Division of Allegiances

10

WHEN THE CHILD STRUGGLED, THE FATHER TOLD HER ABOUT HIS PAST. HE TOLD HER ABOUT HIS STRENGTH AND THE DARKNESS THAT HE OVERCAME. THE MOTHER HELD THE CHILD CLOSE AND TOLD HER ABOUT THE PRESENT. SHE TOLD HER THAT SHE COULD NOT SURVIVE IF THE CHILD WAS NOT OKAY.

Poetry

CATE TYNJALA After M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language.”

My father whispers, Sisu.

It means courage, he says.

Carry sisu with you wherever you go.

My mother whispers, Courage cou/rage /rage —rage inherited.

EDICT 1 "First-generation" has two incompatible definitions: 1. A native-born citizen of a country whose parents were born in a foreign country, or a foreign-born citizen whose parents immigrated when that person was very young.

2. A citizen or resident who has immigrated to a new country of residence.

Strength swells in her eyes, a thin trickle rolling onto her cracked

smile. s/mile. s/m/ile. s/m/i/le. s/m/i/l/e.

Our home breaks, and my dad says it’s just like kaamos.

Remember what I told you, pieni tyttö, sisu will carry you wherever you go.

I will carry you wherever you go.

Persistence Self

Abigail Thompson digital photograph, 2018

11

Blue Couch Kendall Laurent oil on canvas, 2017

The One Where the Bathtub Drain Is Clogged Again KAYLEEN HEDBERG

T

the water. When it’s nice and boiling, I step into the shower. Before I get my hair wet, I make sure the hair catcher is in place above the drain. We’ve had issues with the drain clogging in the past, and because I let slip once to Lynn that I lose a lot of hair in the shower, she always assumes I’m the culprit. Lynn says that she uses the mesh hair catcher when she showers, so it can’t be her. As if the slippery bastards can’t limbo underneath a string of metal. But it’s not me. I put my hair on the shower wall like a decent human. Still, I always make sure the all-powerful hair catcher is snug around the drain before I get my hair wet as insurance that it’s not me. And now that everything is in place, I turn around and close my eyes.

When my hair is saturated, I wring it out and pull the f irst batch of hair, placing it on the wall. The

Self

he morning of my interview, I wake up next to Jeremy’s drool. He’s on his stomach, legs sprawled in a V, and his face is tipped at an angle that makes my neck hurt. My cat sits at the bedroom door, and she glares at me because I haven’t fed her yet. Jeremy can sleep through anything, and it pisses me off, so sometimes I try and intentionally wake him up; this morning, I decide to roll over on top of him, squishing his body into the cheap mattress. I land on the wood floor with a thud.

Useless. Jeremy is still asleep, and now my head throbs. I pour a quarter cup of cat chow into the tin bowl by the linen closet, grab my towel, and step into the bathroom. I turn the faucet on and peel my clothes off before I can change my mind.

My least favorite foot is my right one, so I use that to test the temperature of

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Fiction 14

hair loops and crosses and paints a landscape before me, a somber effort of something dead trying to be alive.

Sometimes the hair looks like people, and I like to pretend I’m an artist and admire my intentionality, but then I remember that Jeremy is the only one allowed to see me in the shower, and I mess up the hair so that it's no longer people. But even Jeremy is rarely allowed to see me in the shower. I’m not supposed to wear my hair up because the rubber band pulls my hair out, but I can’t have my hair down in the shower because the gobs falling out aren’t romantic either, so usually we just pretend we have hot shower sex, and Jeremy reassures me, “it’s okay.”

I manage to cover a larger portion of the shower wall with hair than I have all month, and it’s with a sense of mangled pride that I turn the water off and step onto the black and white tiles. A heavy steam has settled around the bathroom, and, in another lifetime, I would have enjoyed its ambiance. But it’s this lifetime, and all I can do is clench my jaw and reach for the toilet paper. Four squares aren’t enough to mop up the wall, and as I throw my second mop away, I sink

to my knees and hurl into the toilet.

Jeremy is still snoring when I return, but he’s turned over now, so I throw a pair of slacks and a blazer on his face. He doesn’t stir. I look down at my pumps and then eye his crotch.

A quick toss, a def inite landing, nothing but a mumble and a drip of drool. Goddamn this man. I bang my purse against the wall as I leave the room and begin stomping down the stairs. Something smells foul, and I spot the culprit sitting on the living room rug next to my roommate Graham’s emerald couch and the biggest pile of puke that rug has ever seen.

I give my cat a steady stare and shove my face right up to hers. “We’re not so different, you and I,” I say, squinting at the mound of sick she is sitting next to. “Eating, shedding, puking, sleeping. . . . Now who did you say your mother was, again?” I chuckle at myself, mournful that nobody else is around to appreciate my wit. My cat blinks at me, so I think that’s as much appreciation as I’m going to get for the time being.

Standing up, I give my cat a pat on the head and head out the door.

My interview is on the fourth floor of a brick building on Main

for my purse. A small stain emerges, brown and exposed and angry, so I put the pillow back and rest my purse on top of the black fringe instead. It’s then that I notice I’m not alone. A girl sits a few cushions down from me, peering at me through side eyes; her legs are crossed, and her foot bounces up and down, cutting through the air.

“Hey, I’m Vivian,” I say, extending my hand. She shakes it, or rather, timidly jerks it with a clammy hand and an exhale.

“Clarisse,” she says. “Are you here for the interview?”

“Yeah.” I notice smile-boy is looking at us and marking something down on a pad of paper. “You?” “Yep. So where are you from?” It’s a loaded question and not one that I had been expecting to be asked in our f irst encounter with each other.

Where am I from? Abandonment, addiction, false religion—where am I supposed to begin with that? Nevertheless, I’m always willing to talk to someone interested in my origin story, so I begin. Clarisse doesn’t interrupt me.

“Because here’s the thing: there’s a difference between being a good

Self

Street, and when the elevator door dings open, I’m standing in a lobby of Marilyn Monroe posters and aubergine couches. The boy behind the front desk is wearing circular glasses and brown pants and a ridiculous smile that doesn’t reach his eyes but shows off the whitest teeth I have ever seen. If my teeth looked like that, I’d probably keep my mouth open at all times, too.

“Hi there! How can we help you today?” Smile-boy swoops his head to the left and pushes his glasses farther up his nose. Marching up to the desk, I notice that the tips of his auburn hair are coated in a cloudy f ilm. He probably has to wash his hair every day with that kind of product usage.

Poor bastard. He clears his throat without losing his smile, and I tear my eyes away from his crisp hair.

“I’m here for the group interview with Ms. Hall?” I say, and he answers my question with a quick nod.

“Ah, yes, you’re in the right place.

If you want to take a seat, Ms. Hall should be ready for everyone shortly.”

He gestures to a couch to the right of his desk, and I take a seat. There’s a fringe pillow in the corner of the couch, and I move it to make room

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Fiction 16

roommate and being a good roommate with depression. Being a good roommate with depression means cleaning up your hair from the shower wall, which I obviously do. I just don’t know how to make Lynn see that.” Clarisse is inching closer to the other side of the couch, and I realize that she’s the kind of person who likes small talk, not big talk. I scoot closer to my fringe pillow too, trying not to be embarrassed. She’s the one who asked, after all. And she’s the one who should be embarrassed, being shallow and all.

“Springf ield,” I say. “You?” “Branson.”

We don’t speak after that, so I entertain myself by watching three more business suits walk into the lobby and sit down on the couches. None of them speak to each other either. One bites his nails, one smooths her skirt over and over and over, and one stares blankly in front of him. The last girl to walk in eyes the couches with disdain and opts for leaning against the brick wall, twirling her hair between her index and middle f ingers. If only she knew how much oil she was smearing into her hair.

The boy behind the desk stands

up suddenly and emerges from behind his wall of papers.

“We’re so sorry for the inconvenience,” he says with dull eyes, “but unfortunately Ms. Hall has fallen ill and will not be able to take any interviewees today. We’ll send out an email later today with a rescheduled itinerary for you all. Have a great rest of your day!” He ushers us out the door with a smile and a flourish.

Jeremy’s car is gone when I get home, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I need some fucking cereal.

The house is dark when I walk into it, but Graham’s shoes are by the door, and Lynn’s purse is at the foot of the stairs, so I know I’m not alone.

Feeling my way into the kitchen, I pour a giant bowl of cornflakes and grab a spoon.

When I hear Graham scream, I know he’s found the pile of cat puke on the floor.

“Vivian!” he shouts, and I reluctantly slump into the living room, bowl of cereal in hand. “Vivian. Explain this.” Graham points an accusatory f inger at the dried clump sitting inches from his beloved couch.

“Looks like a serving of tuna and chicken?” I bow down and inch

“The bathtub drain is clogged again,” she shouts, evidently sensing my presence. “I swear to God this is my last time cleaning it out, Vivian!” I should just shave my head, Britney '07 style.

Then they’ll know I’m not the culprit.

I put my hair on the shower wall like a decent human. p

Self

closer. “Or an allergic reaction to the sticks up all of the asses in this house?” Graham sighs and softens his voice.

“Viv, you’ve gotta clean up after your cat. I know you’re having a hard time, but you live with three other people. I feel like a minimum effort has to involve cleaning up puke.” If only he knew how much of my own puke I cleaned up this morning.

“I didn’t see it until I was walking out the door for my interview. I’m sorry, I’ll get to it.”

“Oh my God, how did the interview go?”

“Canceled.” I tip the cereal bowl back and drink the dregs before setting the bowl down on the carpet next to the cat puke.

“What? Why? When did they reschedule—are you going to—?”

“I’m gonna go get the carpet cleaner,” I interrupt before he can f ind the words. I’m not going back there. I think of the boy with crusted tips and the girl who likes small talk.

I def initely wouldn’t f it in there.

Graham stands with his hands by his sides, staring in sadness.

I walk up the stairs and hear retching that, for once, isn’t mine. It’s Lynn.

17

Bike Life JOEY GOTCHNIK Circle of red, a quick right, and I’m streaming through this Sunday afternoon.

Pedals flow these tires whisk over concrete, curbs, and grass.

New brakes slow me toward two large maples with falling leaves.

Back and bike against the trunk, I sit and write about fall until the sun drifts to sleep.

Cool breeze of the night, comb my hair on my last bike home.

Poetry

And now you’re gone— ten years you’ve been with me.

Just a lock in two pieces saying, “At least I left this.”

The lock next to a cold metal bar shaped like a bent bike wheel, like a prison.

All those times I left you in the rain to rust, and the cold to freeze, your gears had ground enough.

18

But it’s just a bike, not a life.

I’m already riding a new one.

Combing my hair on the bike home in the cool breeze of the night.

Until the sun drifts to sleep, I sit and write about winter, with my back against the couch.

Two large maples covered in snow, winter break hot chocolate, gloves, and hats.

The new mountain tires sit, pedals hang on this Sunday afternoon.

Shlumpy Girl Jane Borstad relief print, 2018

I’m streaming through this quick write, and then I’ll circle it in red.

2018

Self 19

A Mountain Rose Caught in a Snowstorm HANNAH KIL Too Asian for the white kids.

Too white for the Asian kids.

The product of a white woman and a Korean man.

“Our children won’t know themselves . . .” he says.

Like mountain roses caught in a snowstorm, You will blend in with the snow, But your colors will always bleed through: Pink and red.

Poetry

“Use your Asianness as a tool for success,” they say.

Please check your ethnicity: A. For white B. For Asian Please only choose one.

Colleges, jobs . . . check B. Hire me; let me in so that you’re Not racist.

20

Like mountain roses caught in a snowstorm, Unrooted and placed In homes, offices, schools To add pleasant color.

To impress some.

To revolt others.

The colors of my hanbok weigh heavy on my shoulders.

The redness of my cheeks As I explain to my white friends what I’m wearing.

I see humor, judgment in their eyes.

I reject Korea.

I want the sweet escape of pretending— Pretending to be blonde and white.

Like mountain roses caught in a snowstorm.

Their beauty to be plucked, marveled.

To sit in a glass vase to wilt away.

To be looked at.

“Oh, you don’t look Asian,” they say.

Looking for clues: Round face, slanted eyes, My middle name.

Eventually coming to the conclusion I am not one of them.

Nor one of the other.

Caught in the storm.

Blowing back and forth.

Petals tearing, unrooting.

The colors buried beneath.

Defeated; alone.

To be lifted off into the wind, To never question their existence, To be forgotten.

Self

You poor mountain rose.

21

Human Preservation

Art

Allison Hunsley colored pencil on paper, 2016

22

Art

Stuff Stuff Stuff

24

Emily Jablonski digital art, 2018

A Part of It NOAH CAUSEY

B

“

men I meet in a year tells me that rather than a card, I’ll actually be stuck swiping my f ingers left or right.

I sigh to myself. Something about these forged and calculated interactions doesn’t seem like the romance we were all fed in the rom-coms we were raised on. Right? Or maybe that’s just me.

Some were raised by a religion, a philosophy, or the Bible. I, however, was raised primarily by Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I was raised by the way that Noah looks at Allie in The Notebook. So, naturally, as the teachings of the Gods of Hollywood would have it, I found myself believing this romantic dream was entitled to everyone. Something everyone deserved and would def initely achieve. Counting the days until I’d fall in love, grow old with someone, and then die at the exact same time as them.

