The Tower 2022

Page 24

Strawberries Are Made to Mold Dani Barber

I went to the farmer’s market last week for the first time in months. The air smelled like dirt and leaves and a thousand warm bodies under hot tents. It smelled like plastic too, and tarmac and a city holding its breath waiting for the first chills to arrive. The produce is good right now, bright and firm. The sellers look tired, as always. Everyone here is tired and moving in a sleepy mass to buy bundles of greens that will be left to rot under the bottom shelf of the fridge. There’s a slime there at the bottom, where waste collects and solidifies. It’s an unintentional slime, the kind of slime that you can never get clean, a guilt that the beautiful bundles of kale and spinach have turned to liquid disappointment and settled into place. The noise of the market is an unsettling din, too loud for the occasion. Everything is too loud these days–I have been living in a sensory deprivation chamber built out of my couch and a thousand blankets and the hum of traffic on the highway. I want to climb into one of the passing cars and feel the movement of the road and drift to sleep, or feel the movement of the road and beg them to pull over and let me spit out the window when my stomach tries to take over my throat. I’m tired of motion and tired of stillness. The whole world turning feels more relentless lately, like we can feel the movement under our toes and in our bones and it is sinking into our marrow and we desperately want off the ride and we beg the operator to stop but he is too busy eating an overpriced corn dog that someone bribed him with to let them ride three to a row on the Ferris wheel to notice our quiet pleas. We keep turning. We want off but if we get off there would be nothing left but dizzy movement, muscle memory, a fake shifting somehow worse than the physical turn. I am buying strawberries that I’ll eat cold and mushrooms that I’ll baste in butter and rosemary and fry until they are crispy and beautiful. I’ll share the meal with my love and try to keep my cat from stealing a stray cap. We’ll feel the motion but it will be quiet and slow and gentle and we’ll copy that motion as we pet our cat while she sleeps between us. The world rocks us to sleep and we don’t protest it. I grab a handful of chard; maybe tomorrow I’ll start eating healthier.

22


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Ahrenholz 1 | Simone Traband | Visual Art

14min
pages 94-104

“Lion Hair” | Annie Zheng | Nonfiction

5min
pages 87-88

“Shrike” | Jasmine Snow | Poetry

1min
pages 92-93

“Ode to Leaving” | Katharine Anderson | Poetry

0
page 86

Me, Me, and Me | Hyunyoung Cho | Visual Art

4min
pages 89-90

Jelly Brain | Carina Lopez Segura | Visual Art

3min
pages 84-85

From Their Eyes | Samantha Bergren | Visual Art

0
page 83

“Chronicling Chronic Pain” | Marley Richmond | Nonfiction

2min
page 82

Walls and Reflections | Sage Caballero | Visual Art

3min
pages 69-70

“Arturo” | Alessandra Benitez | Poetry

0
page 80

“Graveyard Dirt” | Katharine Anderson | Poetry

1min
pages 78-79

“Writer’s Block” | Trinity V. Fritz Lawrence | Fiction

4min
pages 73-74

Working with (Coral Under the Sun) | Stefanie Amundsen | Visual Art

3min
pages 75-76

“The Caves Beneath Walter Library” | Mustapha Jallow | Poetry

0
page 77

“Seasons, or, Grief Underwater” | Laurel Reynolds | Poetry

0
page 71

“Letter of Termination” | Cole Normandin-Parker | Nonfiction

2min
pages 66-67

“The Modern Tantalus” | Max Pritchard | Fiction

2min
page 68

“Unviolence” | Amital Shaver | Poetry

1min
page 57

“Mullo*” | Trinity Fritz Lawrence | Poetry

1min
pages 62-63

Bridge | Tong Liao | Visual Art

1min
pages 55-56

“Meditations on Grief” | Simon Harms | Poetry

0
page 61

“portrait of an identity crisis, on the borderline” | Alexis Ma | Nonfiction

6min
pages 52-54

Passing (Kissing Couple) | Ruby Cromer | Visual Art

0
page 51

“Taxidermy, Pointillism, & Growing into My Skin” | Erin Mullen | Poetry

2min
page 49

“Realtor” | Rachel Huberty | Poetry

1min
page 50

“Storge” | Ariana Nguyen | Poetry

0
page 48

Purgatory 2 | Anna Mamie Ross | Visual Art

0
page 43

“COLOSSUS” | Ian Krueger | Fiction

4min
pages 44-46

“x.” | K. Mouton | Poetry

0
page 42

“How to Work at Wrigley Field” | Jane Fenske-Newbart | Nonfiction

3min
pages 35-36

Shape | Hyunyoung Cho | Visual Art

2min
pages 37-39

“The Oakridge Herald, Page 5” | Emma Rasmussen | Poetry

1min
page 31

“Living in Minneapolis” | Simon Harms | Poetry

0
page 33

“A Scrap Metal Scorpion” | Stella Mehlhoff | Fiction

4min
pages 28-29

“Autumn Weather Report” | Brynn Nguyen | Nonfiction

5min
pages 19-20

“Hidden Genesis” | Lum Chi | Poetry

2min
pages 21-22

“Snowflakes in Your Hair” | Mahdi Khamseh | Poetry

1min
pages 15-16

“My Wife” | Nate Johnson | Poetry

0
page 12

“Strawberries Are Made to Mold” | Dani Barber | Poetry

2min
page 24

“Plains” | Mustapha Jallow | Poetry

0
page 17

“Last Tuesday I Stuck My Finger Into the Socket of Nomenclature and Suddenly I Was Mr. Bean.” | Trinity V. Fritz Lawrence | Poetry

1min
page 10

“Delicate” | Morgan Coffeen | Poetry

0
page 14
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