Sorry, I am still caught on The Notebook.

Anyway, as I grew older, college began to seem like the perfect outlet

Self

e a part of the love club./ Everything will glow for you” chimes on the radio next to me.

When I say radio, I mean my phone.

Do people still own radios? Question for a later topic.

Lorde’s voice flows from the device in a perfectly satirical and rebellious tone that inclines my head to bob up and down, the taste of revolution on my lips.

“Love is a construct. A man-made feeling made by capitalism and the media culture,” I say to myself with a dignif ied pride. I am not weak like the rest.

Yet, days later, I’m lost in a glance of what seems to be a magnetic attraction between myself and some boy walking across the street. Lost in what seems to be an ocean of emotion, I begin to drool from the left corner of my mouth in a quite unappealing way until my friend is forced to hit me on the shoulder.

If love is made from capitalism, then debit or credit, and where do I swipe?

The not-quite handful of decent

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Nonfiction 26

for my love story. The hand to turn the page of my fairy tale novel. I expected it to be the sexual and romantic awakening of my life.

There always seems to be a correlation between expectations and hurt.

What college actually presented to me was a barrier in the pages before my love story: my sexuality. If you haven’t looked up to the author’s name yet: I am a man. Considering I have confessed to liking men, that means that I am a gay man.

Grandpa, if you’re reading this, I’m gay. Surprise!

Being gay proved to add a whirlwind of diff iculties into my love life. First of all, why do I keep falling for straight men? Second of all, why does rejection hurt so much more for me than for my average straight friends? And third of all, why am I resisting the dating opportunities I am given?

Let’s begin with the most irritating issue: falling for straight men.

I was raised in Georgia. For those of you who don’t know, the Deep South is not the most gay-friendly area, meaning I have yet to see any street lined with rainbow flags hanging over driveways.

I’ll keep looking, but the hope is

thinning. All of this is to say that being raised in such an environment bred a breed of internalized homophobia within me. In other words, I was taught to hate and cover the part of me that truly made up so much of who I am.

Consequently, I began to put on the guise of masculinity. If I was coated in the armor of neutrality with masculinity, nobody could notice or disagree with me until I trusted them enough to try them out. Moreover, being taught to hate that part of myself, I felt an aversion to the romantic options laid out before me with any sort of that quality in them as well.

I was caught loving the straight man. He was the ideal. The main feature that I couldn’t have but called for me, the prime course that was laid before me but dissipated upon the touch of silverware. Let’s move on with the point before I get lost in my own metaphors.

Thus, I found myself in an array of embarrassing positions.

Bound helplessly to repeat awkward conversations. An example: Hey. Hey! You’re pretty cool!

Thanks, bro! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um . . . so would you happen to be gay? Gay? Yeah, as in, like, a homosexual man.

pain from before.

I believe it’s the reason why gay men stay together longer. They exist with a mutual understanding of the oppressions that have been released upon them.

Coming to college, this type of understanding was something I longed for. It was my Environmental Biology daydream. However, when opportunities began to present themselves, I ran as fast as I could the other way, inspiring in me the third and final question. If I want this love, then why do I stray from it?

Birthed from such repetitious behavior were two voices. A devil and angel, if you will, with the identities and ideals of them switching back and forth by the minute. One of them claimed, Maybe you’re resisting the love you were taught was sinful. The other responds immediately saying, Or maybe you have built up a fantasy for so long that to stray from it in any way smells of settling.

I wish I could write which voice is right. Something tells me it has to do with the internalized homophobia like the f irst voice suggests, but my Pretty Woman textbook also taught me a distorted view of what love looks like that I can’t seem to get rid of.

So many questions boil in my head.

Self

Oh. No, I’m not. I’m sorry man. No, it’s okay.

I wish I was, though.

I f ind such a statement quite naive, as I stand tall yet feel a tornado within me. My fantasies and youthful cinematic knowledge had led me into my hopeful expectations again that were struck down with rejection. But, something stronger than the rejection stung inside of me.

Which brings me to my next question: why does rejection hurt so much more for me than for my average straight friends? They think I’m overdramatizing or relying too much on the Romeo “iambic-pentameter-ing” in my heart. But there is something more.

It didn’t take me long to realize the taste was too familiar. Any awkward glance, school-side whisper, or comment on the gay character on the TV was, to me, a form of rejection. My parents’ hands glued to the Bible was a form of rejection. Not to mention, my prolonged vacation in the closet kept me from asking for protection from these things being said to my vulnerable ears. So, when the cute guy that has that Hollywood smile and the classic literature humor declares he’s straight or uninterested, it blends in with the

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Nonfiction 28

And as an unhealthy amount of ramen noodles boil next to these questions (a cure for my growing resignation), my hope for f inding love continues to grow slim.

But, I still believe in love. I’ve seen it. I’m not sure if I’ve truly felt it yet, but I have certainly seen it.

It’s passionate. It’s intimate. It’s personal. It’s unforgiving. It’s beautiful.

It’s in the rain next to your window when you’re watching a movie. It’s in the wind when you ride in a car with the windows rolled down. It flows in the trees and drips in our water. It is everywhere and breathes with life.

And at the end of the day, it is even sometimes shown accurately in the romantic comedies.

As a gay man and a human on this planet, I will continue to search for love. I will hope for it. And with time, my perception of what love really means will hopefully transform into something based in reality. The comments, looks, and hidden truths I was taught about being gay will hopefully be severed from my brain.

Rejection won’t be able to wound the armor of conf idence covering my chest.

I will love for the sake of personality and truth, throwing my superf iciality

and triviality in the trash, along with a perfectly nutritious amount of pasta boxes. PRIDE will be tattooed on my skin.

But it all takes time. It takes a lot of undoing. It sometimes takes complaining and whining and being written off by adults who have grown complacent. It takes dedication.

So, though I sit in my room belting the words to this Lorde song, satire staining my lips and with the feel of mutiny on my skin, I never stop longing for the feeling. I never stop watching the movies. I never stop swiping my f inger or asking straight guys their sexuality.

Yes, I sing these lyrics embracing my individuality and my revolt over a system with monogamy as its god. But I also sing these lyrics for the ache in me that does want to be a part of this illustrious love club and will try to be, whether I am invited or not. One day, I will hold a man’s hand on a bridge.

I will write poems in the candlelight.

And I might even die in a bed next to my love of forty years. p

Unseen Skin Magdalene McClun acrylic ink relief print on paper, 2018

Perch GENEVIEVE VICKERS It spiked my palm with needled fins, smeared blood onto its face.

Its eyes were sets of slimy marbles superimposed onto one another.

“Make your cut through the skull,” Grandpa said, “to kill it quick.”

I was fourteen. I was gentle.

Poetry

I was static sentinel as the O’s of its lips Went from capital to lowercase, until Grandpa came and drove his scarlet pocket knife directly through its brain.

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All for One Self

Ella Van Haren colored pencil and pen on paper, 2018

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That Dragon, Nameless MIKI SCHUMACHER

Fiction

I

32

’ve lived with a dragon since I was about thirteen years old. I didn’t really notice him then; he must have just been an egg. Or maybe he was some sort of dragon-pup. To be honest, I don’t really know dragon biology. I don’t really know how he got here either. Really, the only thing I can tell you in confidence is that he wasn’t very noticeable until now.

The first time I remember seeing him was after I witnessed some big fight between the King and Queen. I’m not sure what started the row, but by dinner he had her pinned to the floor and was threatening to kill her with a salad fork.

Murder by monarch! Wouldn’t that be one obscene way to inherit the throne?

They are still together by the way, the King and Queen. No one is content with that.

I haven’t named my dragon yet, so I’m sorry if you wanted something to call him. I don’t really think it’s my place to impose that sort of identity on the beast, even after nine years. After all, not many people notice him either. It’s surprising really, considering his size.

I can tell you some things about him

though, don’t worry. He really enjoys Thai food—but only really spicy Thai food. I think that’s because I don’t let him breathe fire often enough, and the creature does deserve some kind of respite.

A dragon can’t help that its instinct is to burn. He also loves to play late into the night. He rolls himself out from wherever he’s hiding and can’t help but create some huge ruckus. You’d think it’s endearing, but I haven’t slept well in months.

Every dragon hoards something, and mine is no exception. I wish he kept something useful, perhaps some good literature or extra salad forks, but no.

He collects memories; he loves them.

They aren’t just any memories either; they’re all mine. I don’t know when he takes them or how, but he does prefer the peaceful ones—who wouldn’t? This does mean I get stuck with all the ugly ones, however. Every time I look him in his eyes, I’m reminded of what was stolen from me, and how I’ve only been able to think of all the bad things lately; the kind of ruckus that keeps you up at night. I never asked for him, but he never asked to be stuck with me either. I guess I feel

never really felt right when I would sneak him the beans though. It feels closer to poison than protection; I never wanted him to hurt. It’s hard to remember what my life was like before him, and that in itself is terrifying.

The Dragon Seers said I could request accommodations for my dragon while he’s here: more time to move him between classes, leniency on homework for when he burned it, things like that. They said it would make him more comfortable, and, supposedly, me as well. But the thing with dragons is that they burn villages and kidnap princesses. They kill and pillage and steal and destroy everything good. Who would watch him if he were to leave? Who would be there to protect our village? It’s hard to even convince myself that he is real unless he is staring me straight in the face with eyes full of something I still can’t place to this day.

The thing is, I’ve always loved fantasy novels. I’ve dreamed of riding dragons across the night sky; we could maybe even touch the moon. I never thought it would be like this; that it would feel lonely even when wrapped in his wings; that I would find myself wishing for his burn just as often as I wanted him dead.

After all, I am a prince. I’m supposed to kill these monsters. p

Self

some sort of responsibility for him in that way; I don’t think he means to hurt anyone.

Now, here’s what I’m a bit ashamed of: I can’t take care of this dragon. I really can’t. He’s been needing more and more attention lately, more memory fragments for his hoard. It’s been getting harder and harder for me to remember the stolen things. Furthermore, there’s just no space for him here; I don’t have the resources, and I’m so busy with school. Now, you may ask: Why don’t you just set him free somewhere? He’s a dragon after all, they love that shit—wide open spaces and such.

And I would respond to you: Wow! I never thought of that before! My life problems are all solved!

Unfortunately, my dragon has attachment issues. He didn’t get the memo about staying in my hometown when I left for the city. So here I am with this dragon that severely impacts my ability to function the same as everyone else who does not have to care for a giant fire-breathing pet that they never asked for.

Don’t think that I’m not still trying, though. I’ve been talking with a dragon tamer for a few months now, and she gave me these magic beans. Fifty milligrams every night until he’s ready to leave. It

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Art

Erosion

34

Jessica Clayton intaglio on eastern and western paper, 2018

golden in my own way ERIC DEBORD why are the lobbies always so intricate? it’s like they need to convince you they matter. three hundred thousand-dollar waterfalls doing the job of college degrees on the wall. when i was six the lobbies never seemed to pretend to be anything. the doctor always gave me toys to play with, and there was cable to watch. a little coffeemaker that blew my mind, the little cups looking like the cups of jam stored at hotels. this time there are no k-cups, no cable tv, and certainly no toys to play with. then i was dragged along, but now i am here for me. i am convinced that my brain has been turned to gravel, but there’s gotta be something left to excavate within my rubble, something of value left in the rough. my name gets called. the man asks me how i feel. i mumble because that’s what i feel i am supposed to do. i stare next to the doctor’s chin at the empty wall. they go through all this effort to make you feel comfortable just to break you down. the doctor tells me that i am worth living—that i am Golden In My Own Way. gold is heavier than many of the elements. i sink into his couch. he mines me more until i almost disappear. i feel saltwater hit my cheek like flecks of dust. i toss a copper coin into the waterfall. my dad tells me i did ok.

Self 35

Art 36

Infectious Jessica Clayton linocut on paper, 2016

RELATIONSHIPS “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”

—Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Papou DEMITRIA SABANTY I’m going to Greece to find you, Papou. I’m going to find you in the face of every old, Kalamata-olive-skinned man I see, and when approached, I’ll ask, “Do you remember when Nana would brush my curls, all ratty with sweat and youth, and then we’d walk to the tennis courts, painted the shade of green most loved by the wealthy? Do you think of the pink bows in my too-big hair (you know she’s Greek with that hair!), the bows you liked?

Are you haunted by how I cried when you left for the ocean, so terrible to me then—she took you from me—and I didn’t see you for three years? Does it make you happy to think of when I’d kiss sea spray on the boat— the one we called the Lil Aud, after Nana—and you were strong like Hollywood men but better than them?

Did you see me reaching upward to hold your wing?

Did you want to say that you loved me too as you sank into black nothing?”

Relationships

Would those Greek men walk away if I asked them these things?

Would they play pretend for me?

I need to know, because I’d sleep better at night if I could look upon even the lie of you one last time.

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40

Art

Jihyea Jang watercolor and pencil on paper, 2018

Relationships

Comfortable

41

On Grief and Other Lovers MIKI SCHUMACHER

Nonfiction

P

42

ossibly the safest place to trip on acid would be your mattress (think sleep, think safety). She is on the mattress staring at the red painting of Mars and saying how it reminds her of the alien from Looney Tunes (his name is Marvin, and he is, in fact, not just an alien, but a Martian). I am trip-sitting and smoking, and no, I do not tell her I love her. We are still smiling and laughing at how the walls move, and maybe this would be when I would tell her not to take the synthetics. Or maybe it would have been at school the next day, if she had shown up. Or maybe her boyfriend would tell her that this wasn’t a good time to try it, and someone else would have tried first.

But no, I am sober now, and I need to go home before my mother gets worried. I need to go to my own home and sleep in my own bed and not think about her and, for the last time, take the safety of her mattress for granted.

To wake: to emerge from sleep, to stop sleep. To understand the concept

of being awake, you must first know what it is to sleep. In this, the nervous system is inactive, the eyes are closed, the postural muscles are relaxed, and consciousness is suspended. Sleep is like death in this way. If the body is removed quick enough from the mattress, the bed does not need to be discarded.

However, if left for too long, the scent of rot will stick, and the odors will attach. The mattress must be discarded.

Someone else could have died first.

I am in my sophomore year of high school. I am taking Studio Arts, and it is my first class every morning. I am silent.

My teacher tells me I need to concentrate on planning my art.

It has now been three hours since morning.

The principal announces the loss of another student.

I am in math class. My teacher tells me I do not need to push through it.

Four years have now passed, and it’s the first time I’ve gotten high since the incident. I am with my partner, and

I am silent.

“You loved her,” and I cannot tell if this is a statement or a question.

I tell her that I do not know where the line is to be drawn between friend and lover. I tell her that this abstraction is arbitrary. And she proceeds to tell me about the grief cycle. And I am sick and tired of hearing about things I learned in the sixth grade. And I am afraid of four years feeling like four months feeling like four days since it happened for the rest of my life. And I am still afraid of losing lovers to sleep.

A bed is a bed is a bed is simply a place for sleep—a place for rest. It is not a place to remember or wait for the ones we grieve.

Some, however, will find it fitting for this purpose and stay. p

Relationships

I am with their friends, and this place feels closer to Mars than any place I’ve known. Thirty minutes have gone by, and I can’t tell time, and I think my heart is beating too fast, and my eyes can’t focus on anything, and god, I think this is a panic attack. I wonder if this is what it felt like before she stopped breathing. I try to ask my partner for help, but I cannot open my mouth, so instead I look at them and laugh; I cannot breathe. Finally, I vomit three times and fall asleep in their arms, on their mattress. We do not talk about this.

I wake the next morning on my partner’s twin mattress, a place I do not remember falling asleep. Sleep also refers to the yellow grime in your eyes that you pick out every morning. The uncomfortable, gritty secretion that is occasionally pushed back into the cornea.

I cannot look them in the eyes with all this sleep. We laugh about last night; we laugh about how I’m a lightweight.

Three months pass, and I can only manage to tell my therapist about what I’m feeling through my poetry. She says this is powerful. I tell her this is an inability to express myself and should not be praised.

“It seems like she was a little more than a friend to you.”

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Stiff Jane Borstad earthenware clay and terra sigillata, 2018

Relationships 45

Baseball GRACE LANGEBERG “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”

Fiction

-Yogi Berra

46

FIRST BASE I learned about sex the way any good ole American kid does: through porn.

That being said, though, when I learned about sex, I wasn’t giggling over a computer screen at a sleepover; I didn’t accidentally come across my older brother’s stash of Playboy. No, I learned about sex the way that any good ole Catholic kid does: a child porn scandal and my parish priest.

His name was Father Lewis. He was odd, old, and cancerous in more ways than one. But I didn’t see it. I was in fourth grade, and where I come from, priests are the closest thing to God that we can see.

I remember when the scandal broke: an unsurprising surprise, here we go again, “just another bad apple” situation. Over the telephone, my best friend, Abby, read me a newspaper article about Father Lewis: “Coleman police were aware a Catholic priest now charged with having child pornogra-

phy repeatedly followed several young boys into a swimming pool bathroom,” she read.

“What did he do that’s bad?” I asked her. “What’s pornography?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked me. I paused, feeling the weight of the situation hanging heavy in the air.

“No, not really,” I replied. “At least he doesn’t have cancer,” I said.

When I talked to my mother about what happened, she simply said that Father Lewis had lied, and because of that lie, he was being sent to jail. “Will I have to redo my first communion?” I asked her. I wanted to know what, if any of it, had been real.

At school, for years afterward, we would talk about Father Lewis. It was like telling ghost stories. We would discuss the special attention he gave to Nick Wise and chills would roll down our spines. “Do you remember how Father Lewis gave Nick his hat to wear?”

“I wonder if Nick was an altar server be-

cause of, you know . . .”

But we also remembered Father Lewis’ cat and the art in his office and the time he played baseball with us at recess. That was the hard part. Despite everything, it was impossible to remember him as all bad.

Relationships

BATTING AVERAGE March, age sixteen: “Since I was a little girl, it has been engrained into me to wait. Great, right? Well the thing is, I feel like I made that decision half-heartedly. When I listen to my friends talk about waiting, I just nod, nod, nod, like I agree.”

May, age sixteen: “Sex is supposably a ‘physical union’ with God. Doesn’t that seem a little weird? Or am I just being brainwashed by secular culture?”

May, age sixteen: “I’m afraid that one day I’ll get carried away and give up my virginity. I want so badly to be loved and also cherished. I do not want to be objectif ied, but I also don’t want to be left behind.”

August, age seventeen: “I did something with Jared Anderson.”

I had sex for the first time in the backseat of a silver Pontiac. The car was parked in an empty golf course parking lot—no one goes golfing at midnight.

The sky, navy, was blooming with stars. You didn’t need a telescope out in the country. The sky was that dark and clear.

It was corn-sweat August, the dog days of summer. The air was ripe; you could feel the corn in the air, yellow and thick. The New York Times called it “evapotranspiration.” I just put on another layer of deodorant.

In the back seat with me was the pitcher for the baseball team, Jared Anderson. He was nice and a senior. When he wrote his name on his homework, he signed his jersey number along with his name. Jared Anderson #3. Like he needed to differentiate himself from Jared Anderson numbers one and two.

I met him at my waitressing job two weeks before. He slapped my ass when I brought out his cheese curds, and he left his phone number instead of a tip.

I’d seen him before, though. Everyone knew the baseball players. Coleman even had a week for them, High School Baseball Appreciation Week.

“He’s probably going to play for Vanderbilt next year,” I said to my friends afterward, as we stood around the water fountain.

“Someday you’ll see him on TV and remember what you did with him,”

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Fiction

Meredith replied, jealousy pink and words slightly ominous.

“It’s so cool,” I said, staring blankly at the wall.

October, age seventeen: “What happened between me and Jared was not fun. What was fun, though, was telling people about it. Finally, people could stop calling me a tease, a lesbian, or a prude.”

December, age seventeen: “I am starting to think that what I did with Jared was not completely consensual.

I know that probably sounds weird to you, because I bragged about it to so many people. I think I mostly just did it because I wanted him to get out of my car. I got him hard, and I thought it was my responsibility to deal with it. I never, never, never meant to do what I did with Jared. He really wasn’t all bad.

But if I could go back and never get into that car, I would.”

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HOME RUN I met my f irst boyfriend in Chemistry class on the f irst day of senior year. This is the year, I thought to myself. This is the year you get a boyfriend. And so I sat down by the cutest guy in the room, and it happened to be Aiden.

April, age eighteen: “In church they

always say that people who have sex before marriage are selfish. But what if pleasure isn’t the name of the game for you? What if you just want to give yourself to someone because you love them? What if you don’t really care if you get your heart broken? What if you think that makes for a good story?”

There’s still a photo of us in my old bedroom at home. In it, Aiden and I stand in front of the baseball diamond after one of his games. The sky is gray, my hair is reddish-brown, and I have the biggest fucking smile on my face.

He looks like I Googled “stock image of a baseball player.” Beneath the photograph is a caption I wrote in August: “You fit into me/ like a hook into an eye/ a fish hook/ an open eye.”

April, age eighteen: “Aiden. He says no to me. I both like and dislike this concurrently. He tells me I remind him of Padme from Star Wars. He doesn’t like any ice cream other than vanilla. He swears he can see all of the colors in the rainbow in every sunset. He gets overly excited about planners. He wants a dog, four kids, and a truck. He wants the truck so he can haul things. He says he loves me because I am easy to talk to.

But I am scared of him sometimes.”

May, age eighteen: “I got in a fight

is a kind of pleasure too.

GAME SEVEN I am nineteen years old, a freshman in college, sitting on the floor of my dorm room, my roommate perched above me, braiding my hair. “I have to tell you something,” she says in a voice I’ve heard too many times before.

“What is it?” I reply, even though I know what’s coming.

“I think Danny might have assaulted me at the party last Friday.”

“What do you mean ‘might have’?”

I ask.

“He kind of shoved my head down when I was blowing him. And when I asked him to stop, he didn’t. I thought I was going to choke.”

I hate myself for the thoughts that run through my head. I like Danny; he’s a good guy. I don’t want to add him to the impossibly long list of men to fear.

“Are you sure that he heard you say no?” is all I say, after a long silence. I do not ask her if she is okay. This is how it is for us. Run the bases, win the game, and get over it. Did you really not want it? Are you sure? You couldn’t have just shut up, enjoyed it a little? It is impossible to remember any of it as all bad. p

Relationships

today with Aiden about what happened with Jared. He wanted to know if I was a virgin. He said it was his ‘right’ to know. He kept pressing and pressing, but I couldn’t say it; I couldn’t say anything.”

June, age eighteen: “Aiden said he could hit me with a baseball bat and rape me in his basement.”

The f irst time we had sex, I laid on my back and stared at the ceiling. If our love had a color, I remember thinking, it would be cherry red. A true red. The color of f ire engines and exit signs. This is what I thought about, counting the seconds, and waiting for Aiden to finish.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You almost lasted a minute.”

“That’s longer than Drew lasted his f irst time,” Aiden said.

That’s what it is to them, I thought to myself, wistfully. A game. Last this long. Collect this much. My lifeguard swimsuit was tangled on the floor, a bright spot against the mauve carpeting.

If I thought about colors, poems, in the moment, it was easier to pretend that everything was okay.

Later, when talking to Meredith, I spoke excitedly: “And it didn’t even hurt for me at all.” We didn’t talk about anything feeling good. The absence of pain

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Anatomy of a Love Seen1 ALEXIS MA

Poetry

With her, I learned the shape, the curve of girl and her anatomy: a divine art cherished, second to the mother of pearl mantelpiece all bedecked in frames, one part her and me, at three, shimmering mermaids; two parts sisters, lovers that dove too deep.

Read her in textbook fashion; played charades— mi amor and 亲爱的2 till sun-sleep as Doubt rustled our sheets, kissed me goodnight, said girls couldn’t love girls the way boys could, claimed my bruise-laden fists would pick a fight they had no chance of winning in girlhood.

I studied every technique to loving— practiced, perfected—no, I knew nothing.

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1

The title is drawn from the movie Anatomy of a Love Seen (2014), directed by Marina Rice Bader.

2 These characters translate to darling.

Untitled Zoe Rogers acrylic on canvas, 2018

She's Got Sun in Her Eyes Maia Jacobson collage on paper, 2017

Orange IAN SMITH He was always peeling oranges by the open window at the dining table carved from zesty pine with a finish that made it glisten.

Scratchy wool itched his neck and climbed it how the sun in the morning climbs the sky, and he said the feeling of burnt umber radiates when it wears him.

The autumnal breath eddied and curled around him and me and sometimes brought through a dry leaf easily mistaken for a bright Monarch.

Our song was a Creamsicle melting down our fingers at the fair.

It sang sweetly, and we heard it while entwining our tongues.

Relationships

And we could feel the color in the air itself, like apricots and nectarines, pumpkins and campfires and cheddar and Reese’s Pieces and carrots and sweet potato fries.

And we were both starved.

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Where Mama Took Me, What Mama Taught Me

Art

Stefanie Amundsen embroidered tapestry on linen, 2018

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Chasing Grasshoppers OLIVIA MCGOVERN

Relationships

My mom has scars on her legs that I used to think were stretch marks.

But now I know when I was a pudgy, adventurous baby I saw a grasshopper dancing across our glass table, and I got my fat toddler body up on top somehow and chased that grasshopper, giggling toothlessly and drawing slobber-coated fingermarks like snail sludge across the glass.

Mom leapt just in time to grab my fleshy body before I fell, but instead she fell, and the table shattered into pieces that gouged her skin but not mine, and I probably wondered where the grasshopper went.

Mom says I’m still chasing grasshoppers.

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A Dreary Afternoon MEGAN LANGE

Fiction

T

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he record would not stop skipping. Eliza changed the song first then tried changing the vinyl. She’d tried both sides of three others, and every one of them skipped, skipped, skipped! Thoroughly frustrated, she closed the case and gave up completely. The quiet was unbearable. She tried the radio, but it played only static on every station, and she was forced to give up on that too. Even the birds were terribly quiet outside, but there was the softest rustle of leaves in the garden.

Faint as it was, nothing could be worse than the horrible silence. The decision made itself; Eliza pulled on a hat and stormed out of the silent, empty house.

She took a seat in the garden beneath a shady tree and listened for any sounds.

The leaves rustled in the gentle breeze, but it was not enough to make it hard to think or hard to recall the last time she’d been in that spot.

Eliza started as a shape emerged suddenly from the brush. Fear gripped her

for a moment before she could make out what it was: the ugly old tomcat. Eliza’s nose crinkled as she took him in. He was big and ugly with thick, filthy, matted fur, a pinkish scar over one of his leering green eyes, and crooked whiskers.

Each of his traits told of alley fights he either won or narrowly escaped. She’d seen him milling around the house now and again for the past few months, but even on the days she didn’t see him, she knew he’d been around. Friends relayed stories of their cats leaving them little “gifts” (dead or nearly dead animals).

This creature was absolutely not her pet, but he still partook in the practice of gift giving. They felt less like gifts and more like threats.

“What do you want?” Eliza said to him, just so she could hear someone say something. He padded over to her seat, and she pulled her legs up onto the chair. The skirt of her long, dark dress bunched up under her feet. She was about to yell at him to get back when

a cat could shrug, he might have, but a twitch of his ears sufficed.

“Well, anyway, that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, standing and flicking his tail this way and that. He had things he wanted to talk about with her? He continued before she had another moment to question her sanity. “I was wondering if you’ve seen a bird around here. She and I have an engagement.” The grin returned, this time accompanied by a bloodthirsty glint in his good eye.

“Even if I saw a bird, I wouldn’t tell you about it!” Eliza cried. She sat up straight, so her legs were over the edge of the chair again. “Now get out of here!” She stamped the ground, her skirts swishing in the grass. “Shoo!”

His pupils narrowed, and he hissed and ran back into the bushes without another word.

Another few moments of silence passed while Eliza tried to collect her thoughts. Surely she imagined that encounter. Perhaps the grief and stress of the funeral were finally getting to her.

“Thank you,” crooned a voice from above. For a moment she fought the urge, but it didn’t last long; Eliza tipped her head back to look for the source of the voice. In the tree, just above her, a

Relationships

he stopped and sat before her. His tail wrapped itself around his feet as he made himself comfortable, looked up at her, and meowed. What a horrible sound! She might have preferred the quiet.

“Well, meow to you too,” she said, turning up her nose at him.

“Shouldn’t you be weeping?”

Her brow crinkled, and she turned her head down to look at the tom again.

He had his head cocked to the side a little, awaiting an answer. She wondered if maybe she’d finally reached her breaking point. “Meow,” she attempted, hoping to remind him of what he was supposed to sound like.

“Me-ow.”

He meowed again. Much better.

“You look terribly unaffected for a widow.” This time she saw his little cat mouth move and watched the words slide out between pointed, yellow teeth.

“How do you know I’m a widow?”

She supposed it was only polite to continue the conversation. The cat just offered a large, knowing smile. “I don’t care for your company,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Should I be worried?” he purred.

“And what does that mean?” she snapped back, eyes narrowed on him. If

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little blackbird hopped from branch to branch. “Thank you for not telling him where I am.”

“I didn’t know you were there,” she admitted a bit sheepishly.

“That’s okay,” she said and flitted down to land on the arm of her seat. “I know you wouldn’t have told him. It’s our secret.”

“What is?”

“That I was in the tree the whole time.”

“Oh,” she chewed her lip, glancing into the brush. She worried the cat would pounce out right then. “Are you in that tree often?”

The blackbird gave her best attempt at a nod, but the bobbing motion was so birdlike that it was hard to say if it was an answer or not. Seeing the woman’s confusion, she answered, “Yes, all the time. It’s a good hiding spot from him.”

“It can’t be that good; it’s in his garden.”

“Your garden,” she chirped. “You tend to it far more than he does.”

“That’s true,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “If you are here often, you must have seen what happened the other night.”

Again, the blackbird nodded her little head. “I did. . . . It was a terrible

accident.”

Accident. The word hung in the air between the two of them for a few long moments before Eliza spoke again at last. “Right. Positively dreadful.”

“Do you suppose he will come back?” the bird inquired, watching the bushes. Eliza’s stomach turned as she considered the question until the blackbird added quickly, “The cat?”

“I hope not,” the woman answered, leaning back in her chair.

“Me too,” the bird agreed. She flew back into her tree and began chirping the way a proper bird should.

Eliza listened to her singing, letting the sound drown out the deafening silence that weighed on her so heavily.

This was her garden, and for once it felt like it. She waited awhile just to make sure the cat didn’t come back, and only when the sun began to dip beneath the horizon and the bird had long since stopped singing did she return to the house.

Maybe she’d see about getting a trap for the tom. p

Brandon Anderson darkroom photography on paper, 2018

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Architecture Abstraction Study I

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Flight Plan ALEX SCHUMACHER

Poetry

Wings beating in your bed, Not big enough for you, Beating the walls of that small Childish bedroom.

Four teal walls and a bookcase.

Four teal walls and too many years.

A pair of Hanes and some Levi’s Just junk piled by a bedroom door.

All this and so much more.

Wings cramped, beating against Four teal walls. Now pan To a bed not big enough for Two: him and you. One grabs and One’s grabbed. One touches and One's felt. One pushes and One surrenders to everything.

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Funny little things, These broad blue wings.

How they open and close.

How they give and they take.

There is so much everything Out there, and you know you are Removed from it all.

You know you want to fly there.

Wide shot now of you Rising from the bed, Going to the window.

You open it; your wings Are beating. Far off, just beyond The horizon, a city, Big enough for you, waits.

Revenge MICHAEL GREER A much-hated childhood friend recommended a book to me and I read it, so I could tell him just how much I hated it.

There was the thought of his imagined upset squirming as I explained to him How horrible the writing was, How incoherent the plot, how lazy the dialogue, how tepid the themes.

His face, thoroughly annoyed at me for so deftly Dismantling his beloved classic, almost glowed in its attempt to hide its feelings.

But much to my disappointment that book—yes, I will only call it “that book”— Was quite superb. So now I have only one option: If he asks, I shall respond, “No, I haven’t had time. I’m so busy, you know.

Soon. I’ll read it soon.”

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Meat Shop

Art

Rachel Weiss acrylic on canvas, 2018

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House Poem SIMON BATISTICH

There is a house at the end of time, a small bungalow, where the light of the sun from below the porch roof shines early this morning through a short window, across the tiles of the kitchen floor, onto the table at its center, the table where your sore, cracked hands squeeze mine.

Poetry

There is a house at the heart of a wide valley, at the mouth of a long, violent river— a house on Earth, a planet forsaken a billion years ago.

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There is a house with charred white clapboard and broken stone shingles and a heavy, squeaky door— the door that I walked through in the late hours of last night after driving for hours and hours under the long arc of the sun, across the open, barren country, across the fallen borders of long-defeated states, across the ravaged remnants of miscellaneous civilizations— toward you, only you, after you told me on the phone— after I heard the sound of

you choke, of your hand tremble as I mumbled into the receiver, as I forgot what I wanted, needed, to say.

This is the house where I found you at long last, where I felt the thumping in your chest, the sweet heat of your breath on my neck as our bodies swayed in the darkness, in the dull glow from the moon, the street, heard the trill of cicadas, heard the soft creak of the planks of the porch beneath us.

This is the house where the wallpaper peels and the wood floors sag and the puppy barks and the coffee brews in the kettle on the stove, where we sit on plastic furniture and read aloud from old books like our moms and dads did for us when they were still here such a long time ago.

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This is the house where we look at each other, at our naked, broken bodies, at the tiny, crumbling space around us, at the only thing we ever owned:

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the place we built together— this pathetic, magnificent home.

Poetry

This is the house where we look through a wide bay window at the lawn and the street, at the sky, at the perfect, fading colors of the places outside our own— where we watch the universe, as we watch each other,

all as one,

finally go.

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Cassi Miesner ceramic porcelain, 2018

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Home

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Historians GABRIELLA GRANADA

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ou look at me like an artifact.

You study my favorite jean jacket and fixate on the fading painted image on the back—a turtle? A sun? It’s a donut, isn’t it? I tell people the image you see first tells you something about yourself. You ask how many times I’ve washed the thing. I tell you once, when I spilled chocolate milk all over it, but that was almost two years ago. You laugh and tell me you can smell the jacket from where you’re standing.

“Good,” I say.

I came home one day with a new pair of earrings: big, beaded, multicolored hoops. I wear them nearly every day. You notice every time. I’m not used to someone paying such close attention.

One morning I forget them on my kitchen table. You send me a video of you in my apartment with my roommates and slowly zoom in to my earrings. I begin to wonder how many times a day you see things that remind you of me. I shake the thought out of my head as quickly as it appears.

It’s getting colder out. We get home

late from the bars with our friends. You ask if I want to walk to get pizza. I’m not hungry, but I grab my coat. You study the Oxford pattern on the tips of my new maroon boots as I kick them back and forth like a kid in a chair that’s too big. We’re sitting on a large concrete slab in front of that church just off campus. You tell me you read my latest article about masculinity and rape culture. I roll my eyes. “No, you didn’t.”

You quote a line from it and say ​d uh,​ of course you did. We talk about masculinity, family, your father, mine. I sit there with you until I’m so cold I can’t feel my hands. By the time we walk back, the sky is lighter. I realize we forgot to get pizza.​You respond, “I didn’t actually want pizza, did you?”

You see me standing at the bus stop on the corner, scoffing about how the 6U dematerializes during any inclement weather. It’s sleeting, and I’m bundled in a giant light blue peacoat. “New?” you ask, gesturing toward it. My instinct is to lie, but for some reason, I don’t. I tell you my father bought it

my arms dramatically, dressed as a giant hot dog. Everyone’s laughing; it’s funny: two friends arguing in jest, one dressed as processed food and another as SNL’s “Weekend Update” character “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat.” I look at the phone screen playing our operatic argument and tell you we should start charging money for our shows. You nod and insist there’s a market here. One of our friends cuts us off to observe, “It’s so funny, you guys are clearly​annoyed at each other, but you’re . . . holding hands.” We change the subject.

We’re driving in my car, and you ask, “What do you write about me?” as if you’re absolutely certain I’ve written volumes about you in the notes section of my phone. I want to ask you why you care so much; I want to ask why my opinion of you is so important; I want to ask where you’re storing all the things I tell you that you never seem to forget.

Instead, I ask you to roll down the passenger seat window. You look perplexed but do it anyway. “It’s so your ego can fit in my car.”

You have my favorite scarf in your hands, the big knit one with woven purples, reds, and blues. You hold it delicately, as if you’re wearing white latex gloves.

“Are you looking at all the crumbs in

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for me when he showed up in town last week. He bought it a few sizes too big, so I’d have room to grow, not realizing how much he missed—I was done growing. “I don’t know why I just told you all of that,” I say, staring at my boots.

You shrug and respond, “I do.” I don’t press further. I don’t want to know what you know. I look up and watch you archive this conversation somewhere in your mind.

It’s gently snowing out. I slip on the peacoat and go see ​Lady Bird at the small theater down the street. There’s a scene in it where the nun at Lady Bird’s high school tells her that it’s clear she loves her hometown, Sacramento, because of the way she writes about it in careful detail. “I guess I just pay attention,” she shrugs. The nun responds, “Aren’t they the same thing, love and attention?”

You buy a keg of cider and host Friendsgiving in your dingy basement apartment. We’re crowded around your small living room, eating, drinking, laughing. Someone brings up the infamous video from Halloween night. I moan and insist we not relive this, but I’m outnumbered by an audience who demands to be entertained. They pull up the video of the two of us arguing in a booth at Stella’s. I’m waving

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it?” I ask. You’re doing that thing again where you squint your eyes and examine something of mine with great intent.

“Stay in Minneapolis,” you say abruptly. I pause, then tell you that I’ll be on a​ beach in Spain next semester, and deep down I’m not sure who it is I’m trying to convince. You roll your eyes and toss the scarf at my face. “I know,” you say, as if it was a test, “I wouldn’t let you stay here even if you tried.” It’s sincere. You lean back into the couch, tilt your head toward the ceiling, and close your eyes.

“I might try,” I say. With your eyes still closed, you respond, “I know that, too.”

It’s warm when I return from Spain.

The heat helps distract me from my creeping fear that things have changed.

We’re at trivia with our friends, and you sit next to my roommate, the one who just got back from Germany and smiles at you a lot. I wonder if you’ll start historicizing her instead. I realize, for the f irst time, that your attention might have an expiration date. I drink more beer. You end up turning your attention toward me the whole night, and that worry subsides. My mouth is agape during trivia, laughing, yelling.

You take note. My teeth are straight: did I have braces as a kid? I was a headgear kid, wasn’t I? I insist I wasn’t but tell

you that in junior high I had to wear rubber bands on my braces that made it look like my mouth was chained in. You laugh and archive that somewhere, too.

I’m standing on the lawn of a brewery. It’s a beautiful summer night, and all our friends are here. The sun is setting, painting the sky magenta. A singer from Australia is playing one of my favorite songs of hers. It's a slow acoustic ballad with a line from Carrie Fisher: “​Take your broken heart, turn it into art.” I close my eyes and imagine her lyrics wrapping around me. When I open them, I see you and my roommate, the one that smiles at you a lot, lean your faces into each other in the crowd.

When I was nine, my father and I got into a car accident. I never told you this one. Our car went into the corner of a building. I remember coming to and everything around me sounding muffled and moving in slow motion. I opened my mouth to scream something, but no sound came out. The only thing I could hear was a high-pitched ring. I remember staring at the tiny shards of glass gleaming over everything and feeling like I had absolutely no control.

Watching the two of you, I am trapped in that car again.

I decide in the crowd that night that

for the best. I hope you like your nine to five. That sounds sarcastic, but really, I mean it.

Maybe our instinct to historicize is a desire for permanency—cataloging memories like artifacts, pinning them still. And for what? Why me? Why were you always paying such close attention?

I’m curious: did you find what you were looking for? Did you realize it wasn’t as interesting as you’d hoped? Did it scare you? Maybe you were an archeologist, not a historian, disrupting and taking rather than observing. I’m not so sure people should be excavated, dug into, hollowed out. Sometimes I worry I am still trying to fill that space.

I imagine you, years from now, presenting your findings to the world.

I walk into a gallery and recognize my old scarf hanging on a large white wall.

My jean jacket with the faded donut on the back, framed. My beaded multicolor hoops are encased in glass. My life during that time, now an exhibit, with your narration. p

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I don’t ever want your attention again, and I almost mean it.

The leaves change. Our fights are now so frequent, they feel like one long continuum. You tell me what happened with my roommate at the concert doesn’t matter to you, and that’s somehow worse. You brush it off. You begin to brush off everything. You tell me I’m arguing with you inside my own head. We argue one day about who gets to walk away from relationships more: men or women? I tell you I think leaving is a masculine trait. I phrase it “cutting the cord.” You laugh. You tell me I don’t have the ability to cut cords. You say you know this because you know me. And for the f irst time, your attention feels like surveillance.

The ground shifts beneath our feet faster than we can anticipate, so we stop trying to anticipate it altogether.

During another argument, I ask you if you think we should call it, still unsure about what it is we’re calling off.

You send me a message later that night: “I can cut the cord. Have a good year. I hope everything turns out well.”

You graduate and get a job downtown. I start thinking about taking the LSAT. I slowly adjust to not being an artifact to someone anymore. It’s probably

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in Eclipse Rachel Weiss acrylic on canvas, 2018

The Bottle or the Bullet (my father is) MAYA ULRICH Upon examining your crinkle-cut hands I point out that every valley is f illed with the Earth’s grime You tell me you would never wash your hands because you like feeling the pain of others in your palms A desert of broken promises Every grain of suffering yours

Poetry

You always wash away your own gritty past The cold drink

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creating rivers in a barren land Pools on both sides of the jagged mountain that rises above your face You keep this healing Water, A Poison, to yourself Wondering why everyone you are afraid to love is so damn Empty

And There Lies the Truth CATHERINE RETICA

Y

a baby. They started to crowd surf me, and some dipshit up front dropped me right before I got to the stage. Then David Lee Roth pointed at me when I was picked back up and crying. My dad tells people I did make it to the stage and that Van Halen himself baptized me in his sweat.”

“My grandfather used to be a Soviet spy. He was eating an apple at our house once, and his fake tooth filled with cyanide fell onto the ground. We were looking for it all over when all of a sudden, my dog collapsed. Turns out she ate it.”

“The key that Benjamin Franklin used to discover electricity was the key to my great-great-great-uncle’s brothel.”

“I stuck my aunt’s ivory earring up my nose, and it never came out. Still hasn’t. So I guess I’m technically part elephant.”

“My husband just left me.”

That last one’s not a lie. That’s real life. I think. But the Van Halen story always gets the biggest reaction from the halfwit, full-drunk bar-goers. It really is a ridiculous one. Day in and day

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eah, I’m a liar. So I guess what I’m saying now is a lie. Actually, most of the things I say are lies. I know it’s not good, but I can’t help that my imagination is so bountiful, and my life is so boring. And unlike my life, I can control my lies. But I don’t give two shits anymore. So you can sue me for all I care. Well, not for slander, though, because you’d have a really good chance of winning that case if you did.

My most impressive lies come from the chumps I meet, mostly in bars, who are dumb enough to say, “Tell me somethin’ about yourself.” To which I give a ridiculous reply, matching the ridiculousness I sense in those men. Like: “When I was a kid I fell off of a cruise ship and had to swim my way back.”

“My mom once caught this big butterfly that was shiny and purple when we visited my cousin in Mexico, and after she went home and dipped it in hydrogen peroxide, she sold it on the black market for three grand.”

“One time my old man brought me to a Van Halen concert when I was

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out I would sip on a Death in the Afternoon—Ernest Hemingway’s beverage of choice—and punk the same guys over and over again. Well, they weren’t the exact same guys every night, but how different are all men really? I say this because without fail, there’s only three responses I get when I tell lies to these men.

Some of them don’t believe it. They say “no way” and “yeah, right” and “give me back my damn wallet, bitch.”

These ones are usually the angry ones too, thinking that I owe them my body because they endured my excruciatingly entertaining stories.

Some of them just don’t care. They listen to my stories because they think good listening warrants some kind of sexual favor in return. And they don’t care if they hear something about a Soviet or a sailboat or a scrotum—coincidentally, I have stories about all three.

They only care about what I do after the bar closes.

And some of them actually believe it. They ask follow-up questions and call other guys over to the bar so my incredible experiences and I can be shown off like a rare baseball card. They remark about how brave I am or smart I am or how sorry they are for me. Though the

others are crueler, the ones that believe make me sad. If they believed my bullshit, what else did they believe?

So this is my life. Getting free drinks and an occasional fist thrown in my honor—sometimes even thrown by yours truly.

Well, that was my life. At least, until I met one guy in particular. He wasn’t necessarily a new kind of guy, though. He still f it into a category. He was just. . . different about it. I don’t know. I’m good at lying, remember, not explaining.

That day, I walked into the bar, and it smelled damper than usual. And when a fresh face came and sat next to me, I locked and loaded my bullshit cannon—or mouth, if you will.

“Hey there,” he said to me.

“Hiya.”

“How’s your day been? Pretty bad I’m guessin’, if you’re here at two o'clock.”

“Actually, my day’s been pretty kickass. My life on the other hand, you could say it’s been kinda bad.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, when I was young I was on a cruise ship with my parents.

And when I was walking to the Elvis bingo night, a gust of wind knocked me

liars. But I quit my lying to be a better person and a good wife. Almost had a kid, too. But turns out I was right about men. Also turns out that a lifetime of trickery even makes your reproductive system trick you.

So I’m back to the bars now. Same shit, but now with a tan line on my ring finger and a KitchenAid mixer to my name; it was a wedding gift. I’d like to think I’ve changed, and I’d like to think that men have changed too. But I’m not that hopeful. If anything, we’ve all only changed in diameter.

Yesterday at the bar, though, I was sitting at the sticky counter and noticed for the first time that the bartender was a woman. I prodded my finger into the gumball-sized hole in my green pleather barstool and ordered myself a Death in the Afternoon. The bartender caught my eyes on hers when she handed the finished product to me. Her fingernails were periwinkle, like the color of the butterfly my mom caught.

“Can I do anything else for you?” she asked.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, you can,” I said. “Tell me something about yourself.” p

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right outta my Reeboks. I fell off and had to swim my way back through the Atlantic. My parents didn’t even notice.”

I said this while brewing beautiful, organic, vodka-scented tears in my eyes.

He stared at me, and I waited to see what response category he would fall into. He looked like he would be a believer—I think it was the innocent face and small ears.

“That is . . . absolute horse shit,” he said. “There’s no way you would make it fifteen minutes without drowning, freezing to death, or getting eaten by something. Where in the Atlantic were you?”

“We were by the Bermuda Triangle.

Of course, right when—” “Where was the boat coming from?

And going? Did they turn it around?

How many people were on board? How long was the cruise? Did you suffer any injuries? How old were you? And can I buy you a drink?”

Now, don’t ask me why, but that was the sexiest response I had ever gotten.

So I married him.

A couple months after that first meeting, actually. And we lived together for about a year. He was a lawyer so, funnily enough, we were both professional

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A Collection Alyssa McCathie digital scans of flowers collaged in Photoshop, 2018

COMMUNITY “I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me.”

—Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”

###

Nonfiction

Emily Jablonski digital art, 2018

Community

Sea of People

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Catching Wind FARRAH MINA Of course I would write about my Egypt My skin the color of wheat And my people whom the sun favored Would betray my lips had I resisted When they ask if I belly dance I say my body knows the choreography of Cairene streets When to skip and duck and halt without hesitation Attuned to hustle and bustle To auto-rickshaw To obstacle course The street vendors—maestros of din and vibration Compose the soundtrack of an impossible routine My body a moving gear in an epic clockwork of people

Poetry

But they look at me, disappointed Half expecting anecdotes of Nile and sugarcane Like the way my mother shakes her head at my translations of Gibran and Mahfouz Still I rush to the defense of the unwieldy idioms Of speech that attempts to catch wind, kabd al-reeh A reconstructed narrative from verbal duct tape But my aching feet remind me I am standing on my tiptoes

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I want to point fingers at somebody And condemn clumsy hands For my broken Arabic that wanes and waxes Burnt rice that clings to the bottom of a pot But diaspora is a sea And in a battle of binaries Identity winces a casualty

Brooks Nelson Geenen archival pigment print

Community

Spring Valley, Wisconsin. 2018

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Loiter Jane Borstad collage on paper, 2017

The Preacher’s Son N.C. KRUEGER

Community

Jo, he says, at the corner of my mouth, the intersection (of my lips) with the bent stop sign that the bus driver always forgets, where a worn-thin woman with corn kernels for teeth said to me once, I wash my shirts by hand and drip-dry them— they put chemicals in detergent, you know.

Jo, he says, at the corner where I once saw a siren wearing knee-high leather boots with waffle treads— I know because she scuffed them on my tongue.

Jo, he says, there are so many forgotten people still living in your body.

(I always forget that I even have a body.) he says he would have liked to talk to them (the people) or maybe buy them popovers.

I tell him this is the first time someone cared to ask about it.

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Kids These Days SOPHIA WAHLSTROM we are nothing but hollowed out globes once full on tucked in covers and momentary bliss now scraped raw and slippery rounded marks tracing our insides

Poetry

one can never tell a pumpkin from a jack-o’-lantern without the holes and we are whole simply gutted slathering concrete on our skins to keep the fresh inside from pouring out sidelong glances expose our worries don’t lie with ceasing but that someone else might see the leakage

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so now to tell the truth we consume too fast and inhale shards from the water which stick fast to our throats so we might choke die from a phantom

but at least we may move on doubled over holding our chests (dreadfully hopefully) to the next bit of life

Sarah Mai India ink on paper, 2018

Community

Many Faces Many Places

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Mountain

Art

Michelle Nasvik acrylic on paper, 2018

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Community

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What Did You Say? LUCAS KURMIS

Fiction

“

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Y

ou know how my day’s been.

Have you seen the car?”

“I don’t know. Some dumb kid rear-ended me on the highway. He obviously wasn’t looking where he was going.”

“Yeah, I’m f ine. The car’s not even dented too badly. I saw him coming, so I gave some room for the car in front of me, in case he did hit me. Of course he did.”

“He’s f ine too. His car’s not. He couldn’t even get off the highway. He just left it sitting in the middle lane.”

“He did apologize. He apologized right away. I’m just thinking, ‘Well, thanks for the apology. Is an apology going to f ix my car?’”

“We had to wait on the right side of the highway for the cop to come.

I called 911 and my insurance right away. Get this: he told me he’d get his insurance card, so he ran back across the highway to get his insurance card, and he gave me a card to AAA. That’s, like, a repair company, right?”

“I know! I’m lucky the cop sorted things out so well. I think he wrote the kid up, and he gave us each a driver exchange form with both of our information. I got a call from his insurance a few hours later. So I guess he did have insurance after all.”

“I heard what he said to the cop.

He said he was checking his phone and didn’t look up in time. I don’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t even a very sudden stop. I think something was up with that kid . . .”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Do we give him another car?”

“Is he paying for it?”

“He’s got to be punished somehow.”

“But we have to deal with his insurance. If he gets another car, we’re paying for it?”

“Where’s the car now?”

“Is he alright?”

“Was he . . . on anything?”

“Oh, you know, normal day. A lot of

“Yeah, this kid was right in front of me when it happened. He’s lucky I was there. I got his car out of traff ic by the

time the cop came.”

“Oh yeah, we nailed him good. He didn’t even know what hit him. He’s got a few hundred to pay just for us to move that car to the lot, and if he doesn’t come to pick it up by Friday, we’ve plenty of parts to sell, not to mention everything that’s in the car.”

“Nah, I never feel bad. If he really wants that car, all he’s got to bring is a title, registration, a photo ID— whatever else we tack on, hahaha.”

“He looked so out of it the whole time. He didn’t even take much out of the car. Just grabbed his guitar, glasses, and a few cards out of his car. Poor kid was probably still shell shocked.”

“I helped a few clients today. It was a good day.”

“No, I don’t inspect any cars; I just talk to clients—over the phone, usually—about the claim, the damage, the other driver, and any other details of the incident that need reporting, and assess the damage based on what they told me. Then I f igure out a plan.”

“It is pretty rewarding. Some people think it could be draining— hearing about car crashes all day—but I’m glad to be the one to help.”

“How bad are they? Well, just

Community

speeders. A few accidents.”

“You want to know details? I don’t know, nothing all that new. A kid got his car totaled.”

“Of course it doesn’t faze me. I deal with cases like that every day.”

“He was checking his GPS on his phone and didn’t look up in time. He still had it on when I got there. Kid seemed pretty frazzled.”

“The damage? Well, he couldn’t keep up with the road, so I gave him ‘duty to drive with due care’ and ‘texting/use of electronic device while driving’ because of his GPS. I also gave him a warning, because his address wasn’t up-to-date on his license. I didn’t give him anything too bad.

He lost his car, so he only has to pay a hundred and seventy-f ive dollars to the state of Minnesota.”

“Hey, that’s not really that bad.

I’ve given out much worse tickets— even today. He’s still got his license; he doesn’t have to go to court. He got off alright. Trust me. I’ve gotten pretty good at reading people, and he didn’t seem like a bad kid.”

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today, some kid totaled his car.”

“Oh yeah, his rate is going up for sure after this. I looked at his record, and this is the third incident he’s had. None this bad, but we have to take some precautions for the riskier drivers.”

“There were a few complications.

He’s got his car locked up in some towing lot now. We’ll still need it to assess the damage.”

“That was one of the better clients, actually. Sometimes even drivers who only have minor bumps on their cars can be the loudest and hardest to deal with. For being in a car crash like the one he was in, this kid seemed to handle everything. He answered all my questions pretty calmly and respectfully. Seems like a good kid. His insurance is still going up, though.”

“I know, right? I don’t even know which is his car anymore. Sometimes he gets rides; sometimes he shows up in his parents’ car. He’s a good kid, but I don’t know what’s going on with him. As long as he does his job, I don’t care.”

“Sorry, that one’s on reserve. Some kid crashed his car, and his insurance set up a car for rental. His dad called and made sure he got that one.”

You want to know what happened?

How I remember it? I don’t know if I could honestly tell you. There are these things called flashbulb memories. While they are vivid, they aren’t necessarily accurate. I was… distracted, I’ll cop to that. My car only does radio and CDs, and I prefer CDs. I was switching out CDs. I guess I was sick of what was playing. I put in 22,

“I’m not really sure what happened to his car. He’s been getting rides to work this week. He just told me his car isn’t working and that it’s not worth f ixing anymore.”

“I heard he was smoking.”

“Both.”

“He found it right after he hit that car, and he put it in his guitar case.

All of this was in the middle of the highway.”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he smoking a cigarette or weed?”

“What did he do with the bowl?”

“Was there anything else in there?”

“I know he’s had driving anxiety.

Maybe it was just that.”

to steal my car’s parts. It was just a car crash. I don’t know what people really said about it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. p

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New Seaberry, MA Haggai Simon digital image on canvas, 2018

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A Million by Bon Iver. I want to say “22 (OVER S∞∞N)” was playing, but I feel like that’s too poetic to be real.

I never got that CD back. I still have the case, though. I was putting away the other CD when I looked up and then— Fuck.

The music cut out like that.

Smoke everywhere. At least it’ll cover the smell. The car wasn’t moving.

Weren’t we thinking of getting rid of this anyway? The other driver was waving things at me. Cars sped past. I took a second to gather myself. There were people looking at me, probably wondering why I hadn’t moved off the highway. As stressful as all this was, there was some safety in the inside of the car. Before I had to deal with any of this, I could just hide in here for a little bit. I took a second to gather my things (I had a feeling I’d lose anything I didn’t grab), and I got out of there.

I got the car out of the lot. I paid the f ine. I don’t feel like there’s a lesson out of this. Nobody found anything in my car. My parents got me another car. They probably don’t actually care that I crashed that one, because it was a beater anyway. The towing company that picked me up is probably not out

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Homage to Gen Z GEOFFREY AYERS 1.

A frog is resting on a lily pad.

Out on the ocean, there’s a billion lily pads.

Their roots are connected, but the current is electric, and it pulls them apart.

The frog paddles his lily pad, trying to make a connection with another.

But the current is electric, and he falls into the water.

Poetry

2.

Three young gazelles crouch in the brush.

They gaze eagerly at a lioness.

The lioness looks up and sees these three young gazelles galloping to encircle her.

She would defend herself, but the Sahara has a zero-tolerance policy.

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3.

The young beaver is ready to become an adult. But first, he must pass a rite of passage. He must spend four years swimming in the river.

As the four years pass, he learns how to swim gracefully, like his father always wished

he could.

But when he leaves the water, he discovers that his whole coat is covered in leeches.

4.

An eagle is perched in his nest, surveying the land with his superior eyesight. Miles in the distance, just barely visible against the horizon, he spies a magnificent bird worthy to be his mate.

He immediately takes flight, soaring to find his new companion.

But when he arrives at her nest, he discovers she is a pigeon.

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5.

Two monkeys stand next to the mouth of a volcano. Surrounded by coconut palms in the fertile soil, they stare in awe at the round fruits suspended above them.

One of the monkeys heaves a rock into the air; it knocks a coconut down to Earth.

But the rock ricochets into the mouth of the volcano, who spits back a jet of lava upward.

Singed, the monkeys run.

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Art

Robert McGrady ink on Bristol board, 2018

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CAT CUBE

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Vert de Terre HADEN RILES I saw the temple of her Lord, in a sunshine-meadow scene hanging on a nicotine-stained wall, forgotten— The walking-coughing-fits shuffling in the hollow light, miming life, coddling youth-dreams Incessant, ringing landlines+clanking gurneys+scythe swings+sneaker squeaks in impeccably carpeted halls, vert de terre, were collectively unnerving. It was, you know, a sterile kind of cleanliness; the faux-pep squeak of nurses’ shoes pattering through the mush some Vicodin I pocketed (please, don’t tell) left of my brain dragged me down.

This, the last time we visited the hospice, which is a weird fucking place, she reached out in a dazed, soon-to-leave-this-plane gesture of reconciliation; I witnessed her life’s montage self-immolate, and she took hold of my shirt sleeve.

Poetry

Knuckle crack+decay+lavender hand lotion+sanitizer+percolated coffee

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INSERT HERE: euphemism for death.

I’m sure she’d sigh either way; just the same, You can’t scrub away scars, but Hospitals like to play with ineffability— to pretend otherwise.

Mengjie Zhou acrylic and ink on canvas, 2018

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The Earth Green

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The River ALEXANDRA BLANCK Hunter green vines wrap around rain drops of crystal water, so innocent and pure as we ran down the rocks to the river.

Come, imagining only your favorite things as language unravels, and you keep it there for the future when you write these poems.

I feel the warmth as I read those poems the ones we wrote with ink-tipped pens and hands around our dreams and wondering where we would be in the future.

This is life, and we live in water, and now as we age, all we see is cluttered things.

Take me back to the river

Poetry

Sometimes in my dreams it appears, that river, the one that gave life to poems.

I no longer value those luxuries that make up a life of things write it out loud, form your words around a breath for you and I to share in water and rejoice in our health that brings us to the future.

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Everyone asks where you can see yourself in a time that becomes the future.

Do you ever write it out? Take the time to plan your return to the river.

The river that rushes with vague, green water the same ambiguity that stains the lines of poems

that writers and students and readers endlessly try to form their thoughts around.

How trivial they seem, these things You ask about memories, an important place held by these nondescript things that form the past, present, and future.

Quickly, catch them with your fingers before your hand they dissolve around Oh, how I long to go back to that river The one that inspires me to make my life of poems and think about the fluidity of water It comes and goes, this tranquil water An inadequate word to describe a life composed of things all written out in multiple poems.

Hoorah! we all say and lift our glasses to the future, and a picture as perfect as the day I met you at the river appears behind two clear windows of eyes looking around Here I am again in this water, swimming strides to the future In my mind are all these things, but I go back to the river, the one that inspires an array of poems in which to form my life around

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Art 104

Jack Magnus acrylic, oil pastel, and chalk on cardboard, 2018

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Us?

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A Nice Thing LAUREN SWEE After Kenneth Quick’s bottle vase, no date.

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don’t think that vase was made to sit on cold glass.

Now that’s just my opinion, but there’s something so wrong—almost sacrilegious—about hard ceramic sitting on hard glass. The bottle vase wasn’t meant to sit exposed to stale, chilly air. I bet its rough, hand-crafted bottom isn’t even smooth enough to rest flush against the glass pane. I bet that vase just wants to sit up. It’s like when I’ve been sitting in class for sixty minutes on a harsh plastic seat, and my bony ass is numb, and tingles are shooting down my crushed legs. That vase probably just wants the teacher to call a f ifteen-minute break.

I think it would fit neatly between my hands if I could take it out from behind the glass case. I think I would be able to feel its pleats against my palms, the glossy stripes separated by rough edges. Those worn edges that expose the grainy clay from beneath the pot’s thick, inky-black glaze remind me of my dry, cold skin in the winter. And, seeing that this pot is too small to satisfy

even one person’s thirst, I doubt it’s for water or even wine. Rather, it seems to me that the puckered lips of the pot give away a preference for finer liquids and careful ceremony. If dipped too hastily, I imagine the pot would protest by glugging up pockets of air. So I imagine a more refined guest: a rare oil or liquor or perfume that fills out the pot’s subtle curves and aligns itself into a thin stream when poured. And if it were to hold a flower of some sort, that flower would have to be trimmed so that it wouldn’t topple over the short vessel. This stature quite literally requires nature itself to bend to the will of stubborn ceramic, volume, and physics. This vase demands quietly that it be honored and respected as a Nice Thing. I think that perhaps it’s best on its own. Plus, maybe, a soft pillow.

I’m thinking that among all the other milestones in life sits one very interesting and overlooked marker which is the first Nice Thing you receive. It’s the first gift you get that isn’t meant to be played with. When you get this gift, the

adults in the room look up from their tissue-bound quarter-zip sweaters and supermarket knick-knacks to realize that they’re actually jealous of you.

Nobody probably ever realizes that they are giving or receiving their first Nice Thing until years later when they stand in an art museum trying to figure out why they recognize something in that black glazed pot. Because there’s something oddly familiar.

It was my eleventh Christmas when I received my f irst Nice Thing. It was a dark green, fabric-bound journal.

Tamed within a golden frame, a black and white Andalusian horse blew stately through the wind, completely unaware that its glory had been captured and flattened onto my lap. There were 350 lustrous pages—of which I counted

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and numbered in careful black pen—all with thin gold lines to separate the ivory paper into rows. On the inside cover my father had written a sincere letter in indulgent cursive. He ended the letter with a quote by Mark Twain: “The difference between the right word and the wrong word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” I then proceeded to fill the journal with better metaphors than this.

Really my parents were as supportive in my pursuit of the right words as they possibly could have been. The green notebook made countless trips up and down the stairs: up to scribble stories in a frenzy and down to recount them to mom and dad. We’d settle into our pilling green couch as I dug through my imagination. They’d listen intently and always engage with my thoughts— always picking out exactly what I was trying to say. They definitely had a better grip on prose than Mark Twain.

There is so much meaning sitting within the connotations and sounds and subtleties of a word. I just think that Mark Twain could have made a more interesting point if he had chosen two words whose differences cannot necessarily be explained in terms of other words. What about the difference between pathetic-ness and misery? Or the difference between joy and blessedness?

What does it take to impress an unavoidable, unmistakable feeling on us?

It takes the right word. It takes a Nice Thing.

Like how my grandmother was in love with fabric but never said so. She’d guide me back into her bedroom, and the two of us would stand before a grand dresser that towered above our heads.

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Her thin f ingers reached for drawers to summon those precious cloths, which she had saved from her family’s years of running a corner store, to show me how each swatch had a story. She’d tell me these stories as she transfixed herself in color and texture, running her fingers over the f ine threadwork or silk or weaving. From somewhere between the tips of her long, feminine fingers and the fabric’s surface came a soft swirling sound—as if the air between them spun with reserved delight.

I spent a lot of time three rows removed from a conductor in high school.

We talked so much about spinning sound as she drew circles in the air with a poised hand. Not all conductors are created equal, so some of them were better at evoking this spinning sensation than others. At worst, I’ve seen conductors stick a clumsy finger in the air and outline a flat rotation. But at best, they could hypnotize the entire room, pulling the air from their wrist to their elbow around and around as if rolling through water—firm and fluent.

At best, they could pull sound from every direction and curl it around their body and gather it at one central point.

And in that suspended moment before melody or harmony could complicate

things, there could be perfection. It was so simple and perfect and clear that every single individual in the room could understand that one note with the same confidence and the same intimacy as every other ear in the room.

My grandmother could hypnotize me with the sound of stroking fabric.

She could even hypnotize herself. Soon the room would be filled with gorgeous fabrics and stories, all draped over her chair and bed and dresser. It seemed my grandmother had unpacked her life from that dresser and laid it out for me to see and feel in heaped blues and yellows and oranges.

Sometimes I touch a piece of fabric, and I think of her.

Like when Jason gifted me the most beautiful dress. On my nineteenth birthday, I sat before my friends with a cardboard box sitting on my lap and a dress sitting in tissue paper. A world of pink and blue and purple sequins sat nestled on my lap, shining back at me like champagne bubbles. I ran my fingers over the surface like my grandmother would have, then burrowed my hands into the folds of the bundle like she wouldn’t have, arousing the sequins into a frenzied wave. I drew the dress up. It twinkled coyly as it unfolded,

and I wondered if my friends across the room could hear the sound. I clutched it against my chest, moving my eyes to Jason who sat directly across from me, his knees practically touching mine. I told

But sometimes I just hold his face because those cheeks fit perfectly into my hands. His soft skin rises over high cheekbones to cushion a happy gaze and wrinkles curl affectionately around the outer edges of his eyes, embellishing an already gorgeous smile. Each curve is a hypnosis, and with each flick of his lashes I fall deeper into my trance. I can feel his smile beneath my palms. The best part, however, is that Jason squishes my face too. So I’m not just applying pressure to his cheek until he falls over.

And there’s some sort of equilibrium there that you just don’t get with a pot. p

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him I loved it. I told him it was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen.

I’m trying to imagine why we cherish certain things. I think maybe it’s something about them that we connect with. But what exactly is the nature of that connection? Sometimes it’s touch, and sometimes it’s sight, and sometimes it’s sound, and sometimes it’s story.

And sometimes they all weave together to make one perfect expression. That object has taken some aspect of our world and captured it with completeness. Like how a bottle vase can take all of my emotions, all of my memories, all of my thoughts about Nice Things and capture them within thick black glaze and grainy clay. A Nice Thing. A cherished object.

But some Nice Things can cherish you back, and those Nice Things are people. Like Jason.

Jason has never given a bad gift. Not even a mediocre gift. Which is frustrating—because I feel a lot of pressure to give him good gifts—and ironic—because he never needed to give me any

gifts. The gift is Jason. The only thing I’ve ever wanted is to squish the side of my face against his.

I start by laying my face against his—just enough so that I can feel the hairs on his cheek brush mine. Then I go for the squish, hugging him so tightly that his nose pushes my nose to the side. Eventually, I let go, and we start over. Touch, press, squish, release, repeat. Ad nauseam.

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Cate Miller digital art, 2017

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Solstice

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Watermelon and Cayenne DEMITRIA SABANTY Black dress shirt and dress pants become a second skin when mixed with sweat.

My back feels like the cutting board I used to slice lemons today.

Before I leave I roll silverware. Cloth napkin, folded in half, like a triangle. Place knife on the edge, then fork on top. Pulling corners inward, then rolling and pushing until it becomes muscle memory, until an entire bin of fifty sits proud, without an inkling of a thought from me. It’s therapy.

Poetry

Jump when cold water meets the skin of my ankles. Juan, he knows to laugh at me. Makes me remember to loosen my tense shoulders, remember that this is just a job. I laugh and kick the greasy waste on the ground back at Juan like I’m a kid. Like a man didn’t kiss my hand when I gave him extra bread today. Like I don’t have breasts and other obstructions.

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No closing work after a double shift, I’ll be cut before ten tonight. I’ll crawl into warm bed sheets early, but I’ll dwell on how I inexplicably wrote down the wrong shorthand for a pizza order because I was “too busy thinking about getting fucked.” I’ll lie in bed on my back like the slut I am, dreaming of all of those insults shouted so close to my face that I’m breathing in spit.

I f inally get cut, and it feels like lifting off a death sentence, but I cannot leave. Javi just split fresh summer watermelon—beautiful, juicy pink with red cayenne dusted atop like new snowfall. “Bite before you go, honey?”

Javi smiles with honesty, like my father; I suppose it’s remarkable that he is family now. He and those other faces I’ve come to love so abundantly. It’s a small miracle: the tender friend who shares his watermelon and cayenne.

Kate Drakulic acrylic and charcoal on paper, 2018

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Summer in New York

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Stitched Bottleneck

Art

Melissa Gust slip and glaze on earthenware, 2018

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ARTWORDS “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

—Thomas Merton

Corners and Points: The Point Is That This Is Not a Loveless Town. The Corner Is, the Love Is Hard to Digest, like Gallstones.

CIARA CAGEMOE

I

first place It is not a loveless town, is what I try to say. It is just a town of hard love. Just a town of corners and points, whose love is found and dispersed in those very same corners and points, corners and points. A town of people whose hearts are gray-green, crusted over with moss and cracked like weathered stone.

Tourists occasionally come, wrapped in their big cylindrical coats. Their bits and pieces curve out of the corners and points of our buildings and our parks.

Their hearts (we checked through color x-ray) are bright red, smooth, and easily torn like balloons, the petals of flowers.

They complain that our love (as well as our food) is hard to digest, passing through their soft bellies painfully like gallstones forcing their way out in pee.

But we understand. It is diff icult, sometimes, to know love and to digest it.

ArtWords

n a town of corners and points, who doesn’t have a sharp tongue?

If you fold yourself along the creases of our gray streets, you’ll be followed by wallops, curses, and calls that curl and catch in clouds of dusty insults at your feet. It isn’t anything personal.

It’s just about shapes. About triangles.

Our people don’t know how to show love that is soft within a triangle. The only soft spot on a triangle is the belly, the volume, and people don’t like to expose their bellies, their volumes. So instead, we give the hard, roof supporting, three-pointed sort of love. It (the love) looks like kisses that stab and taste metallic, spiked tongues fencing with teeth, and hugs that are two-dimensional—other bodies met harshly like water from a great height. It looks like those curses, calls, and wallops that curl, curl, curl when everything else corners, corners, corners.

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Drรถbsdorf I

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Lyonel Feininger oil on canvas, 1928. museum purchase.

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One Portrait of One Man Beth Lipman glass and metal, 2017.

Weisman Art Museum commission.

For All the Women I Love and the Men that Did Not Love Them GABRIELLA GRANADA second place

Y

ou carve deep holes in place of your lungs to make space for more useful things than air.

He f ills it with the crumpled contents of his back pocket, a pack of cigarettes, that book you gave him two Christmases ago that he hasn’t gotten around to reading yet.

You rest your tired frame against a mosaic of glass. I see a throne eclipsing the sun and cloaked in rays. He sees cracks in a thick sheet of ice. You begin to fear the concept of looking cold.

Your deepest drawer rests at the very bottom of you. He’s upset that it’s locked, so you are, too. You know it’d be easier if he could reach every part of you, so you mold a small opening in the center of yourself to reveal crystalline chains coiling around glass shards. He reaches in and cuts himself on your most jagged parts, and you apologize for not making it easier for him to take.

You place your heart outside of your body, frozen in glass.

You worry that when there is no more space left for you to give, when you can’t hold any more of him, he’ll go.

And you’ll be left with empty compartments—deep caverns with nothing but space.

ArtWords

You trade your gut for a knuckled f ist, string it together with beads, and douse it in a deep cherry red. I see it clench tighter every time you think you are doing something wrong. You are never doing something wrong. He tells you that you really need to get better at

letting things go.

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BLUE JULIANNE PEKALA third place This indigo skin, deep aquamarine, Once was lemon, amber, tangerine.

Shades of sunset escaped from my soft sigh— Colored my skin like the evening sky.

Rose, bronze, pigmented pink Pooled at my joints like calligraphy ink.

My feet were covered in ruby red; Up my ankles and shins the color spread.

Then a jagged voice, some shameful phrase— “Fat,” “Big Boned,” my tones tinned to gray.

More wicked words thinned my tint like turpentine.

All that remained, my blue tears, stained my skin like cherry wine.

ArtWords

Few notice my blue toes, My blue hands, my blue nose.

A “Fat” body is a body left unseen; A “Fat” body is a body banished from magazines.

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But big breasts, a full figure, and shapely hips Are parts of me that tempt eager fingertips.

Clumsy lovers' palms, like palettes, paint my torso with every touch.

Green, red, yellow, black. Too much.

I miss my marigold, sunset skin.

I miss multicolored, vibrant limbs.

The beauty of my elbow, my ankle, my face— I miss when my body, my whole body, could be embraced.

Though sorrow flows along my curves, I know the love that I deserve.

Atop my pair of mishandled, multicolored breasts, I’ll paint a heart on my chest.

Niki de Saint Phalle painted polyester on a metal base, 1997. gift of the Arnold and Sylvia Goldman family.

ArtWords

Dawn

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The Formation of Our Flying Forms a Shadow Down Below CHERYL WILLIS third place

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eads crane in wondrous gasps at our sequential rhythms, swooping and darting at breakneck speeds. We are the Sunrise Awakeners! We dive through clouds and dodge tall miracles to make our way home, singing freedom with our many colors.

Migration is more than moving geographically—it is chemistry, molecular, a yearning from within—beyond our control or our choosing. We are empowered by simply conceding to our inherent fate: remembering those that will never forget you.

But as our shadow casts its fleeting shade we see you and become your witnesses. No longer heads up, no longer mouths breathing wide. Your head droops down. You walk in lines, and your body is closed. How stuck you are with your weight on the ground?

And as we touch our shadows upon the tops of your heads, we see what you have become, where you have been and are heading. We fly for now—as all we can do—and desire the day the wind reaches your wings, and your shadow will take up a new dawn.

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#4, Diaz Charles Biederman painted aluminum, 1990.

Biederman Archive, Weisman Art Museum, gift of Charles J. Biederman

ABOUT ARTWORDS ArtWords is an annual writing competition for undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Minnesota, sponsored by the Weisman Art Museum. Students select a piece of art on display from the museum’s permanent collection and create an original piece of prose or poetry in response. Selected authors are awarded prizes, published online, and given the opportunity to present their work in galleries of the museum. ArtWords is held in collaboration with the Department of English’s Creative Writing program and The Tower art and literary magazine. A jury including faculty, Weisman Art Museum staff, professionals from the Twin Cities community, and staff members of The Tower select the winning entries.

Launched in 1998, ArtWords encourages students to analyze, reflect, and respond to the diverse and stimulating collection at the Weisman Art Museum. This is The Tower’s sixth year as an ArtWords collaborator, and we are happy to present the 2019 undergraduate winners in this year's issue.

JUDGES Mikayla Borchert, Managing Editor and Art Editor, The Tower Katie Covey, Director of Student Engagement, Weisman Art Museum Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Marketing and Publicity Assistant, Coffee House Press Jesseca Fusco, Fiction Editor and Copyeditor, The Tower Megan Hoff, Chief Poetry Editor and Marketing Director, The Tower Tess Maki, Chief Nonfiction Editor and Copyeditor, The Tower Kathryn Nuernberger, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota

CONTRIBUTORS STEFANIE AMUNDSEN is a freshman from Waukesha, Wisconsin. She is studying Art as well as seeking minors in Design and Sustainability. She also enjoys volunteering, poetry, and traveling and would like to become an illustrator and/ or high school art teacher in the future.

BRANDON ANDERSON is a senior from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is currently studying Illustration, Digital Photography, Curation, and Entrepreneurship. He enjoys his time working in his art studio and is currently developing an online digital art gallery and exhibition space.

GEOFFREY AYERS is a junior studying English. He enjoys writing, gaming, music, and cooking. He wishes to live in San Diego.

GABRIELA SIERRA BEDON is a sophomore studying Finance and Art. She was born in Ecuador but has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for most of her life.

ALEXANDRA BLANCK is a senior studying Strategic Communications and Spanish. She started her own freelance business and hopes to pursue a career in writing in addition to following her passion for travel.

JANE BORSTAD is a junior from Minnetonka, Minnesota, working on her BFA in Visuals Arts and a minor in Interdisciplinary Design. She studied abroad in Florence. In her free time, she enjoys deejaying for Radio K and road tripping.

CIARA CAGEMOE is an undergraduate student from Minneapolis, Minnesota, pursuing a BFA in Ceramic Sculpture.

Her head is usually half in the clouds, chasing daydreams and inventing worlds.

She likes to wander in a perpetual haze of wonder with a briefcase of questions at her side.

NOAH CAUSEY is a gay Acting major in the Guthrie Company of 2019 and a writ-

Contributors

SIMON BATISTCH is a senior studying English and Political Science. He is from Illinois. He has been published once before, in the 2017 edition of The Tower.

Art has always been a part of her and will continue to be throughout her professional career in the business world. Without her family’s support, she would not be where she is today.

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er and filmmaker. He hails from Georgia and seeks to use words and stories to expand the understanding of sexuality, and he works to eliminate any stereotypes or limitations placed on the queer culture.

JESSICA CLAYTON utilizes various printmaking methods to navigate the complex nature of mental health issues and their stigmas existing within societies. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in December 2018 with a BS in Psychology and a secondary major in Art.

Contributors

ERIC DEBORD is a junior at the University of Minnesota studying Psychology.

He likes to spend time listening to music and hanging out with friends. He hopes to become a school counselor or therapist after graduate school.

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KATE DRAKULIC is a graduating senior studying Art, Journalism, and Design. Her written work elevates the voices and stories of local artists, bringing awareness to their practices and ideologies. Her visual work explores the body and her own identity.

She is currently working on portraits of people close to her.

BRIDGET DUGAN is a senior from Syracuse, New York, studying English. She is also the Co-Editor in Chief of the Trouble Child magazine. She enjoys wholesome

twitter threads, cannoli, and singing with her a cappella group.

NISARG GANDHI is a senior from Minneapolis, Minnesota, studying Finance and Neuroscience. He enjoys drone-flying, working with education nonprofits, and writing poetry. He hopes to one day publish his own poetry anthology.

BROOKS NELSON GEENEN is a photographer currently living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Minnesota. His work has been exhibited throughout Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York. Geenen’s photographs survey the ongoing struggle between the natural landscape and the human desire to exploit it. His images suggest the symbiotic yet troubled quality of the relationship.

JOEY GOTCHNIK is a junior studying Materials Science and Engineering. He is from the snowy hills of Cloquet, Minnesota. He enjoys songwriting and the outdoors, and the role that humor takes in everyday life. He hopes to find the proper balance between science and art in the future.

GABRIELLA GRANADA is a senior studying English. She’s passionate about

Filipino food and female agency. She plans to go to law school and become a legal advocate for immigration and international women’s rights. Her writing has been published in City Pages, The Riveter, and The Wake Magazine.

MICHAEL GREER is a freshman from Northfield, Minnesota, studying History. He likes Hawaiian shirts and Bananagrams, and dreams of finding someone who will read Wittgenstein with him.

MELISSA GUST is a BFA student with an emphasis in Ceramics. She creates with earthenware clay and slip in vibrant coloring and patterns to mimic fabric.

Her work is centered around making vessels through her stitching and tackle issues around the negative effects of peer pressure.

ALLISON HUNSLEY is a sophomore from Albertville, Minnesota, studying Product Design. She loves to travel, hike, meet new people, and take photos.

One day she hopes to work as a product

EMILY JABLONSKI is a graphic designer and illustrator. She loves to work with color and playful topics.

MAIA JACOBSON is a junior from Minnesota studying Strategic Communications and Journalism with a minor in Communications studies. She enjoys spending time with the people close to her, seeing live music, reading, gardening, and dancing—she'll never stop dancing.

JIHYEA JANG is a South Korean contemporary artist based in Minneapolis. She is focusing on drawing and painting realistic and creative portraits and using pencil, watercolor, and oil paint. Her work is about showing intimate traits of people and she is always trying to create different ways to approach portraits.

HANNAH KIL is a sophomore from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. At the University of Minnesota, she is pursuing her degree in Journalism within the Strategic Communications track. She is passionate about creating, growing, and developing herself through her art.

Contributors

KAYLEEN HEDBERG is a senior studying English and Creative Writing. If you pay attention, you can find her obsessing over a George Saunders story, listening to everything by Lana Del Rey and Sia, and snuggling her cat, Minerva.

designer in New York City, while creating freelance artwork and painting murals on the side.

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LUCA KJOS is a senior from Madison, Wisconsin, studying English and French.

They enjoy finding cool-looking mushrooms in the woods and petting every cat they see.

N.C. KRUEGER is a freshman from Minneapolis studying Earth Sciences.

Her work has been published in Embers Igniting, Alexandria Quarterly, and Blue Marble Review.

LUCAS KURMIS is a senior at the University of Minnesota studying Psychology. He enjoys writing (music, poetry, and stories) and will probably spend more time on that sort of thing after college.

Contributors

MEGAN LANGE is a sophomore from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, studying Technical Writing and Communication. She loves reading, writing, and spending time with her friends. One day she hopes to write a book.

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day make art for a living.

ALEXIS MA is new to college and the Twin Cities, and aims for greater heights by pursuing an education in Neuroscience. Despite living overseas for the better part of her life, she hopes to sate her wanderlust and travel the world.

JACK MAGNUS is a freshman studying Graphic Design. If he is not in the studio, you can find him rock climbing, hiking, or back home with his family in Elm Grove, Wisconsin.

SARAH MAI is a junior from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, studying English Literature and Art. She enjoys taking care of plants, rock climbing, drawing, and cooking with her friends.

GRACE LANGEBERG is a second-year Art History student, originally from Wisconsin. After graduation, she plans on pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing.

ALYSSA MCCATHIE is pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Minnesota. She loves nature and being outdoors, and that is often reflected in her digital artwork and paintings. Alyssa hopes to use her art to encourage others to be more environmentally conscious.

KENDALL LAURENT is a senior studying Studio Art and Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She enjoys cooking, cats, and being active. She hopes to some-

MAGDALENE MCCLUN is a nineteen-year-old Art major from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys different shades of green, the smell of rain, danc-

ing to funky music, and peach tea. She is often found in a turtleneck drawing faces under a tree.

OLIVIA MCGOVERN is a sophomore from Wausau, Wisconsin, studying English and minoring in Creative Writing.

She loves photography and reading, and she hopes to one day hike the Appalachian Trail but will settle for hiking next to the Mississippi for now.

ROBERT MCGRADY is a multidisciplinary performer and visual artist, working with cartooning, printmaking, and theatre. His work often explores the relationship between patriarchal power structures and queer identities.

He attends the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre.

CATE MILLER is a second year art student at the University of Minnesota. She uses charcoal, graphite, ink, and digital

FARRAH MINA is a sophomore from Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, studying Global Studies and Journalism. She enjoys reading, eating chocolate, and making fridge poetry.

MICHELLE NASVIK is a junior from Minneapolis, Minnesota, studying Anthropology, Geography, and Design.

She enjoys biking, cooking, and traveling, and she loves to create many different forms of art. Michelle also runs her own art and jewelry business.

JULIANNE PEKALA is a sophomore from Minneapolis, Minnesota, studying Nursing. In her free time, she enjoys exploring the outdoors, painting, and seeing family and friends. She writes poetry to challenge herself to take on new perspectives.

CATHERINE RETICA is a junior from Minnetonka, Minnesota, studying Strategic Communications with minors in Design and Spanish. She plans to work at an advertising agency and enjoys watching movies and dabbling in different mediums of design.

Contributors

CASSI MIESNER is a senior studying Studio Art with a focus in Ceramics. Her current work explores the concept of home, comfort, and safety in objects. She enjoys gardening, spending time with her cats, and teaching clay camps at the Northern Clay Center in the summer.

mediums to create comics and drawings that focus on community, healthy friendships, and connections between people and places.

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HADEN RILES is an undergraduate in English at the University of Minnesota.

His poetry has previously been published

by The Merrimack Review. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

ZOE ROGERS is a sophomore from Minnesota studying Art and English. Her favorite activities include painting, printmaking, and petting dogs.

DEMITRIA SABANTY is a sophomore from St. Charles, Illinois, studying English and Creative Writing. When not reading and writing poetry or prose, she enjoys painting. After graduating, she plans to pursue an MFA in Nonfiction in the hopes of one day publishing a memoir.

Contributors

REBECCA SANCHEZ is a freshman at the University of Minnesota studying Child Psychology. She works at a daycare in St. Paul as an assistant teacher in the toddler room. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, and performing her poetry at open mics.

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ALEX SCHUMACHER is a senior at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities majoring in English. He hopes to pursue writing after graduating this spring.

MIKI SCHUMACHER is a second year student studying English Literature and

Japanese language. They enjoy painting, listening to folklore podcasts, and hiking in the fall. They hope to teach in the future.

HAGGAI SIMON is a digital artist who creates 3D art, digital animation, and photo manipulation. Haggai is from a northwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Minneapolis this fall to study Digital Business for Artists Advocacy and grow his startup company: an app to connect artists.

IAN SMITH is a sophomore studying French. Born and raised in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, he enjoys eating cheese and arguing in favor of the word “bubbler.” In addition to studying, Ian immerses himself in writing, drawing, and listening to good tunes.

LAUREN SWEE is a sophomore from Waconia, Minnesota, studying English with minors in Creative Writing and Environmental Education. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, visiting any available lake, and paying way too much attention to other people’s dogs.

ABIGAIL THOMPSON is a senior at the University of Minnesota studying Art History and Art with a concentration in Photography. Working primarily with en-

vironmental portraits and digital collages, her most recent work navigates the falsification of memory in transitional spaces.

CATE TYNJALA is a junior from New Brighton, Minnesota, studying English and Strategic Communications. In her free time, Cate listens to true crime podcasts and searches the Twin Cities for the best dark roast.

In the future she hopes to work in public relations for a nonprofit or school district.

MAYA ULRICH is a sophomore from Renville, Minnesota, majoring in Psychology and Art. She is also minoring in Sociology and Social Justice. She enjoys advocacy, plants, reading, and dancing in her living room.

ELLA VAN HAREN is a first year student from Sussex, Wisconsin, studying Art. Ella is passionate about creating art that is both socially conscious and beautiful, and hopes to one day incorporate her love for visual art into a career.

RACHEL WEISS is a senior from Hudson, Wisconsin, studying Art and Psychology. She will be going to graduate school in the fall to pursue her Masters degree in Art Therapy. She is Georgia O’Keeffe’s number one fan and much of her inspiration draws from O’Keeffe’s use of color and abstractions.

CHERYL WILLIS is a BFA student with a focus in abstract painting. She has returned to University after a full career in theatre and TV. Cheryl enjoys playing video games, long walks, and meditating.

MENGJIE ZHOU is a painter who makes acrylic paintings on canvas. She earned her BA in Art from the University of Minnesota. Learning Chinese calligraphy inspired her to use the technique of mixing ink with water to create a very dynamic atmosphere. She applies this method to the acrylic world.

Contributors

GENEVIEVE VICKERS is a Fall 2018 graduate from the Journalism school who aspires to one day write fiction full time.

When she isn’t working towards that goal, she enjoys drawing, singing, and horseback riding.

SOPHIA WAHLSTROM is a junior from St. Paul, Minnesota, studying English and Creative Writing. Her lasting loves are for literature, cribbage, and coffee shops. Most of Sophia’s notebooks are filled with the beginnings of ideas, and she hopes to someday fill more notebooks with the endings.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, we wish to express our gratitude for the support we’ve received from the Department of English, Student Unions and Activities, and the Minnesota Student Association, and for the continued collaborations we have had with the Weisman Art Museum and Radio K. We thank our friends, family, and community members for their support; without their generosity, we would be unable to do what we do. We would like to recognize the following individuals:

Acknowledgments

Matt and Clare Ailts, Cindy and Gary Charbonneau, Mark and Renee Charbonneau, Thomas M. Clausen and Christina L. Ulrich, Barbara Dierssen, Keith Dobbin, Dave and Mary Dooley, Evelyn Elliot, Robert A. Gaertner, Fe A. Granada, Phuong Ha, Regents Professor Patricia Hampl, Victoria A. Harsin, Elizabeth F. Hogan, Fain K. Keo, Marleen A. and Richard D. Kurschner, Phan Ly, Beatrice Maguire, Kevin Maguire, Patricia Maguire, Tom Maguire, Bryan L. and Diane Mauer Maki, Katharine W. Mauer, Professor Ellen Messer-Davidow, Ernest and Jill T. Miel, Sarah J. Miller, Bryan and Suzanne Miller, Paula Mitchell, Aaron D. Nesser, Jennifer K. Phillips, Larry A. Pruess, Brett A. Pruess, William J. Reichard, Renee Schauer, Doug and Renae Schleisman, Paul A. and Lucienne J. Taylor, Randolph A. and Saralie S. Terens, the Katharine W. Mauer Charity Fund-Vanguard, Valerie H. and Charles A. Thompson, JoAnn Verburg and James Moore, and John and Barbara Wollersheim.

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We thank Jamee Yung, Director of Education for the Weisman Art Museum, for organizing the ArtWords competition. We would like to acknowledge Kathryn Nuernberger, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota; Katie Covey, Director of Student Engagement for the Weisman Art Museum; and Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Marketing and Publicity Assistant for Coffee House Press, for participating as judges.

We thank English Department Chair Andrew Elfenbein, Director of Undergraduate Studies Dan Philippon, and Creative Writing Program Director Kim Todd. Thank you also to the following English Department staff members for helping with our endeavors: Rachel Drake, Coordinator of Advising and Undergraduate Studies; Jessica Franck, Executive Assistant; Karen Frederickson, Graduate Program Coordinator; Judith Katz, CLA Regional Academic Advisor; Brent Latchaw, CLA Executive Accounts Specialist; Pamela Leszczynski, Department Administrator; Jess McKenna, Coordinator of Instructional Services; Zarlasht Niaz, Administrative Assistant; Terri Sutton, Communications Associate; and Holly Vanderhaar, Creative Writing Program Coordinator. We would also like to thank the following Art Department faculty and staff members: TerĂŠz Iacovino, Assistant Curator of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery; Tetsuya Yamada, Professor of Ceramics; Emmett Ramstad, Lecturer of Sculpture and Professional Practice; and Patricia Straub, Senior Academic Advisor. Thank you also to Sara Enfield, Executive Office and Administrative Specialist, and Erik Farseth, Associate Administrator, both in the Department of Art History.

We would like to give a special thanks to Paul Taylor, member of the English Department Advisory Board, and Ann Regan, Editor in Chief of the Minnesota Historical Society Press, for speaking to our class. Finally, our instructor, Dr. James Cihlar, has earned not only our gratitude but also our utmost respect for his constant support and assistance; without him, this publication would truly not be possible.

Acknowledgments

It is because of the combined efforts of everyone listed here that we were able to publish another edition of The Tower. The magazine belongs to you as much as it belongs to us, and for that we are both humbled and grateful.

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Colophon The Tower art and literary magazine was designed and typeset by Alexandra Buelow, Lauren Foley, Christine Ha, and Samantha Keo in Avenir and EB Garamond. It was printed by Versa Press, East Peoria, Illinois.

THE TOWER

VOLUME 13 2019

THE TOWER